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The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

jonathanhaidt.substack.com

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Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#371

Post by candiodari »

neuronic wrote: post #333
jimmaswell wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public school schoolwork is so easy. So is applying to a college. How is anyone stressed by it?

This is a tad bit insensitive. I have excelled at public school for the first years, then there was a rough patch in life caused by parents which TANKED my grades and social life for years. I recovered and eventually got an excellent Master's degree in Bioinformatics but it is condescending to assume that everyone was dealt the same hand as you in life and that anything at all is fair. Maybe schoolwork isn't so easy…

I had some serious incidents in High School, mostly with other kids, and while my grades dropped, I never lost the ability to make up for weeks, sometimes months of doing nothing for school in a matter of hours.

Didn't stop me from getting bad grades for those weeks/months and making stupid mistakes like not completing assignments and the like.

It's very easy. It's just that in a depressed/anxious/... state people aren't capable of sustaining even the most basic levels of effort after a while. Frankly, I bet that if it was a lot harder, that would have helped me.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#372

Post by partiallypro »

nluken wrote: post #79

While I don't doubt that social media can drive some of these mental health issues, I think most teenagers are simply stressed from the constant work that's necessary for the college admissions process. I'm 24, so I would have been a teenager in 2012, but I didn't have a smartphone until I was 16 or so. My high school experience consisted almost entirely of school, studying, and running (my primary extracurricular).…

I think this is your personal anecdote and there isn't much to support it, but I do think, separate from college, that kids simply just can't be kids today. There is social, political and academic pressure that just didn't exist when most of us were growing up. I think the pandemic made it much worse.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#373

Post by function_seven »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #353
function_seven wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you don't see are the kids that weren't invited to the park or mall. The ones those kids are possibly making fun of. Or those same kids you did see, but later at night as they stress about what to wear tomorrow, why Jake didn't like their post earlier today even though he liked Jasmine's post and Mia's post. Many characters in "Nosedive" ( Black Mirror episode) looked really happy as well.

How does one measure whether it's a net positive (for those who are laughing/dancing with their friends at the park) or a net negative (for those like you described) without being biased/projecting? It feels a little "anarchist" to say "down with all social media! it's most likely a total net negative! nobody should be allowed to enjoy it because it isn't inclusive of those who might be left out!"

I can't answer your question, but do note that there are many who are studying this and coming to some similar conclusions. (But of course it's really hard to separate the moral panic from the real trends!)

I agree that we shouldn't just ban anything that exclude some users. I'm not as shrill as some people are about the dangers, but I do have a generally negative opinion of childhoods that are spent so online.

I have several young relatives—ages 9-22—that are heavily online. For the most part, they're the popular kids in their schools. Yet I see and hear constantly how they would never dare do things because of the pile-on potentials. Things I (a nerd who desperately wanted to be cool) would still have done.

When I was in elementary and middle school, I was definitely in the lower quartile of popularity. I was bullied occasionally, and I would sometimes dread going to school because of my social standing. BUT, I had friends at home! I had a life outside of school that I could return to after a short day of that stress. Even in school, the social pressures abated during class. If Instagram or Snapchat or TikTok existed during my school years, I would have found no refuge from the hierarchies and drama of school. The game I was "losing" between first bell and final bell would have gone 24/7.

My only saving grace would have been parents that refused to let me play the game in the first place. I think parents and schools should lean harder in this direction. Kids need to learn their social skills in small settings first, before they're exposed to literally the whole world. An awkward 11-year-old can only do so much "damage" to themselves in the limited setting of IRL. Let's get the mistakes out of the way before they're broadcast across space and time.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#374

Post by Myrmornis »

kypro wrote: post #226
arp242 wrote: post #2

Another possible explanation is that we are simply diagnosing these kind of mental health issues better – due to decrease in stigmatization and/or more attention to it – but that our treatment is worse than doing nothing, and is leading to higher rates of self-harm and suicide. I have no idea if that's the case – and if it is a factor at all it probably doesn't account for all of it – but it seems something worth exp…

I think the opposite could be true – that we're too quick to diagnose mental illnesses in kids today. In the last few years I've witnessed several kids in my family get referred to doctors for potential mental illnesses and then end up on a cocktail of drugs as a result. It's something I've found really difficult because I was never personally convinced they were mentally ill in the first place and in many cases thes…

