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The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

jonathanhaidt.substack.com

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Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#131

Post by ouid »

Aunche wrote: post #120
sircastor wrote: post #70

I recall seeing commentary recently from mental health specialists that noted that young people are increasingly facing a sense of existential dread over climate change - that there's nothing they can do to stop it, and will feel the impact more heavily than previous generations. I wouldn't discount social media and related issues out of hand, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's a contributing factor. I understand…

The evolutionary purpose of dread is to motivate people to leave dangerous situations. When you hear about people surviving dangerous animal encounters, they tend to notice that something is "off" before they actually spot the hungry bear or mountain lion. Feeling dread for something you can't control is completely irrational, however. It's inevitable that you'll succumb to age related illness, so it's logical to be…

Coming to the conclusion that there is nothing you can do serves no evolutionary purpose either. You should continue looking for an out as long as any possibility remains, no matter how remote.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#132

Post by em500 »

cat_plus_plus wrote: post #65

Well, it also has been a tough decade - global financial crisis, wars and flood of refugees, political turmoil partially as a result of these, worries about climate change. Social media certainly amplifies these news and makes it hard to ever unplug, but we could also use better news. As for progressive teens, well their ideology is getting some serious pushback worldwide, so that's one reason to get depressed. Anoth…

Pretty much every decade could be called tough. Post-WW II in the US we had:

- 1950s: Civil Rights, Korean war, dawn of the Cold War

- 1960s: Vietnam war, more Cold War

- 1970s: stagflation (high unemployment + high inflation), Watergate, even more Cold War

- 1980s: more stagflation, worries about AIDS, environment (ozone layer, acid rain), urban decay and crack epidemic, rise of Japan, Greed is Good

- 1990s: amongst the more optimistic decades in the US, but there was still lingering AIDS anxiety, dim employment prospects for the over-educated coming off age ("Generation X"), domestic terrorism bracketed by Waco and Columbine High. Abroad there were the Rwanda and Yugoslavia wars.

- 2000s: 9-11, war in Iraq and Afghanistan, financial crisis

And there's probably tons more anxiety inducing events in each decade that I forgot.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#133

Post by [deleted] »

taylodl wrote: post #74

Seeing as how my daughter has gone through ten years of therapy due to depression I'll throw my hat in the ring and tell you what I think at least part of the problem is: Late stage, winner-takes-all & loser-gets-nothing, Capitalism. Those of us who are well-entrenched in our careers may not understand how vicious the world is for the entry-level and those aspiring to launch careers. The secondary schools preach and…

[deleted]

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#134

Post by gjsman-1000 »

zug_zug wrote: post #129
bittercynic wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose there are different pollutants all the time, but the areas I'm familiar with (SF Bay and LA) have gotten much less polluted in the last few decades, at least by how they look and smell. I suspect our air and water is safer now than 20 years ago, and much safer than 40 years ago. Solitary entertainment has grown drastically more engaging in the last few decades, and it seems reasonable to think that it has c…

> I suppose there are different pollutants all the time, but the areas I'm familiar with (SF Bay and LA) have gotten much less polluted in the last few decades, at least by how they look and smell I want to point out that pollution can be invisible. As a thought experiment - the amount of lead in your water it would take to permanently damage your brain would be invisible, untasteable, and miniscule. It's worth remem…

Reminder that in 2016, 93% of test subjects who were US Adults tested positive for BPA in their urine.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22363351/

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#135

Post by yhavr »

Thank you, will quote this article as another great illustration why I don't want to have kids, or to be precise, don't want to expose them to the homo "civilization".

It's another example that "sapiens" are so lame, so even having AbUNdAnCe TeCHnOlGy and PrOgResS they manage to terribly screw their environment. A handful of ancient greeks living in "undeveloped" conditions with infant mortality, slavery and no mcdonalds managed to produce philosophies, which are heavily quoted today. Take stoicism, it manages my mental health like charm, and I'm only shallowly practicing it. "Developed" countries have thousands of universities full of "educated" people who have access to orders of magnitude knowledge than the guy who taught at Stoa. They should've cured not the teenage depression, but the mental health issues at the scale of humanity. If they are _really_ developed and educated, of course ;-)

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#136

Post by ssully »

zdragnar wrote: post #110
ssully wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They made it up.

