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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

#231

Post by ChickenNugger »

beefman wrote: post #126
ChickenNugger wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Huh. My impression is that a preponderance of HN agrees with his conclusion. Stories about it from a variety of sources (not just Haidt) routinely make the front page; ditto techno-negative stories in general. But true or not, he hasn't come close to supporting his claims.

>a preponderance of HN

is exactly the bias I'm talking about: https://i.imgur.com/Si183zE.jpg

HN is basically just reddit with slightly more dissent with the prevailing bias to be found in the [flagged] [dead] section. When the hivemind encounters data that causes cognitive dissonance it downvotes and flags it.

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

#232

Post by WeylandYutani »

scythe wrote: post #186
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.

Statistics like that don't always make sense. Prior to the 1960s you will barely find incest in any official report because society wasn't ready to talk about it.

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

#233

Post by dragonwriter »

YellOh wrote: post #125
dragonwriter wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m not saying Dobbs doesn’t matter, only that I both 1) doubt it’s a central driver of the trend Yeah, I’m not saying it (or reproductive rights & health care more generally) is the central driver of the trend, I’m saying its one of the key reasons why if someone asked me, today, what group in American society would be most depressed, my intuitive response would be “white liberal teen girls” (particularly, its a k…

Interesting. I would much rather be a (white liberal) teen girl today than in ~2012, but I can see how insofar as Dobbs is only a manifestation of existing trends, I might be in the minority. It's just hard to wrap my head around what this trend would be, or why teens started picking up on it in 2012. I am not conscious of any major modern debates around women's rights except abortion/birth control, and I see no part…

> I am not conscious of any major modern debates around women’s rights except abortion/birth control, and I see no particular link between the causes of Dobbs and that generic time period.

2011-2012 was when the major wave of state anti-abortion laws (135 in those two years) and the first notable state executive measure defunding Planned Parent that represented the beginning (well, the visible conversion to a major active push rather than mere rhetoric) of the anti-abortion push by the Republican Party that led to Dobbs occurred.

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

#234

Post by PuppyTailWags »

scythe wrote: post #217
PuppyTailWags wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a list of the referred critiques in the show notes: The Miseducation of Free Speech ( https://www.virginialawreview.org/articles/miseducation-free... ) College and the “Culture War”: Assessing Higher Education’s Influence on Moral Attitudes ( https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00031224211041... ) The Myth of the Campus Coddle Crisis ( https://academeblog.org/2018/12/28/the-myth-of-the-campus-co...…

It's not much easier to engage with ten articles of varying quality and varying levels of disagreement than with a podcast. >The Miseducation of Free Speech Does not focus on Haidt. >College and the “Culture War”: Assessing Higher Education’s Influence on Moral Attitudes Does not focus on Haidt. >The Myth of the Campus Coddle Crisis "This is not one of those laudatory reviews. Although I agree with many things they w…

The Amy Waxman point was explicitly used by The Coddling Of The American Mind to prove its point, while the book completely ignored the context that Amy Waxman was racist, which is why it's referenced here. It's clear you haven't even read the book you're trying to defend here, so why are you doing this?

Edited to add: A gish-gallop? I'm just linking a set of references that the podcast uses because of the critique that podcasts are apparently bad to listen to? Do you want a transcript or something? I'm just wanting to let folks have some context to this article dude, that isn't coming from a source without its own biases and to keep that in mind when reading. Why are you being weird about this, man?

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

#235

Post by mehlmao »

scythe wrote: post #217
PuppyTailWags wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a list of the referred critiques in the show notes: The Miseducation of Free Speech ( https://www.virginialawreview.org/articles/miseducation-free... ) College and the “Culture War”: Assessing Higher Education’s Influence on Moral Attitudes ( https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00031224211041... ) The Myth of the Campus Coddle Crisis ( https://academeblog.org/2018/12/28/the-myth-of-the-campus-co...…

It's not much easier to engage with ten articles of varying quality and varying levels of disagreement than with a podcast. >The Miseducation of Free Speech Does not focus on Haidt. >College and the “Culture War”: Assessing Higher Education’s Influence on Moral Attitudes Does not focus on Haidt. >The Myth of the Campus Coddle Crisis "This is not one of those laudatory reviews. Although I agree with many things they w…

Haidt's book argues that students and faculty denouncing Amy Wax is stifling a culture of freedom of speech, while purposefully not addressing what the students and faculty were denouncing. This is one of the few examples he provides.

