Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is Scandinavia poor and miserable?
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Lots of countries are ethnically homogenous and yet, they are fucking hellholes.
The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
171–180 of 937 posts
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
US and UK life expenctancy both dipped by ~ a year whereas, say, Australia | Japan | China | Canada have all continued to rise. Put that down to a complete dogs breakfast response to handling an epidemic.
The recent pandemic had minimal impact on US life expectancy. Opioid poisoning and motor vehicle crashes have been a larger factor since before 2019 because they typically kill much younger people. This magnifies the impact on life expectancy. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/the-opioid-crisis-is-dri...
That may have been the case in 2017, the date of your article, certainly then opiod deaths outweighed the nonexistant deaths from COVID.
Today, in 2024, looking back, there's a sharp decline in US life expectancy figures after 2019 that, according to the CDC and other epidemiologists, had little to do with opiods:
In 1980, life expectancy at birth in the U.S. and in comparably large and wealthy countries was similar, but over recent decades, life expectancy has improved by much more in peer nations than it has in the U.S. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased mortality and premature death rates in the U.S. by more than it did in most peer countries, widening a gap that already existed before the pandemic.
Life expectancy in the U.S. fell by 2.4 years from 2019 to 2021, whereas in peer countries’ life expectancies fell by an average of just 0.3 years in this period. COVID-19 has erased two decades of life expectancy growth in the U.S., whereas the average life expectancy for comparable countries has decreased only marginally, to 2018 levels.
In 2021, 9 of the 10 leading causes of death remained the same as in 2020. The top leading cause in 2021 was heart disease, followed by cancer and COVID-19 (Figure 4).
Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis became the 9th leading cause of death in 2021, while influenza and pneumonia dropped from the list of 10 leading causes. The remaining leading causes in 2021 (unintentional injuries, stroke, chronic lower respiratory diseases, Alzheimer disease, diabetes, and kidney disease) remained at the same ranks as in 2020.
What does stand out is that OECD | G20 countries in general have steadily improved quality of life and expectancy whereas the USofA has been relative flat since 2012 (opiods and other reasons) and sharply dropped post COVID (poor community health responses).
[1] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-lif...
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think all the social media stuff is missing the mark. I think phones may well be responsible. Before smartphones, people regularly experienced true downtime - unstructured moments with nothing to do except be in your surroundings, feel your own boredom, experience your thoughts. Now, the moment our attention isn’t occupied by something external, we reach for our phones to have something to fill the silence. I bel…
>> Before smartphones, people regularly experienced true downtime Was there not a similar argument made as newspapers became commonplace? Before that the same argument had been made for books but newspapers were on another level - they were effectively limitless drugs, affordable and every single day a new one was available. Instead of talking, laughing and joking with the other workers waiting at the bus stop or in…
No one was reading the newspaper for the entire day. Instead it was a moment of reflection through the words of someone else.
Right now phones never end, there is no final page and nothing is reflected upon a second time outside phone time.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
I certainly think a drinking age below the driving age is appropriate. Either by increasing driving, or lowering the drinking age.
Driving is different. It's a lot about harming others. Drinking and smartphone's is primarily about harming the users themselves.
They are connected. Drinking makes driving less safe. Driving makes drinking easier. And smartphone use gives reasons to drink.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being always online wasn’t quite so shitty til the last 10-15 years. Many people did it and were just fine for a long time. To me this feels like blaming food poisoning on the fact you have to eat food. Maybe the food is just bad. the current state of online is the food. it just really sucks.
In the past we could stay online for long hours doing some few activities (chatting, playing games, browsing few sites). These days we can barely survive without a mobile phone always on, permeating every little interaction we have with the world. It’s quite a difference.
Before cell phones there were beepers. and people could always reach you on a landline. or leave a message on the machine. payphones. people weren’t really that much farther than they are now, it just required a little more coordination.
and cell phones have been around a lot longer than 10 years when this really picked up steam. even if you filter this statement to exclude everything but smart phones - smart, internet connected phones were around well before ~2012 when we saw a sharp spike begin in this trend, and that’s really the dawn of dominance of the YT/FB/IG/etc era.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#176Few deny that a drinking age is necessary. We also need a smart phone age. It's quite obvious that many teens are addicted to their phones and the mostly useless content they consume there.
Except with drinking, there's at least many adults that can effectively consider the risks of drinking. With smartphone usage, I'd argue that adults are just as bad, if not worse, in judging their own usage. I fail to see how this is anything but blaming the youth (or, modern speech "ageism").
Still, older smartphone users seem to be more psychologically resilient to them at least when it comes to anxiety and depression.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think all the social media stuff is missing the mark. I think phones may well be responsible. Before smartphones, people regularly experienced true downtime - unstructured moments with nothing to do except be in your surroundings, feel your own boredom, experience your thoughts. Now, the moment our attention isn’t occupied by something external, we reach for our phones to have something to fill the silence. I bel…
>> Before smartphones, people regularly experienced true downtime Was there not a similar argument made as newspapers became commonplace? Before that the same argument had been made for books but newspapers were on another level - they were effectively limitless drugs, affordable and every single day a new one was available. Instead of talking, laughing and joking with the other workers waiting at the bus stop or in…
The newspaper at least... stops once you've read it -- so that's what an hour (or whatever) gone of your day. That's a major difference, at least.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#178Not just social media, but always online mentality. Spending all your time online gives you a skewed perception of the world and I believe being online always is a major negative. Spending time outside is good for you. Socializing with real people in front of you is good also. Not sure if we can ever go back to that without some major catastrophe.
Being always online wasn’t quite so shitty til the last 10-15 years. Many people did it and were just fine for a long time. To me this feels like blaming food poisoning on the fact you have to eat food. Maybe the food is just bad. the current state of online is the food. it just really sucks.
Nobody except a very small minority of techno-nerds (and most of those not teenagers) was alawys online until about 15 years ago, the advent of the smartphone. It took easily another 5 years before a significant amount of teenagers had them, especially outside the richest countries.
But of course it's not the technical capability that's the problem, it's the always-online culture, the network effects, the constant doomscrolling through algorithm-optimized feeds, the instant notification when someone replies to your kneejerk vitrolic comment with even more vitrol.
And then again, that culture was not possible without the technical capabilities and widespread adoption of them. Nobody was motivated to build a site or app optimized for doomscrolling until there were enough eyeballs and advertising dollars to capture.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> Before smartphones, people regularly experienced true downtime Was there not a similar argument made as newspapers became commonplace? Before that the same argument had been made for books but newspapers were on another level - they were effectively limitless drugs, affordable and every single day a new one was available. Instead of talking, laughing and joking with the other workers waiting at the bus stop or in…
No one was reading the newspaper for the entire day. Instead it was a moment of reflection through the words of someone else. Right now phones never end, there is no final page and nothing is reflected upon a second time outside phone time.
You miss the point, before newspapers no one was this distracted from the present. It’s not the magnitude of distraction - a phone obviously offers more opportunity for longer distraction. It was the delta change vs. What distraction existed before.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#180I think all the social media stuff is missing the mark. It's 100% bad but it's just trash filling the hole society is making. Looking top down at the problem, humans need self actualization or propose to be happy. Originally we evolved to live in medium sized social groups that worked together to ensure their survival, we took care of each other and that was what drove our purpose, or rather why that need evolved, it…
All this talk about “community” - what “community”? It simply doesn’t exist anymore even if you wanted it - short of arranging to stay near your extended family and in laws, what else is there in the modern western world?
Churches, I guess is the only other true community left…