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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)

#861

Post by FrankyHollywood »

defrost wrote: post #858
wiether wrote: post #856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] global warming [...] either cannot be generalized globally or did not start in 2010 I guess global warming _can_ be generalized globally? It sure didn't started in 2010 but neither did social networks. Facebook opened public access in 2006 which about the same period when Twitter was launched. _An Inconvenient Truth_ was released in 2006 and it seemed like the start of a global discussion about global warming…

The 1972 UNEP First Earth Summit seems a lot more like the start of a global discussion about global warming. It marks the start of concerted white anting of the message and Koch et al funded think tanks to antiprop the fossil fuels are bad message. An Inconvenient Truth was more the start of some limited central north american awareness starring some local politician or something.

global warming is actually peanuts compared to worries of previous generations, like the cold war, school kids got instructions on what to do if an atomic bomb would fall on city!

stress and worries are from all times

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

#862

Post by navane »

atmosfir wrote: post #845

Everyone who is skeptical of the proposed plausible cause of social media in causing depression in this thread should explain why their alternative theory holds up to the evidence that no significant increase happened both pre-2010 and is global To my knowledge there is currently no other better theory other than the rise of social media use that explains the phenomenon. Other proposed explanations such as Bad econom…

I'm an early millennial and even I feel that the very capable smartphone totally fried my brain. I tried to postpone having one for a very long time because I knew I was prone to screen addiction since my first 486. Now I'm in a point in my life where it's very easy and socially accepted to stagnate my life, so my fried brain is everything I need to get by. But kids still need to grow, the fried brain must hamper them so much more.

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

#864

Post by pixl97 »

_gabe_ wrote: post #840
pixl97 wrote: post #806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, to piss off as many religious people as possible.... A couple of goat herder psychologist a couple of millennia ago figured out if you told people they had a purpose things in general worked better. The particular problem is they made up a whole bunch of shit and when the sciences in general came around, people when "wow, religion is a bunch of controlling bullshit". Now, I will say that religion is only mostly a…

> The particular problem is they made up a whole bunch of shit and when the sciences in general came around, people when "wow, religion is a bunch of controlling bullshit". I think you have your history a bit backwards. Galileo is considered the father of modern science, and he was one of the people that believed those goat herders. He argued that his views were in accordance with the Bible, not that the Bible was a…

You're really working backwards. At the time people like Galileo started down the path of scientific discovery, he didn't think his religion was wrong though it seemed he quite disagreed with some in the leadership at time.

Discovery after discovery afterwards, learning there was billions of years of history of Earth. Billions of years of evolution. That causality exists. That entropy exists. It was these pieces compounding that finally reached a tipping point for most letting them know "yes, this is a bunch of bullshit".

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

#865

Post by z7 »

wiether wrote: post #856
atmosfir wrote: post #845

Everyone who is skeptical of the proposed plausible cause of social media in causing depression in this thread should explain why their alternative theory holds up to the evidence that no significant increase happened both pre-2010 and is global To my knowledge there is currently no other better theory other than the rise of social media use that explains the phenomenon. Other proposed explanations such as Bad econom…

> [...] global warming [...] either cannot be generalized globally or did not start in 2010 I guess global warming _can_ be generalized globally? It sure didn't started in 2010 but neither did social networks. Facebook opened public access in 2006 which about the same period when Twitter was launched. _An Inconvenient Truth_ was released in 2006 and it seemed like the start of a global discussion about global warming…

>I guess global warming _can_ be generalized globally? It sure didn't started in 2010 but neither did social networks.

As another poster pointed out:

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

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38936280

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

#866

Post by everdrive »

WalterBright wrote: post #644
everdrive wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The connection here does seem to be a lot more firm. Teen suicide rates are way up, and they do seem to strongly coincide with widespread smartphone and social media adoption. Do you believe those correlations are just circumstantial?

