The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023) • Hacker News Board

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

#311

Post by bluescrn » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 10:16 AM UTC

drfuchs wrote: post #41

ChatGTP wrote: 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…

Disagree. Folks in the 60’s thru 80’s expected global nuclear annihilation with some probability.

There was also concern over population explosion back then (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb).

But talking about population has become quite the taboo. Utterly unacceptable to restrict reproduction, but it's cool to take people's transport/heating/protein away to save the planet?

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

#312

Post by Tainnor » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 10:18 AM UTC

elzbardico wrote: post #39

People blame social media, but they never ask why social media is like that. I think that the cultural changes that lead to that have been running for far more time than people give credit for, and that social media is just the proverbial canary on the mine that made things explicit. Those changes are multi-generational changes, and more probably there are a multitude of factors behind it. Family structure, economy f…

Social media is of course not responsible for all our problems, but I do blame specifically social media for making people (including myself) who are materially well off and live a comfortable life irrationally angry about things outside of their control and think that everything is going to get worse and worse (which is a reinforcement loop because then some of these people start exhibiting destructive behaviour which does make things worse).

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

#313

Post by oldpersonintx » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 10:19 AM UTC

grecy wrote: post #35

Do teens have much to look forward to? Climate change is already causing severe weather events, which are very likely to ramp quickly. Careers are a thing of the past, and it seems like no matter how hard you work you'll never "get ahead" and will be lucky not to spend your life living paycheck to paycheck. Life expectancy has gone down, markedly. Debt is up. New wars.

[dead]

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

#314

Post by nickd2001 » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 10:23 AM UTC

gverrilla wrote: post #42

Hyper-individualism in all spheres of life, magnified by anti-social technology. They are depressed because current life-form is depressing. Capitalism is pathologically tautological.

I agree that hyper-individualism is a big part of the problem. People need friendship and connection to be happy. If everyone is "doing their own thing" and looking after their own needs first, its a barrier to that. If you're depressed, going and helping someone else who is in need is often a good way to snap out of that depression (assuming its situational more than clinical depression). Even if the other person isn't obviously grateful, simply seeing that you made their life a bit better can put things in perspective, give yourself a purpose etc. Its often really low effort, e:g just actually bother to talk to someone , give them a cup of tea whatever. But people often fail to see this option that can make 2 people happy, because individualism gets in the way. People are almost embarrassed to offer or receive help and friendship, particularly in the US I feel ...

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

#315

Post by Fricken » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 10:25 AM UTC

elzbardico wrote: post #39

People blame social media, but they never ask why social media is like that. I think that the cultural changes that lead to that have been running for far more time than people give credit for, and that social media is just the proverbial canary on the mine that made things explicit. Those changes are multi-generational changes, and more probably there are a multitude of factors behind it. Family structure, economy f…

11 years ago I visited Lombok, and island adjacent to Bali in Indonesia, where people generally lived very traditional village lifestyles and most adults over 30 were illiterate. They had recently been provided 4g cellular coverage, and all the teenagers and young adults were lounging around doomscrolling Facebook lite on their $50 android phones. There was no multigenerational transition for them.

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

#316

Post by bondarchuk » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 10:29 AM UTC

fulladder wrote: post #155

If you want to posit an explanation for this phenomenon, you have to be able to explain two things: what changed abruptly in the early/mid 2010s?, and why did it uniquely affect teen girls? Many of the reactions I've seen over the years to these authors' work focuses on some particular frustrations or complaints about American society, the economy, our culture, and so on. The problem with these theories is that none…

>and even then there's no particular reason that a 13-year old girl would be so much more negatively impacted by changes that did occur than anyone else.

It would be a comparable reason (maybe even the exact same particular reason) to the reason that teen girls were uniquely impacted by earlier mass media to develop body image issues (and boy-band fandoms..). I think this is the (maybe implied) gender difference that a lot of people are seeing that you're missing.

Also, if the proposed explanation is exposure + susceptibility, with a gender difference in susceptibility, then your counterarguments that there's no gender difference in exposure doesn't really work.

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

#317

Post by drewjaja » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 10:30 AM UTC

Our society is teaching us to seek money, power, intelligence, beauty, bodily satisfaction, all of which will never satisfy us.

“If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.” ― David Foster Wallace,

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

#318

Post by nickd2001 » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 10:36 AM UTC

bongodongobob wrote: post #244

grecy wrote: post #35

Do teens have much to look forward to? Climate change is already causing severe weather events, which are very likely to ramp quickly. Careers are a thing of the past, and it seems like no matter how hard you work you'll never "get ahead" and will be lucky not to spend your life living paycheck to paycheck. Life expectancy has gone down, markedly. Debt is up. New wars.

I think this has to be a huge chunk of it. I'm 40, have an established career, make the most money I've made in my life, live in a smaller city and I can barely afford to get by. I can't afford to take a vacation. I can't afford to buy land or a boat or something. Retirement situation looks grim, likely a bullet to the head. I have literally nothing to look forward to and every day gets harder and harder to tell myse…

Sorry to hear this. If you're now making the most you ever have, and continue to do so, hopefully if you live somewhat frugally and save, you ought to be OK in the long-term? Speaking as someone who for various reasons, mostly the need to support family members, doesn't have the big bucks a lot of tech workers have. I've no prospect of owning land or a boat. ;) Or a fancy car. But I don't really care. :) Vacations - well ours are fine, we go to nice countryside, but doesn't involve flights, hotels, eating out or anything fancy. Seems to me in the West, many expect a high standard of living and feel a failure if we don't achieve that. But people in poorer countries are happy with much less. When I worked in the USA, I noticed many immigrants lived very happy lives on a fraction of resources of their American coworkers/ peers. They hadn't got used to expecting that standard of living. Possibly their kids would be more "American" and feel like that had to have more. * Caveat : US healthcare system is a mess and can cause huge bills , for some people frugality and saving is outweighed by health costs. This system needs fixing IMHO

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

#319

Post by throwbadubadu » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 10:41 AM UTC

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.

Geez what? If a kid greater certain age does not change behaviour with parents watching please see a psychologist with it.

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

#320

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 10:45 AM UTC

granshaw wrote: post #214

nradov wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of that cultural change in attitudes can be traced back to the Etan Patz kidnapping case in 1979. That case received widespread, prolonged media attention at the time which made many parents more fearful. He was one of the first missing children to be featured on milk cartons which made it impossible to ignore. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/etan-patz-case-verdict-pedro-he...

It seemed free roaming was still widely accepted in the 90s though? What changed since the 2000s?

[deleted]