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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

#181

Post by FredPret »

censor_me wrote: post #161
PuppyTailWags wrote: post #152

Note that this isn't an unbiased source. This is working with Jon, the co-writer of The Coddling Of The American Mind, which uhhh is not without its critics for inaccuracies and stretching of truth. Check it out: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-coddling-of-the-am...

Linking a podcast isn't very good sourcing. I'm very intrigued to hear how the cuddling that's happening college campuses isn't happening, since anyone can see it in real time.

Cuddling on campus sounds like a good idea and has been par for the course for generations. But coddling is a problem

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

#182

Post by BryantD »

stri8ed wrote: post #75
BryantD wrote: post #46

That’s interesting data. I wonder: is there any possibility that part of the change is because we’re telling kids that it’s okay to admit to depression? I.e., are we just reporting more accurately now?

The authors address that by looking at hospitalizations for self harm.

That’s a powerful part of the narrative for sure. But … ugh, I need to be less lazy and dig into the supporting material, actually, some of my questions may be answered there.

The big one is “does that mean there’s more self-harm, or does that mean parents are more willing to ask for emergency help?”

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

#183

Post by loup-vaillant »

bentt wrote: post #150

I would like to see this conversation turn from "Did phones cause these problems" to "Here's exactly how phones caused these problems". There are many ways to use technology, some better than others. We need literacy in these areas for both parents and children, and things are moving so fast, it's the companies that are getting to write the rules, not the culture. It's time for the culture to push back but we need to…

First though, we need to establish with enough certainty that whatever we are doing with phones is indeed the main culprit. I don't find it hard to believe to be honest, but we need something a bit more solid that this one correlation.

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

#184

Post by ipaddr »

zackmorris wrote: post #140
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-unders…

This happened under Obama.

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

#185

Post by jl6 »

bentt wrote: post #150

I would like to see this conversation turn from "Did phones cause these problems" to "Here's exactly how phones caused these problems". There are many ways to use technology, some better than others. We need literacy in these areas for both parents and children, and things are moving so fast, it's the companies that are getting to write the rules, not the culture. It's time for the culture to push back but we need to…

If we take the approach of not overthinking it, we might notice that many of these mental illnesses feature dissociation, and what does an iPhone do if not dissociate you from your physical being?

Teenagers (and younger) in their formative years are pouring a significant part of their lives into virtual environments and identities. Their digital lives are literally disconnected from their physical lives. Their sense of self is tied up in a system that has completely different rules and exists in some nebulous otherworld.

The physical basis for being is deprioritized and a new way of being is sitting uncomfortably alongside it.

Why doesn’t this affect everyone the same way? Some people are able to keep a lid on it, and reintegrate their iPhone lives into their real lives. Some people are not.

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

#186

Post by scythe »

grammers wrote: post #80

The article has a point, but there's no proof for cause & effect. A completely different explanation could be that our societies are so advanced by now that we can finally listen to mental illnesses and take them seriously - while in the past people just had to 'function', no matter what.

>A completely different explanation could be that [...] we can finally listen

The article references massive increases in ER admits for self-harm, among similar data. That isn't a matter of "listening".

Haidt continually publishes detailed analyses and meets with retorts like this that obviously didn't engage at all with the content.

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

#187

Post by colpabar »

ssully wrote: post #136
zdragnar wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm sorry you misinterpreted my comment to mean all public events in existence.

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

#188

Post by brabel »

artificialLimbs wrote: post #169
grammers wrote: post #80

The article has a point, but there's no proof for cause & effect. A completely different explanation could be that our societies are so advanced by now that we can finally listen to mental illnesses and take them seriously - while in the past people just had to 'function', no matter what.

Maybe we should look at ways to get back to 'just functioning'.

I may be old fashioned, but learning to "just function" instead of constantly crying and expecting the world to listen to me and be the way I want it to be is just called growing up.

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

#189

Post by p_j_w »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #166

Its interesting that this cites a "mental illness epidemic" but only seems to cover anxiety/depression. I want statistics on ADHD, PTSD, autism, eating disorders, psychosis, and personality disorders too! If there is a major rise in ED (primarily women) it would explain why there are so many hospitalizations, because EDs are deadly.

Sorry, what is ED in this context?

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

#190

Post by paganel »

grammers wrote: post #80

The article has a point, but there's no proof for cause & effect. A completely different explanation could be that our societies are so advanced by now that we can finally listen to mental illnesses and take them seriously - while in the past people just had to 'function', no matter what.

> A completely different explanation could be that our societies are so advanced by now that we can finally listen to mental illnesses and take them seriously

I lived in the Eastern Europe of the 1980s and the 1990s, not the best of times, economically speaking. I used to play football with Rroma children that were walking strange, at least that's how it looked to child-me, only later to find out that most probably they had been afflicted by polio in the past. All this to say that things were tough.

Even so, as a kid back then I had no acquaintances of my age who were harming themselves or, the worst of all, who were off-ing themselves. We would have known, kids used to know this sort of stuff because we were almost always outside, playing together.

Suffice is to say that things are now totally different. I've heard of kids harming themselves at 11-12 years of age and I know of a young lady who took her own life (at 16 or 17). Again, that was unimaginable 30 to 40 years ago.

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