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The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

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Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#151

Post by carapace »

constantcrying wrote: post #71
raziel2p wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article clearly states that the connections you mention don't make up a community: > Many praise the myriad benefits that smartphones and social media are said to bring; online connection can give a person a sense of “community,” we are told. We can find new friends, discover just about any idea imaginable, network, and even date through our phones. We can video chat with hundreds of people simultaneously from fa…

The article indeed makes that argument. But from a functional perspective it just isn't true, virtual communities have replaced physical ones. I also think it sells short the attractiveness of these digital communities. A digital community can be something where you spend many hours a day, with the same people, where the connections are just as important as your connections in real life. It isn't just dating apps, Fa…

> the attractiveness of these digital communities

> where the connections are just as important as your connections in real life

That's the problem statement: these degenerate images of real communities are attractive and they become important despite being incomplete and ultimately crippling.

It's exactly analogous to junk food which is attractive and which becomes "important" to the people addicted to it even as it slowly destroys their health.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#152

Post by zemvpferreira »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #82

Well, yes, we've doubled down on mediating social interactions through economic relationships. Most of the interactions adults have in their lives are with or in the framing of economic relations. Homes, are being invaded with tablets and mobile devices which bring along with them framing interactions as economic relations through ad and consumer frames. Workplaces are inherently settings of economic relations, and t…

True. I have personally integrated this idea fully by trying to hire/work with friends and family whenever possible.

After years trying to see people weekly and failing miserably, this is best hack I have found. Caveat emptor, takes discipline and patience from everyone but it's great to see loved ones daily, fully engaged in a project.

It helps that I can afford to have hobby businesses.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#153

Post by strikelaserclaw »

bustling-noose wrote: post #62

About 9 years ago I traveled to the US from India for education. Smartphones were still not very common in India cause data was not as cheap as it is today. When I was in the bus commuting everyone’s head was buried in their phones. I thought to myself this is such a sad thing. Look outside talk to each other but the every single person had an iPhone and was doing something on the phone. Fast forward to 2024 and ever…

humans will always take the path of least resistance to spike domaine when given the option - that is why we banned drugs and most of these apps with short form info like tiktok, reels, instagram, twitter - these are pretty much like drugs. I wish i can just throw away my phone and live my life but 'being on' is just an expectation in todays world.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#154

Post by bunderbunder »

michaelt wrote: post #118
bunderbunder wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If compromise with others is starting to be seen as an affront to one's own sense of identity, it's no wonder people are reporting such a poor sense of well-being nowadays. I grew up before the terminally online era, and I'm not sure we ever saw taking turns doing each other's favorite activity as a sacrifice of our individualism. It was just part of what it means to form meaningful social bonds with other people. He…

I agree with you, but there was certainly some pressure in that direction. You were probably told that if all your friends were doing drugs (or jumping off a cliff) you should think for yourself. And you were probably told it was bad to be a sheep and just follow the crowd. And you probably saw some "real fans" of bands/comics/whatever being scornful towards "phoneys" who were just "pretending". And you might have be…

[flagged]

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#155

Post by chownie »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #113
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can't be treated like drug addiction, though. Most people I know have a _relatively_ healthy relationship with alcohol or cannabis. The addicts, especially of hard drugs, are the odd ones out. With phones, and before that music, and before that newspapers, it's a social norm. If you are trying to talk to people you feel like the weirdo. And I get it, cause I don't like making myself vulnerable. I wish I talked to…

Hm. In Iowa it's thought that 10% of the customers of liquor stores buy 90% of the product moved through the door. That's not 10X the general population. That's 81X. One in nine drink 9X what nine other people do. So, you have a relationship with alcohol, it's likely not a healthy one. It's addiction, all the way down.

I'm confused, you paint a picture in which the majority drink moderately and then say "likely not healthy" but in your example 90% of the customers, the vast majority, don't have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol.

So if you have a relationship with alcohol it is most likely a healthy one, and it's "addiction all the way down" for... a minority.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#156

Post by llm_trw »

gmoot wrote: post #139
llm_trw wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of people lived in villages until 1920 in the US. US birth rates started dropping off not a generation later.

I mean, there was also a depression, a world war, and the increasing availability of birth control. That factoid doesn't mean much on its own.

Birth rates did not fall below replacement until 1972.

Blaming the depression and word war is a bit of a stretch.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#157

Post by kelseyfrog »

meowkit wrote: post #129
hot_gril wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything is economically viable if enough people want it.

Point == missed Its a tragedy of the commons style problem. The viability has to come from a group effort - as soon as there is a single entity running the show the economic incentives will warp or collapse the 3rd place into something different.

It's also a framing problem[1]. If we were creating an encyclopedia of ways third places are killed or aborted, centralization would definitely be a failure mode.

I'd add, the belief that projects should be financially self-sufficient and the fiscal individualistic belief that I shouldn't pay for things I don't personally benefit from.

There is a sense of fairness, that makes sense in isolation, yet have these downstream effects when applied to public goods like third spaces. "Kids are always on their phones," and "Youth programs and parks should be financially self-sufficient" are downstream contradictions of the primary belief.

1. among infinite ways to analyze it

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#158

Post by alexfromapex »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #82

Well, yes, we've doubled down on mediating social interactions through economic relationships. Most of the interactions adults have in their lives are with or in the framing of economic relations. Homes, are being invaded with tablets and mobile devices which bring along with them framing interactions as economic relations through ad and consumer frames. Workplaces are inherently settings of economic relations, and t…

This is so accurate. There's been lots of talk of enshittification and it really is just everything now. Monetizing the well in modern capitalism means poisoning it. It all can be traced back to lobbying in politics. They need to ban money from politics immediately and everything will improve.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#159

Post by photochemsyn »

Some things to keep in mind:

(1) A 'youth mental health crisis' may or may not actually exist. Consider the 'chronic pain crisis' marketing that preceded the opiate epidemic in the USA, and the concomittant boom in opiate drug prescriptions, sales and profits. Similarly the 'attention deficit crisis' was very profitable for the makers of amphetamines and their derivatives, from Ritalin to Adderall to Desoxyn. Here's CDC on opiate prescriptions in the USA, 2006-2015:

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6626a4.htm

(2) A 'youth mental health crisis' may actually be a 'youth are looking at the dystopian world besest by war and climate chaos and not feeling good about their future prospects' - which means their mental health is probably fine and their views are entirely rational. See the famous "this koala is having a mental crisis' cartoon:

https://www.reddit.com/r/lostgeneration/comments/avf6kh/this...

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#160

Post by drooby »

sleepingreset wrote: post #92
drooby wrote: post #60

I have recently started traveling and working remote at "co-living" hotels. And I must say, this is the ideal way I wish to live my life in my 20s-30s. Community makes life fun. Someone needs to import co-living to the US. And I don't mean these "co-living" apartment complexes that exist in our major cities. I mean like, actual communities with character and life.

there's a few cool groups working on this, specifically for academics & ambitious young people as the beginning market. https://www.livetheresidency.com/ :)

That's cool. Would love to see something like this for people that aren't ambitious geniuses though... like myself ;)
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