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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

#331

Post by carimura »

lsllc wrote: post #296
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 pe…

this 100x. And in the young brain, every single person looks amazing because that's how everyone is posturing constantly. Image filters can even literally make someone better looking. It's basically an arms race to 0 on who can posture the best.

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

#332

Post by PuppyTailWags »

naasking wrote: post #323
PuppyTailWags wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your article doesn't seem to be quite authoritative: It shows there's actually a lot of debate about this subject. There's even a responses section that shows there's some significant issues with the article and claiming it's not neutral, leaving out significant statistics like a less than 1% regret rate of trans affirming procedures (less than a knee surgery). I think it's still up in the air, frankly.

What is authoritative is the evidence. The cohort WPATH was familiar with before 2010 and for which we have considerable data was older male-to-female transitioners. This cohort has changed significantly per the article, which is why some people are raising concerns about the lack of quality safety data for minors. Furthermore, only the US has really pushed gender affirming care for minors to this degree. Every other…

I'm just saying it's still up in the air it seems.

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

#333

Post by sacnoradhq »

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 have potentially a bazillion questions:

0. How do kids socialize without devices these days?

1a-b. Do they meet new people like them and/or unlike them?

2. Do they go outside and explore the world nearby?

3a-b. Do they get in the same or different kinds of trouble as past generations of kids?

4a-d. What are the fundamental social values they share that differ from 1-4 generations ago?

5a-c. Do they have as much curiosity, work ethic, or resiliency to setbacks?

Here's my neon fuchsia fanny-pack, old personitis for reference:

When I was a kid, I had to wake up at 5:45 am to get ready to walk 1.3 mi (2 km) to a school bus stop when there was a perfectly good school 0.25 mi away. (Supposedly, I was denied a slot due to race-integration busing but I attribute it to paranoid parents rationalizing their lack of resolve.) The bus ride was 90 minutes each way for 3 hours total, depending on traffic. It was a magnet school where there were many kids from broken homes, abuse, poverty, undocumented parents hanging on, and situations adjacent to drug gangs. The non-IEP classroom material was too slow for me and I was often bored. The turnover of teachers was about 50%/year. Many substitute teachers. There were bullies, girls who behaved in age-inappropriate manners, carved graffiti-encased desks, and mountains of scantrons and dittos (spirit duplicator). No school uniforms, but gang colors and teen pregnancy were omnipresent concerns. Hardcover textbooks were worn to where bindings had saggy wrinkles. No computers and no cell phones.

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

#334

Post by PuppyTailWags »

notch898a wrote: post #314
thelopa wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This narrative about trans shooters is disconnected from reality. If you take every trans shooter in the last decade, you get less than 10… out of thousands. For context, last year America has nearly 700 mass shootings. Trans people are actually under represented in mass shootings. Estimates put trans people at up to 1% of the population. We would naively expect 7 shooters last year to be trans, but none were. Saying…

The desperation to argue against a straw man is real. If trans people went from no school shootings to one in 2020 and one in 2023 there may or may not be a "trend" but it's still worth finding out why that is happening. Edit: re pupptailwags: Yes we should be examining whenever people are engaging in violence, factors behind that happening. I'm quite certain, unlike assertion made below, that people indeed have stud…

We didn't apply this standard to all men when we went from no school shootings to one school shooting in 1840. I don't see a reason why we should apply it to another gender.

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

#335

Post by luckylion »

lezojeda wrote: post #86
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…

Add increasing concentration of wealth in less and less people, increasing job insecurity due to technological advances rendering many jobs completely useless (and transfers even more wealth to those that are already haves and removes it even more from have-nots), the instant access to compare yourself to millions of others around the world... I seriously can't understand why some people scratch their heads around th…

We've seen much worse wealth inequalities in history, we've seen much worse job markets, we've seen much worse wars and pandemics, history was a lot more violent.

Really the only thing different there is that "instant access to compare yourself to millions of others". Which is essentially social media.

I'm sure there are other factors and everyone can speculate what they are, but "the world is terrible today" is hard to argue because it was much worse before, yet this didn't happen.

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

#336

Post by thinkingemote »

mxkopy wrote: post #289
ttt3ts wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the world has always had issues and the lense through which we now view the world is an everpresent fear coaster. Step away from the news & social media for a few months. You can't effect the outcome anyway and you might find you're happier.

This is really easy to say for someone who doesn't experience these issues firsthand. Not reading the news isn't going to make your existential anxiety go away if you or your parents give it to you, either by helicoptering or living paycheck to paycheck. Also, you really don't think that, in between building aqueducts and nuclear missiles, nothing has changed? You really think we have the same problems today as we di…

Relative, not an absence.

History and geography.

We can look back at history and say that there are times that are worse than now. For example, the second world war was worse than now. Cuban missile crisis also.

We can look at other countries and see that being in Syria or Ukraine right now is worse than in my more peaceful country.

By looking this way we literally gain new perspectives. Perhaps part of today's crisis is one of perspective maybe the internet narrows our vision.

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

#337

Post by PuppyTailWags »

notch898a wrote: post #305
PuppyTailWags wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've specifically said they weren't shooting up christian schools in the old days, with no commentary on the (non-zero) number of schools shot in modern days, so I have no idea what you're even arguing against. Your whole comment is a side-step strawman. Although for the record it doesn't even make sense to say "trans person wasn't shooting school in the old days." Pluralization is an appropriate use of English here.

My comment is that I don't think its reasonable to attribute a terrorist action to the lessening of oppression that that demographic has received overall.

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

#338

Post by dragonwriter »

YellOh wrote: post #292
dragonwriter wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mor…

> 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.

Prior to the Texas private-enforcement-only hack that occurred just before Dobbs (and was huge news before Dobbs eclipsed it), most of them were either funding/access restrictions that didn’t directly target the Constitutional right just made it difficult to exercise in practice (because that had some chance of surviving the courts), while the rest were struck down (or enjoined, and then struck down later) before going into effect and never enforced, serving primarily as strong social messaging rather than enforced law.

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

#339

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

lsllc wrote: post #296
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 pe…

I think social media - which is not so much about media but about performative competition - is just part of the problem.

Reality for kids seems so much more competitive and ruthless in every way. And there are so few resources available to them to help them deal with it.

At the same time opportunities are shrinking and pressure to perform is increasing. It's not enough to be adequate, you have to be outstanding in looks, talent, ability, work ethic, party ethic, lifestyle, income, and education.

But you can't be. Because you're not competing with a small group of relative peers, you're competing with the entire online world.

At the same time there's incoming doom in the form of climate change, Covid mismanagement, outrageous and crippling economic inequality, various wars, and now the threat of AI.

It would be strange if kids weren't getting depressed under these circumstances.

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

#340

Post by tick_tock_tick »

zug_zug wrote: post #34

These always come up and there's always this internet-commenter tendency to be like "I KNEW IT: SMARTPHONES/INTERNET/LACK-OF-RELIGION/ABCDEFG ANYTHING OF THE LAST 20 YEARS I HATE", which is fine for a hypothesis and worth somebody saying once. But it's really just a hypothesis. Another hypothesis is that it's environmental. There's a lot of research showing depression and stress are correlated with inflammation. Ther…

I mean "RELIGION" in and of how it normally goes hand in hand with stronger and closer communities it disappearing is probably a large factor in the current issues. I'm not religious but even I can recognize that for the vast majority of the population this support structure going away with nothing to replace it hasn't been great for a lot of people.
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