It started (in modern times) in the 60's at poetry jams. You can do it one-handed (i.e. while holding a drink) and you can also do it during a particularly impressive part of a performance, rather than waiting until the end. Some groups have definitely taken it as a preference (sorry for the daily mail link, but it was the most succinct): https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3323166/Some-colleg... and tried to ti…

Yeah I’ve definitely been to events where quiet or no clapping is preferred (ex: poetry readings) but the OP claiming we aren’t aloud to clap at events anymore because it’s too violent sounds like someone who hasn’t actually been to a public event in the last year.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#137

Post by ctoth »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #56
travisjungroth wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or there are confounders, like environmental effects are wrecking hormones. That would cause both of those things.

Unfortunately, you have now stumbled on the extremely politically sensitive elephant in the room. If it is environmental (microplastics anyone)... do we need to stop producing certain clothes (stretch clothing is particularly bad)? Could this actually be part of the increase in youth identifying as LGBTQ [1]? Is it a greater threat to our survival, health, and well-being than the more palatable issue (but still an is…

It's such a shame that scientists were figuring this out but the wrong person[0] spoke up and now it's a conspiracy theory. That's a weird dynamic. Wonder if it possibly happened with anything else we now call a "conspiracy theory."

[0]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/04/respectability-cascade...

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#138

Post by ssully »

ChickenNugger wrote: post #93
ssully wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They made it up.

It's hardly widespread, but it's absolutely happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moWe3rk7LzQ

It happening in rare instances isn’t sufficient for the OP to claim “we aren’t allowed to clap at events because clapping is too violent”.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#139

Post by Aunche »

ouid wrote: post #131
Aunche wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The evolutionary purpose of dread is to motivate people to leave dangerous situations. When you hear about people surviving dangerous animal encounters, they tend to notice that something is "off" before they actually spot the hungry bear or mountain lion. Feeling dread for something you can't control is completely irrational, however. It's inevitable that you'll succumb to age related illness, so it's logical to be…

Coming to the conclusion that there is nothing you can do serves no evolutionary purpose either. You should continue looking for an out as long as any possibility remains, no matter how remote.

What gave you the impression that I think nothing can be done? You can drive less, eat less meat, vote for certain politicians etc. What's a waste of mental energy is worrying that everyone else is going to do the same thing. This is often counterproductive to the problem it's trying to solve, like Greta Thunberg inspiring millions of kids to skip school in the name of "raising awareness."

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#140

Post by zackmorris »

taylodl wrote: post #74

Seeing as how my daughter has gone through ten years of therapy due to depression I'll throw my hat in the ring and tell you what I think at least part of the problem is: Late stage, winner-takes-all & loser-gets-nothing, Capitalism. Those of us who are well-entrenched in our careers may not understand how vicious the world is for the entry-level and those aspiring to launch careers. The secondary schools preach and…

I've been trying to post less online because it's, well, depressing. But I agree with you 1000%.

The main way to curtail late stage crony capitalism is to raise taxes on the wealthy. We're at about half the tax rate that sustains a healthy middle class, which is directly correlated with wages being half what they should be, the lack of personal savings for the bottom half of the population, etc. It's been well-understood since the Great Depression, but empires have always known that there's a limit to what workers will accept before they revolt. I believe that we passed the point of stability around the Dot Bomb and 9/11 2001. But a strong argument could be made that the writing was on the wall by 1990 when the USSR separated but world powers kept funding their own militaries to create new bogeymen like terrorism to control the population.

Everything since has been theater: from the way we reward financiers and penalize employees, to how our legal system protects status quo players like the RIAA/MPAA, and how threats to our environments are just treated as externalities and not addressed directly because that goes against "free market" capitalism.

I learned about the situation we're in today with looming global threats like nationalism and fascism in high school AP government class back in maybe 1993. Back then, guys like Robert Bork, Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh were curiosities, and Newt Gingrich was just getting started. Never in our wildest dreams would we have imagined that Fox News would dominate all media, thanks to bitter old men like Rupert Murdoch. They created such a dark reality that I feel awful for young people today who think that this is how it always was and always will be.

The silver lining is that every bully eventually realizes that everyone is laughing at him. I think we're in one of those moments now with stuff like the TikTok ban hearings illustrating how comically out of touch bitter old men are. Their time is ending, and I still hold out hope that when Gen X attains power in government, we'll pull the plug on the fear mongering. But I'm generally wrong about these things, so I also expect the powers that be will prevent us from ever gaining any power whatsoever. Which is why it's so important to organize outside of whatever circles the mainstream media deems appropriate. Thankfully Gen Z appears to be doing just that.

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