This is spot-on. Over-diagnosis and over-medicalization of questionable mental illnesses is a huge problem in (at least) Anglophone societies. Many people know that privately, but it has become a hard thing to say publicly due to the large numbers of people who have received such diagnoses from medical/psychology professionals who they, understandably, believed.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#375

Post by WalterBright »

nluken wrote: post #79

While I don't doubt that social media can drive some of these mental health issues, I think most teenagers are simply stressed from the constant work that's necessary for the college admissions process. I'm 24, so I would have been a teenager in 2012, but I didn't have a smartphone until I was 16 or so. My high school experience consisted almost entirely of school, studying, and running (my primary extracurricular).…

> break under this kind of pressure

They aren't being drafted to go fight in Vietnam. The Russians aren't bombing our cities. The main health problem is eating too much food, not too little. Teens aren't even expected to have jobs anymore. (In my day, teens got jobs at 16.)

My dad volunteered in WW2. He expected to die in combat, as his cohort had an 80% casualty rate. 4 out of 5. Every mission meant holes in the airplane, and you stayed on course and took it. He helplessly watched men die. His best friend had his face burned off. When he returned home, he thought the concerns on the home front were trivial. After all, they were going to live another day.

> what you want to be at age 17

In other words, America is full of opportunity.

We live in a golden age in America.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#376

Post by loeg »

hector_vasquez wrote: post #326
loeg wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Among adult Americans, only a third have bachelors degrees Sure, but this is very skewed by older Americans having low rates of degrees. A lot more than 33% of current American 24 year-olds have Bachelors degrees. And that more accurately reflects the expectations on teenagers than low rates of degrees among Boomers.

In the U.S., around 86% of kids graduate high school[1], around 63% of high school graduates go to 4-year colleges[2], and around 64% of them graduate within 6 years[3]. By that logic around 35% of 24-year-old Americans have bachelor degrees. More than a third, but not by much. [1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/coi/high-school-g... [2] https://educationdata.org/college-enrollment-statistics [3] https://n…

You don't have to reverse engineer it from first principles; the rate is rising over time, lead by under 29s (i.e., current youth): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Educational_Attainment_in...

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#377

Post by odessacubbage »

eecc wrote: post #129
nluken wrote: post #79

While I don't doubt that social media can drive some of these mental health issues, I think most teenagers are simply stressed from the constant work that's necessary for the college admissions process. I'm 24, so I would have been a teenager in 2012, but I didn't have a smartphone until I was 16 or so. My high school experience consisted almost entirely of school, studying, and running (my primary extracurricular).…

very well said, although allow me to make a minor correction. Where you wrote “Today's society demands so much from adolescents for so little in return. “ I would simply generalize to “Today's society demands so much from anyone for so little in return.” There, perfect

while true, teenagers in particular have lost a great degree of the agency that was afforded to prior generations. the concept using surveillance devices on your children did not exist 20 years ago and yet you can see threads of HNers discussing how they or their schools monitor their children quite regularly.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#378

Post by COGlory »

codeslave13 wrote: post #337

My daughter hit her teens in2012. It was a horrible couple of years not just for her but from about 8th grade up. Our HS had a suicide wave. Many attepts (my daughter being one) and quite a few of those attempts were successful later. Thankfully my child responded well to therapy. This was in a high competitive HS IN NORTHERN VA. My thoughts on factors: Crazy parents pushing kids to try and get in TJ who had no busin…

What is 'TJ'?

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#379

Post by Andrex »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #353
function_seven wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you don't see are the kids that weren't invited to the park or mall. The ones those kids are possibly making fun of. Or those same kids you did see, but later at night as they stress about what to wear tomorrow, why Jake didn't like their post earlier today even though he liked Jasmine's post and Mia's post. Many characters in "Nosedive" ( Black Mirror episode) looked really happy as well.

How does one measure whether it's a net positive (for those who are laughing/dancing with their friends at the park) or a net negative (for those like you described) without being biased/projecting? It feels a little "anarchist" to say "down with all social media! it's most likely a total net negative! nobody should be allowed to enjoy it because it isn't inclusive of those who might be left out!"

> It feels a little "anarchist" to say "down with all social media! it's most likely a total net negative! nobody should be allowed to enjoy it because it isn't inclusive of those who might be left out!"