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

#236

Post by Xeoncross »

deepsun wrote: post #229
amilios wrote: post #207

(Seemingly) Inevitable climate change and ecological destruction, growing income inequality and falling standards of living, a deathly pandemic that's still killing people while we pretend everything is back to normal (+ long covid probably bringing about a disability crisis in 3-5 years), increasing tensions between various nuclear-capable states (Russia, China) and the West, changes in the age distribution in most…

> less and less of a future Everything is relative. My grandfather's biggest dream was to live in a city, that's it. Now young people dream (and envy) of way more. So I'd say there's more and more future for youth. They can afford, at least once in one's life: travel abroad, snow skiing, parachuting, going to a restaurant. It's just baseline jumped.

The disconnect might be wasting young peoples lives having them spend hours looking at influencers, reminding them of all the ways they might die from things, and keeping them busy scrolling and up on the latest trends of today.

When you stop paying attention to the deluge of alerts and articles, you can focus on your own tasks and get to experience some neat stuff and wonderful people in this world.

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

#237

Post by bluescrn »

extasia wrote: post #118
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.

That wouldn't explain such a drastic rise in one demographic (teenagers)

Take away the social media, and I suspect the teens would have far fewer mental health problems.

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

#238

Post by andreyk »

amilios wrote: post #207

(Seemingly) Inevitable climate change and ecological destruction, growing income inequality and falling standards of living, a deathly pandemic that's still killing people while we pretend everything is back to normal (+ long covid probably bringing about a disability crisis in 3-5 years), increasing tensions between various nuclear-capable states (Russia, China) and the West, changes in the age distribution in most…

World events and economy aside, there are also clear trends with teenagers (and people as a whole) having fewer close friends than ever - loneliness is more common than ever. Our culture and society as a whole is declining in its ability to foster community and friendship, which really is deadly in its own way.

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

#239

Post by Mordisquitos »

alexfromapex wrote: post #30
Flatcircle wrote: post #2

Saw a post on Paul Graham's twitter about this, turns out white, liberal female teens were the most depressed, for whatever reason, that's a strange specific group to be extremely depressed imho.

I would love to explore Reddit's influence on this phenomenon. The timelines seem to sync somewhat and it seems like a perfect vehicle for adversarial nation states to use to influence public opinion.

I highly doubt that Reddit per se has any significant effect whatsoever—which is not to say that it can't be an instance of the overarching platforms that cause the phenomenon.

The reason I'm disregarding Reddit as a significant cause is threefold:

a) Reddit is overwhelmingly male, and the most affected group are teenage girls

b) Reddit is not that big of a platform in the teenage demographic

c) Even if it were, its popularity is not in any way homogeneous across countries. If Reddit itself had an effect, the USA would be much more affected by the phenomenon than the UK, for instance.

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

#240

Post by ryandrake »

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 agree with this take. The biggest difference I see between the world I grew up in in the 80s/90s and today is how everything has moved to this horrible "winner take all" mode. Not just in education, but everything. Every aspect of life has turned into this zero-sum slugfest where very few win the lottery or kill their way to the top, and the remainder are expected to live with nothing. Used to be there were careers available for A students, B students, C students, D students and so on. We're very quickly moving towards this bimodal: ultra-luxury standard of living for a tiny few elite who ended up #1 (or lucked into it through their parents), and squalor for everyone else.

My kid asks me what career she should be when she grows up and I honestly don't know what to tell her. Every job category is fighting for its life against the capital ownership class's unquenchable need for more of the pie. The truth is that it probably doesn't matter. Unless I'm a multimillionaire and pay her way to the elite club, she doesn't really have anything besides downward class mobility to look forward to.

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