I have a different theory which is just as plausible. These teen mental problems are a result in a shift in attitudes in America - the attitude that everyone is a victim, achievement is bad, one should get everything for free rather than the old idea that kids should work for their goodies, the mounds of presents kids get for Christmas, participation awards, everyone gets an A, parental supervision of kids play even…

I really appreciate the thorough response. I agree with everything you've said, except for it being the prime cause of the issue. I definitely feel that it's a contributing cause of the issue. Anecdotally, I've had this problem, and it was ultimately something I was able to mature out of. In my opinion, I think the problems you've described can be easily bucketed into a general issue with prolonged immaturity and adolescence. I definitely admit that getting to the primary cause of this issue is tough, and although I feel strongly about social media being one of the more primary causes, I'm not in a position to prove that claim.

Anyhow, I agree. Victimhood is a pernicious belief. People don't understand that it has an appeal to it which must be resisted. I'd describe it as a vice just like anything else: anger, jealousy, etc. These are natural emotions, and they do have their own appeal, despite being "negative." And although it can be difficult, these sorts of feelings must be kept in check for the sake of yourself and others.

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

#867

Post by stainablesteel »

cf1241290841 wrote: post #833
stainablesteel wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

religion gave purpose, it didn't hide a lack thereof people need purpose not to hide from the truth, they need religion and purpose to embrace it

There is no story or belief that can justify unethical behavior.

you think existing is unethical?

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

#868

Post by throwaway-0110 »

sufehmi wrote: post #857
throwaway-0110 wrote: post #836

The author attributes the rise in mental illness among teen girls to them "spending hours each day posting photos of themselves and scrolling through hundreds of carefully edited photos of other girls". As someone who was a teen girl suffering depression and extreme anxiety in the 2010s, the idea rings quite shallow. I can assure you I was not suicidal because ... other girls are pretty? what? ... but because of narc…

This is called "anecdotal evidence" I have similar problem too, but then I also people got distressed over social media as well. The existence of our problem does not mean that other people's problems are invalid / does not exist.

I'm not saying everyone has the same story as me, and I'm also not saying that social media has no role in depression/anxiety. I'm saying the talking point "girls' mental health is in the toilet because they're obsessed with selfies" is speculative and condescending, ignoring more serious issues that teens are struggling with, and it's valid to offer a first-hand perspective as a counterbalance to that.

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

#869

Post by jplusequalt »

prossercj wrote: post #805
standardUser wrote: post #727

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…

> And perhaps most importantly, we got rid of the absurd mentality that what happens in other families is none of our business I agree with your general sentiment (more recognition and treatment of mental illness is a good thing), but this line troubles me. Most of what happens in my family should stay in my family. Our business is our business. It's no one else's business. There's nothing absurd about this. There ma…

You conveniently left out the rest of their sentence.

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

#870

Post by jplusequalt »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #783

A spiritual void, a loss of social cohesion, isolation, alienation, a loss of a culture that reinforces ways of life that enable flourishing, radical individualism. The decline of traditional religious faith in the West. The sexual revolution and its dreadful distortion of human sexuality. The culture of consumerism and the worship of desire and appetite divorced from reason and one's objective good. So what's a smel…

>The sexual revolution and its dreadful distortion of human sexuality.

Please explain what you mean by this.

>So what happens with the waning of religious identity? Various dehumanizing ideologies start to look attractive. This explains both the appeal of the sexual, racial, and ecological ideologies that have become popular recently. These ideologies promise identity and social belonging, perhaps even an alleged higher purpose, which is to say they offer false and flimsy identities, ones that have political utility for those who control them.

Two things--firstly, are you suggesting that religion is not a dehumanizing ideology? Moreover are you also suggesting that it also doesn't have political utility? I think both of these are demonstrably false given a brief look at history.

Secondly, you talk about the "appeal" of sexual and racial identities in recent times, and you seem to refer to these identities as "false and flimsy," can you explain what you mean here? Because it just comes off like you're arguing that anyone who doesn't identify as a cis-white heterosexual has a false sense of self.

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