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The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

afterbabel.com

741–750 of 937 posts

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

#741
post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There's nothing cynical about pointing out that "to a cat, there's no difference between staring at a wall and scrolling" is just a shallow truism that falls apart the moment you consider even many non-digital activities people engage in.

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

#742

I remember peer pressure being a big factor in teen years, mostly in the negative. Couldn't the rise of always-connected social media have super charged this negativity and made most teens feel like outcasts, with a few "teenfluencers" determining who is in and who is out? That would be a kind of hell for me to live in who was a teen before all this.

It induces and amplifies existential angst, particularly among teens. They are bombarded with over-sexualised imagery and levels of material consumption not easily attainable in their local economy. One way of reacting is to detach from that world, and play video games all day. Another is to strive to become a YouTuber.

We've devalued the meaning of having an ordinary life with an ordinary mate.

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

#743

I think social media and technology in general ism while important, to some extent a second order effect response to a breakdown in community This is measured in Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone as occurring after 1965-ish[1] through a variety of measures, or for example more recently measuring where couples meet in the US, [2] which were declining well before the 2010s. The Middletown studies of the 1920s for example n…

In the UK working hours (especially working hours per household as women work more) have increased. No one has the time for community. Schools have also deteriorated and kids are put under a lot of pressure to achieve academically. I opted mine out.

Housing costs have increased, daycare is shooting through the roof, and everyone seems to be working harder to scrape by, at least in the US.

Daycare in particular is quite painful; there are high standards, but government subsidy is so low that simultaneously parents cannot afford it and programs cannot afford to staff adequately.

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

#744
post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

With a physical book people can ask "what's that about?" There's a big title on the back. When you are scrolling as far as anyone knows you're already in a conversation and there's nothing more isolating than that.

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

#745
post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or it's merely intolerance of intolerance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

There should be a variation of godwin's law for this, as it's the go-to excuse for anyone to justify not having to listen to anything that makes them uncomfortable.

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

#746

I remember peer pressure being a big factor in teen years, mostly in the negative. Couldn't the rise of always-connected social media have super charged this negativity and made most teens feel like outcasts, with a few "teenfluencers" determining who is in and who is out? That would be a kind of hell for me to live in who was a teen before all this.

> I remember peer pressure being a big factor in teen years, mostly in the negative.

Some would argue this is a natural thing. Correction of social behavior as young adults are just learning how to interact in a more adult setting leading to mistakes that are then negatively reacted to, correcting the behavior for the future.

Doesn't work in all circumstances, but an argument nonetheless.

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

#747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism solved many problems, like regular famines.

Are farm subsidies capitalism? https://www.cato.org/briefing-paper/cutting-federal-farm-sub...

No. They're central economic planning. They have deleterious side effects like suboptimal choice of crops.

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

#748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's responsible for a ton of AIDS deaths, so we'll let him be with one pandemic.

Now Reagan caused the worldwide epidemic of a mysterious disease of unknown origin?

"Crack, me. AIDS, me. Reaganomics? Come on, I'm in the name."

https://youtu.be/jRNCpD3xhsY?si=TwzclIZJqZnifjFz&t=78

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

#749
post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I find the people protecting the woke tribe in these comments to lack any subjectivity or critical distance whatsoever. Are they accurately representing their ideological adversaries with drive-by derision and dismissing out of hand an article that doesn't spend the majority of its time hand-wringing the issue like they do? The more I see of these snide attacks, the less I believe there's any veracity at all in their…

There's nothing real or good about online wokeism but the male Twitter sphere isn't better. I think the shared thread is the way online interfaces lower the executive function barrier to reading (or watching videos) so much that people become willing to engage with worthless text. Judith Butler drew more attention than pea brains in the hundred page medium but no longer in the hundredths of seconds media.

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

#750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, if you say so.

in the US, prior to 2001 the department of homeland security (a signigicant portion of the government) did not even exist.

The Department of Education is another massive bureaucracy that is really hard to discern a benefit from.
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