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The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere
271–280 of 514 posts
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere
#272I 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…
Not entirely scientific, but I am sure you know many parents with kids. Mentally split them into 2 groups - those who let digital and social entertainment run free so they don't have to raise kids because its annoying and hard for them (any fool claiming raising kids today isn't hard didn't actually raise his/her kids) and those who often painstakingly severely limit/block screen time.
My friend, I can tell you from my personal perspective that the difference is staggering and very consistent. Anybody I ever talked about this shared same opinion. So there you have it, some opinions.
I want more specifics too, it would help tremendously to fight against it compared to 'technology=bad', but we still have no fucking clue how our brain works, how our personalities form etc. Without time machine, I don't think we get much further in this century (nor millennium). Just bunch of theories, some wilder than others, with variable amount of proofs out there in the wild. While people often can't have rational debate about basic aspects of life.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere
#273I'm a father of teen kids, teacher and educator. I don't think that there is a single reason here. All mentioned things contribute – social media pressure, climate problems, economical crisis etc. But I'd like to add another one – declining quality of education. I see increasing number of teens depressed because they don't have teachers and their education isn't good enough for jobs they'd like to get in future. And…
Yeah, The US education system seems to have more money than most countries, but we're still 37th in the world for in Math last I checked. Whatever is happening in public schools, you'd do well to increase your child's odds by putting them into something else if you can afford it. Private school, tutoring, homeschooling, college (dual-enrollment), etc..
Middle class and above kids still do as well in math in public schools as they do in private schools. The problem is that students from more disadvantaged backgrounds don't do as well, and its not like they can afford private schools anyways.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the article, the author makes a point to include objective metrics like rate of hospitalizations, and the data is quite conclusive in showing an actual increase. So these issues definitely did not exist before, at the same scale.
Rate of hospitalization seems like the sort of thing that would be affected by if society frowns upon getting help or not.
Indeed, but in the opposite direction. Either that or the sort of help that's provided to teens with mental health issues today is somehow causing them to be more likely to self-harm etc., though presumably that would show up in the data if true.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another hypothesis is: *waves at general state of things since the mid 2000s*
You'd have to show that the "general state of things since the mid 2000s" has gotten appreciably worse than the time period prior to 2012. Rewind a decade and we had 9/11 and the Iraq war, so it doesn't seem immediately obvious that things got significantly worse.
At least in the US, the public was more united in its support for the wars in the middle east at their outset in the early 2000s than they have been for anything since. The war in Afghanistan initially had 88% support[1] and the war in Iraq had 76%, though it fell to 72% shortly after[2].
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/9994/public-opinion-war-afghani... [2] https://news.gallup.com/poll/8038/seventytwo-percent-america...
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere
#276(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…
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Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Imagine that: a culture that promotes individualism and the pursuit of profit over all else leads to a generation of people with few close friends and lots of loneliness and stress.
Yes, switching to capitalism in 2012 was clearly a mistake.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere
#278I'm a father of teen kids, teacher and educator. I don't think that there is a single reason here. All mentioned things contribute – social media pressure, climate problems, economical crisis etc. But I'd like to add another one – declining quality of education. I see increasing number of teens depressed because they don't have teachers and their education isn't good enough for jobs they'd like to get in future. And…
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Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere
#279(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.
> ... loneliness is more common than ever.
But it's also very profitable if you're the advertising delivery system, or somewhere sucking money off that pipeline, because you can convince lonely people to spend money to buy things that might help with that!
The whole "isolated, atomic person, only interfacing with the world through a screen, with every interaction intermediated by for-profit tech companies providing a service for a fee" model is very profitable. It's just horrid for everyone who's nothing more than a wallet and set of eyeballs to be tapped for as much as they're worth, then given loans to keep consuming.
I utterly hate the characterization of people as "consumers" these days - I'm trying to be more deliberate about using "citizen" or something along those lines. There's more to life than consuming as many "consumer goods" as possible.
Unfortunately, the wealthy end of the tech industry makes their money from this sort of social destruction, and so I don't expect many changes while people are still willing to pay for the chains of their cell phone. Fortunately, I think that's changing.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
We did, but we didn't have endless short videos to scroll through.
Yeah, instead we had our teachers reassure us that if we saw a nuclear explosion that we should hid under our desks and that would protect us. We ran drills practicing this, as if it were expected to happen any moment now. I agree with you that it's worse these days. Now, the kids practice active shooter drills. It turns out the USSR never did launch the missiles, but kids shooting up their school is so common it bar…
Drills at least give you an action to do and a hope it will work out.
Meanwhile global warming propaganda does neither. There's no easy to do action and no realistic hope it will be fixed.