The middle ground I've settled on is regulating it like alcohol.

Children should not be hanging out in bars and they should not be on social networking sites, period. COPPA should be vastly expanded.

Social media is our generation's nicotine. "Wait, it's HOW dangerous??" followed by the next generation's "How could those idiots not realize?"

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#380

Post by EGreg »

Kids overdiagnoses, while both parents work in corporations and stick them in a school to sit down and shut up for 10 hours a day:

  ADHD - prescribe amphetamines (Ritalin, Adderall)
  Gender Dysphoria - prescribe hormone blockers
  Autism spectrum - Abilify and Risperdal
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-there-really-a...

https://www.psychiatryadvisor.com/home/topics/adhd/a-true-ad...

Teenager and College Student overdiagnoses:

  Depression - prescribe SSRIs
  Diabetes - prescribe Meglitinides
  Obesity - prescribe diets
https://www.turnbridge.com/news-events/latest-articles/rise-...

https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/population-care/los...

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/p0824-youth-diabetes...

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-childhood-obesity...

Adults:

  Men - Opioid epidemic since 2008
  Women - One in four on antidepressants in middle age
  Internet Addiction - companies need to boost "engagement"
  ADD - notifications and multitasking 24/7 is normal now
https://time.com/3858309/attention-spans-goldfish/

Elderly in nursing homes:

  Too many to list
We need to realize that these "epidemics" and "rises in incidence" have more to do with the capitalist industry and government working together, than individual incidence. They have women vs men, black vs white, so people are distracted from the real causes: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=362

Big Tech is a big part of the problem, and much of the unhealthy habits and emergent depression come from the influencer industry. In other demographics, unhealthy influences were specifically pushed and promoted until they became normalized. It takes hold easier when you are young and impressionable:

  Gangsta rap, Drill music - music industry, corrupts Black youth
  Instagram and TikTok - influencer industry, corrupts adolescent girls
Most of the cartoons you watched, down to the "programming", was based around merchandising opportunities and ways to sell stuff:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/

https://www.cbr.com/cartoon-television-commercials-products/...

But it's not just the young. Many adults are at each other's throats with Democrat vs Republican, Shiite vs Sunni, wars between countries, etc. because the media tells them to. Their brains have developed beyond the youth, but the masses can be manipulated by a top-down media machine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s

Most of the mainstream songs you listen to sound the same because the studios use algorithms to select songs that will they will promote:

https://soundcloud.com/discover/sets/track-stations:22091466...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-music/pop-music-t...

The American community collapsed around 2000 and social media has grown up to dominate it, instead. Our public forums are privately owned and controlled by Zuck and Elon, and in China - WeChat and TikTok work even closer with the Chinese government than here. Governments are very much involved in all this, of course.

https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Commu...

Both parents work for corporations, and are told to "lean in", corporations co-opt women's lib movements to promote climbing the corporate ladder as a way to find meaning in life: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286

But meanwhile, the kids are left to be raised by public schools (or the street). Divorces are up. No one's really happy. Young people who move to the cities work like dogs to afford the rent and live alone and no one knows their own neighbors. They cope with cellphones in their hand.

Before medicating society, consider building better tools than Big Tech has, and exit the system dominated by profit motive and exploitation of others. Open Source, Science, Wikipedia, Creative Commons and more, can be made possible with safety nets like 30 hour work week overtime protection, Universal Basic Income and Universal Health Insurance.

If you want a healthier society, start by opting out of the current system, and invite others in your life to opt out also. In many cases of overdiagnosis, medication is a lazy bandaid for society's problems. They want you to stay medicated and think you can individually recycle your way out of the metric tons of plastic they produce, diet and exercise your way out of the High Fructose Corn Syrup they put into everything, and so on. The more you believe this, the less political will you have to demand politicians and corporations change.

But we do need to hold their feet to the fire. They've failed us. 1/3 of arable land has undergone desertification around the world. Insects are dying. Species are going extinct. Overfishing. Garbage piling up. Coral reefs dying. Kelp forests destroyed. Rainforests being cut down. THe biodiversity of the world is repidly being turned into monocultures and farms. And the only thing people seem to care about is "climate change" from fossil fuels. These things are far more pressing.

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