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The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

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

#191

Post by jurynulifcation »

granshaw wrote: post #180
AnarchismIsCool wrote: post #95

I 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…

There are affinity groups dedicated to more than just particular novel-gazing interpretations of the divine. We should be striving to make a space for affinity groups to meet & form.

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

#192

Post by [deleted] »

granshaw wrote: post #180
AnarchismIsCool wrote: post #95

I 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…

[deleted]

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

#193

Post by zerbinxx »

Ashken wrote: post #89
ta8645 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Can you elaborate on this? From what I can tell, the outcome that you’re speaking of has occurred for the opposite reason. Looking at the data for the US, there seems to be an even more exponential curve between 2015-2020, which would imply that these trends could have been further exacerbated by the reduction of government regulation. The same is likely true for the concentration of wealth, the loss in small busines…

I think a possible explanation would be that the increasing desire for more government regulation, or at least functional government, runs counter to the world, which is increasingly ruled by inhuman, (even anti-human) forces. This breeds a desperation in people as they realize that humanity is viewed as a resource, not an end in itself, for the inhuman forces (call it capital, technology, whatever) to consume and mold toward their own ends. While the left is obviously more in favor of “big government”, I think it’s easy to forget that conservatives are also perpetually in rebellion against a government they feel has abandoned the goal of protecting the traditional structures they hold dear, while also delegating the role of speech police and moral authority to the dreaded socially liberal wings of Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

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

#194

Post by DeathArrow »

Most of the West lost its traditional values. If there are no values to build upon, if you have no reference, if everything and everyone is the same, if right and wrong, good and evil are confused, if you have no compass, then it's very easy to get lost and become mentally ill.

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

#195

Post by granshaw »

j4yav wrote: post #125
latentcall wrote: post #57

Not 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.

I feel like there must be some generation coming that feels like being highly online is weird and embarassing, having grown up and seen the way their parents and other adults behave, and use the internet more as a utility rather than a place to try to primarily live. What makes this hard I think is how addictive it is for children, so by the time they might realize how embarassing it is they have already been addicte…

What makes it hard is the stigmatization of letting children roam free unsupervised, and the isolating nature of suburbs coupled with both parents being working parents.

Kids can’t go anywhere and are stuck at home. None of their friends are within walking distance. What do you expect them to do?

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

#196

Post by barrenko »

latentcall wrote: post #57

Not 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.

Screens of any and all kind.

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

#197

Post by Nyra »

ars wrote: post #38
dghlsakjg wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If a kid changes behavior because of a parent watching then that kid absolutely needs watching. It's still free roaming because the kid is 100% in charge of where they will go. That's the part that matters, not that someone can tell where they are.

You are wrong on so many levels for stating this as though many parents are adequate moral arbiters and not often irrational, unreasonable, or overprotective about what they think is okay for their kid to do. A child is not “100% in charge of where they will go” if they have to consider the consequences of or pay a price for doing innocuous things after returning home when they know they are being monitored.

Everybody, especially kids, deserves to have some alone time and actual agency.

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

#198

Post by lynx23 »

granshaw wrote: post #180
AnarchismIsCool wrote: post #95

I 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…

Churches, dont make me laugh. In fact, church people, or believers in general were those people that convinced me that rural community is something I only want a big distance to. That, and excessive alcohol consumption during the day and evening. It improved when I moved to the next bigish city. But churches are really the antithesis for comfortable communities, to me.

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

#199

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

AnarchismIsCool wrote: post #95

I 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…

Honestly, I think the fact that, as the headline says, "it's international" is evidence against what you're saying.

Even though the post only covers the Anglosphere, I'm from Spain and the phenomenon also happens here and is often qouted as worrying (e.g. child and teen suicide trends: https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/OJt9haHrWhKMDEPsTtrj3g--/Y...)

I don't think the Spanish society is especially competitive - no one cares about IQ, just a minority (going into academic sector) cares about GPA, stack rank is not a thing in any company I know here (maybe it exists, but if it does, it would be rare), and income... well, people do care about that, of course, but as they have always done and more out of practical reasons than sheer competitiveness - in fact, many people would rather be a public sector worker with a super stable contract than earn a lot of money with more instability.

And still, our teens are completely messed up. So I think either phones, or social networks, or a combination of both are more likely culprits.

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

#200

Post by nicbou »

FarhadG wrote: post #149
geodel wrote: post #59

My theory is it is effect of ever faster economic growth across the world. Now it has given great many benefits to great many people. Negative effects so far discussed are only in term of destruction of ecology, depletion of natural resources, pollution etc. To me this growth has created a sense of anxiety in all teens and older. Now the societal structures, jobs, careers, education, medicine etc do not change over m…

This resonates with what I've observed: I've asked several close family members and friends (between 16-22) what's troubling them and the most common answer is that they feel they're behind in life. They feel that they must already be driving an exotic car, surrounded by tons of potential partners, and at the top of their game—I assume these expectations are set by the content they consume and interact with on a dail…

Even without raised expectations, people have got to be disappointed that they can't get the same things as the previous generation. Hell they can't even get basic things at a reasonable price.

I'm out of touch with the reality of teenagers, but it feels like they're expected to fight harder and harder for less and less.

Someone else also talked about how everything became dominated by metrics and competition. It has got to become alienating to chase hard, abstract goals with rewards that never seem to come.

Perhaps social media is just throwing oil on top of that fire.

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