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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

#291

Post by travisjungroth »

YellOh wrote: post #267
travisjungroth wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does fit the trend. These issues are stacking. You can fool yourself into dismissing it if you split it into pieces. In 2012 you can write it off as fear mongering the media. In 2018 you can write it off as “how does this affect your day to day life?”. In 2022 you can say that Dobbs “doesn’t fit the trend” since it started in 2012. I’m not saying this is the whole story, but it’s possibly part. “Having it all” is…

As far as "having it all" -- female employment has basically not changed since 1990[0], and given the decline in the US birth rate, expectations of motherhood have probably decreased as well. I could see "having it all" increasing stress as, for example, more women were being introduced into the work force, but that seems entirely uncorrelated to the 2010s. Insta following could be a new pressure and I agree it would…

When it comes to emotional well being, “real life” is what’s in your head. If people are experiencing unattainable pressures and that’s causing them stress, it’s real. I guess you could make a distinction for dreams, hallucinations, etc. But social media isn’t that.

It’s actually dangerous to think it’s “too pretend”. My bank account is just squiggles on the screen, but I can somehow buy stuff. Same thing that online relationships can have physical outcomes, even if just by turning it into cash first.

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

#292

Post by YellOh »

dragonwriter wrote: post #233
YellOh wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

The abortion changes don't seem to have been major enough for me to easily find (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_States), but I've definitely become a lot less confident in my initial opinion that it's nearly-universally better to be a white liberal teen girl today, so thank you for the interesting conversation.

I still think social media / smartphones / etc as an explanation fits the trend more simply & cleanly, but I'm much more open to the idea that I could be wrong.

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

#293

Post by PuppyTailWags »

notch898a wrote: post #287
PuppyTailWags wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And it's no coincidence young female teens are by far the most susceptible to transition to the opposite role: social media tells them "they were born in the wrong bodies". Um, statistically, trans women are more common than trans men.

In the old days trans people weren't shooting up christian schools out of frustration. I wonder if perhaps society made a mistake by so many members giving them the false impression that society should accept them for who they identify as. In the old days they pretty much had to learn to accept themselves for who they were and not worry about what other people thought, both because no one was encouraging them they de…

I actually don't think it's wise to make a claim that more than one trans person has shot up more than one christian school at this point, or even to attribute the terrorist act by a single trans person to the acceptance of transgender people more broadly.

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

#294

Post by dang »

ChickenNugger wrote: post #191
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...

This is just an ad hominem. Address the content/message, not the speaker.

I agree with you about ad hominems but unfortunately your account has been using HN primarily for political/ideological battle, and also is arguably breaking the rule against trollish usernames here (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...). I've therefore banned it. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future - they're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. If you want to do that, we'll happily rename your account to something less trollish.

(If you didn't intend your username to be trollish, I apologize, but I'm seeing signs that other people are taking it that way.)

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

#295

Post by lordnacho »

obscurette wrote: post #218

I'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…

Did that start in 2010, across several countries?

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

#296

Post by lsllc »

obscurette wrote: post #218

I'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…

I'm not sure you can blame problems such as climate change, economic issues -- every generation had its own existential crisis: WW2, Korea, Vietnam, numerous recessions and until 1990, recent generations lived under the specter of the atom bomb.

I think it's social media, that's what's really changed: Every single teenager is now comparing themselves against every other kid in the world instead of just their local peers (and maybe a few grainy MTV stars over 525 scan lines). And of course the "popular" ones they're comparing to are the most successful, most good-looking, most privileged i.e. the most "perfect" ones (because that's how they got to be the most popular). It's a terrible yardstick for anyone to measure themselves against, let along impressionable young minds.

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

#297

Post by joshlemer »

saiya-jin wrote: post #272
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…

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…

In your first paragraph you say that there is a huge difference but don't say what those differences are, which approach is better and what are the differences?

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

#298

Post by thelopa »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #227
cornholio wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> And it's no coincidence young female teens are by far the most susceptible to transition to the opposite role: social media tells them "they were born in the wrong bodies". Um, statistically, trans women are more common than trans men.

Citation needed. Everything I’ve seen indicates that transition rates are roughly equal.

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

#299

Post by lordnacho »

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.

The issue with that explanation is the synchronous timing. Why would it happen over the last 10 years or so, across a bunch of countries?

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

#300

Post by Apocryphon »

dw_arthur wrote: post #128
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…

American society has always been ruthlessly capitalist, I don't think that explanation holds for why there is a recent increase in depression. People have gone through much tougher times and seemed to thrive once the bad times ended. I refuse to believe today is any tougher than what past generations went through. I think what is going on isn't that complicated. The biggest problem is that internet and smartphones ha…

> People have gone through much tougher times and seemed to thrive once the bad times ended.

My theory is that in fairly recent memory, in America you had relatively good times that went from the '80s up to 2008, with the '90s being a particularly tranquil time at that (no major war between Desert Storm and 9/11). So to regress from a time of security and prosperity into a bad time provides a sort of trauma of its own. Especially since, as others have pointed out, there seems to be no exit condition.

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