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The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

afterbabel.com

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Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#21

It’s not just social media. Free roaming and spending time outside on their own or with peers went down dramatically for the last 30 years.

in no small part "thanks" to social media, no? like yeah in the us and anglosphere it's no small part car centricity, but like the blog post points out, this is a trend that's visible even places that don't have school shootings and car centricity, so it kind of has to be social media. (actually proving it is hard but, like, at this point, i don't see how it can even be disputed by any reasonable person, only pedants)

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#22

It’s not just social media. Free roaming and spending time outside on their own or with peers went down dramatically for the last 30 years.

As has the former abundance of youth-centric spaces. Many such as malls and arcades don’t exist like they used to. Physical game stores (like for Magic: The Gathering) are also drying up as it increasingly becomes harder to sell enough product as maintenance costs rise. And perhaps it’s just me, but after a certain age parks became rather boring even with a friend group.

Personally, I feel we need more library awareness and “recreational areas” within libraries. They tend to have a large variance of media, and are typically a safe place to be. However all the libraries in my area tend to lack anywhere to hang out, which I understand due to budgeting constraints, but it’s a shame it’s not easier to provide areas for the more “interesting” media available.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#23
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parents weren't GPS tracking their children in the 1990s.

To be fair, GPS tracking may actually make parents feel more comfortable allowing their kids to free roam.

It would more accurately be called unfree roaming.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#25
post #19

Since my youth climate change has been A wildly depressing concept to grapple with. Environment destruction period. I mean being depressed is one thing, living in a world that's literally cooking at the same time just takes it up a whole other level. I guess in the past, no matter how bad things got for you on a personal level, you could kind of count on the world being there if you got through it, now it's sort of 5…

So true. There's also the imminent return of Jesus Christ and the subsequent rapture to worry about. Kids have so much on their plate these days...

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#28
post #2

I’m not a parent nor am I a teen so take my comments with a grain of salt. The one thing that has consistently jumped out to me on this topic is how quickly people seem to jump to convenient answers. Of course you can’t ignore the rise of social media since 2010, but what about the level of control, structure, and surveillance that most young people have been subjected to over the same arc of time? That gets no atten…

> what about the level of control, structure, and surveillance that most young people have been subjected to over the same arc of time?

Not good enough thats mostly the US doing that

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#29
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parents weren't GPS tracking their children in the 1990s.

To be fair, GPS tracking may actually make parents feel more comfortable allowing their kids to free roam.

If your parents know where you are with 3m accuracy it isn’t really free roaming.

In other words, being watched or tracked will definitely affect a kids behavior.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#30
People underestimate the change that took place between 2008 and 2012 with ubiquitous phone usage. All of a sudden we all started staring at these devices for several hours a day. We never leave this thing.

The resulting impact on our mental state cannot be overstated.

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