721–730 of 937 posts
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A person sitting on a chair alone staring blankly would be considered a sociopath these days.
I often worry about what others will think of me if I put away my phone and rest in silence.
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"the overprotection of children, the rise of “safetyism,” and the shouting down of speakers on university campuses when students deemed the speaker to be “harmful.” The emphasis is mine. What does that to do with any of this? University students aren't children and, agree or disagree with the result, they are the ones with agency there.
Both are protecting from anything outside of one's comfort zone. What's next, shout down politicians you don't agree with? That's not how democratical societies work.
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> Few deny that a drinking age is necessary. Because of drunk driving. If that was not an issue, we certainly wouldn't have a drinking age of 21 in the US. Several states still allow your family to serve their children alcohol, which is closer to the example of letting your kid use the internet.
In the UK the restriction is around the sale and was set to 18 in 1923 and had nothing to do with drunk driving. The restriction was because of concerns around minors being too young and naïve to fully understand the full implications of their actions. Which is why consumption is/was allowed at home on the basis that responsible adults will help children to learn to handle alcohol sensibly while stopping them doing a…
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…
> best we can be for our community This is the actual problem, because the scope of realization is way too small for humans to comprehend. That is the reason why we're in a climate crisis, plastic waste crisis, middle east crisis, and housing crisis - all simultaneously. How did that happen you might ask? Aren't people responsible for this? Humans are very, very, very _bad_ at planning the future, and they should be…
What are you talking about? Who would do that?
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…
I think it happens if you have kids. Parents make friends with their kids' friends' parents. "Soccer moms" and other parents whose kids are enrolled in sports make friends with other parents of their kid's teammates. Parents also make friends with their kid's teachers.
And kids still make friends at school, and after school during extracurricular activities like sports and jazz band.
Besides that, I think you're right, unless you make friends with your coworkers. There are also still parts of the US where you make friends with your neighbors. My parents recently moved to different suburbs a few years ago, and they're friends with their neighbors.
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Jonathan Haidt is a very thoughtful researcher and has been looking at this and related issues for a very long time. I think your dismissal is perhaps a bit too casual.
Both “the coddling of” and “the righteous” mind were pretty poor scholarship. The kind where the researcher starts with the conclusion and then looks for evidence that confirms the theory. Good science should either neutrally look at the evidence or, when starting with a theory, search for disconfirming evidence. Haidt does neither. Furthermore, Haidt struggles to accurately represent his ideological adversaries. Ano…
The more I see of these snide attacks, the less I believe there's any veracity at all in their belief system, which now spans an entire constellation of fringe politics turned mainstream.
Now, there are many outlets for both that teen and their parents (and their teachers, and their friends, and their friends' parents) to say or do something in response. There are resources online that virtually anyone can access, phone numbers you can call, authority figures better-trained to recognize these problems. And perhaps most importantly, we got rid of the absurd mentality that what happens in other families is none of our business, no matter how many unexplained bruises or cuts we witness.
Only now that we are openly discussing and grappling with these issues do we have ay hope of turning the tide.
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I’m amazed that I had to read so many comments complaining about social media before I hit this one. How have so few failed to consider the idea that young people might be correctly anxious and worried about the future which looks, in many ways, pretty grim.
How did the future looked like for a kid living through 1929’s crisis? A world in between wars. Or living through the Cold War and the possibility of a nuclear extinction of humans? Despair and hope have always been cyclical and yet we always think we’re “doomed” when living through hard times.
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> To your pet cat, the difference between you scrolling on your phone and you staring at the wall is nothing. This stuck with me for a moment, and made me feel like scrolling was effectively doing nothing at all, which is sad and best and sick at worst.
Sorry to make you feel bad, but that exact realization is the reason I don’t do remote work anymore. (I still scroll on my phone here and there!) A cynic might retort that reading a book is also “doing nothing”, but I think there is a certain physical presence that is missing with the scrolling. Hard to describe, but you know it when you feel it.
All other issues aside, it would be shocking if reported rates of teen mental illness did not increase as long-standing stigmas gradually wane and these topic become more acceptable to speak about. If your kid cut themself in 1975, what were you going to do? Ask you husband to spend money to "shrink their head"? More likely you'd hide it, like past generations hid most of their traumas. Now, there are many outlets fo…