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The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

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Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#391

Post by SoftTalker »

aklein wrote: post #88
abcrawf wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drownings and ice cream sales also track nicely, but it doesn’t mean it’s the ice cream that’s causing the drownings.

Right, you need a mechanism. (Ice cream makes you fat, fat people can't swim, ergo drownings). Haight clearly outlines the mechanisms by which social media and smartphones have detrimental effects on mental health, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l2TdinWoM8

That's not why ice cream sales are correlated with drowning. Ice cream sales generally peak in the summer, and that's also when most people swim.

But if drownings had suddenly increased when ice cream was first introduced, that's a stronger suggestion that there's a relationship.

Kids' mental health went off a cliff at the same time that they started getting smartphones and social media.

Something else could be the cause, but we all know it's not, even if we earn our living from it.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#392

Post by neuralRiot »

extr wrote: post #366
kelseyfrog wrote: post #82

Well, yes, we've doubled down on mediating social interactions through economic relationships. Most of the interactions adults have in their lives are with or in the framing of economic relations. Homes, are being invaded with tablets and mobile devices which bring along with them framing interactions as economic relations through ad and consumer frames. Workplaces are inherently settings of economic relations, and t…

Even economically mediated third places are being phased out in some respects. When I was a teen we often hung out at a local McDonalds. Super cheap food, free refills, as long as you didn't cause trouble you could stay for awhile. I went back there somewhat recently and I was shocked at the difference. It's been remodeled to have less seating, no refills, most of the lobby/counter area is touchscreens, and of course…

I have seen some cities building skate and bike parks, I love seeing kids and teens doing physical activities with friends.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#393

Post by mschuster91 »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #341
mschuster91 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and voilá, no more free parking anywhere. Well... yes, that is precisely what's needed to wean America off its unhealthy dependence on cars. Come over here to Europe, visit our cities where you can actually walk on a sidewalk, where you can live without a car just fine because everything you need can be reached safely on foot, by bike or with public transport.

> Well... yes, that is precisely what's needed to wean America off its unhealthy dependence on cars. HIGHLY disagree. If you want people off cars, you need to give them an alternative. Granted, I love cars. I would have cars whether I needed one or not, but I know I'm absolutely 100% in the minority on that issue, and like, when I say I would have cars either way, I mean fun cars. I wouldn't keep and maintain vehicle…

> If you want people off cars, you need to give them an alternative.

And to provide that infrastructure, you need space. Space that is reserved for parking cars at the moment. Just compare how much you pay per m² for the parking spot in your average city center vs the average rent mer m² that someone has to pay just for a basic shack.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#394

Post by racional »

Wytwwww wrote: post #368
racional wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how long do you think Ukraine can hold out if we extrapolate the casualties rates from the last 12-24 months or so? I wouldn't know because I don't have their numbers, and unlike you, I don't trust my offhand estimates. However I will trust the Ukrainians to know, and it seems safe to reason that the more and better arms they have -- the farther off the potential triggering of such a limit will be. The key conside…

> and unlike you, I don't trust my offhand estimates. Yet you're fine with handwaving probably the biggest issue Ukraine is facing (besides the risk of losing western support/Trump winning the election and making a side-deal with Putin). > However I will trust the Ukrainians to know, The government probably does. Of course due to perfectly understandable reasons they will not share that information with the Ukrainian…

For the sake of simplicity -- I'm assuming Trump won't win at this point (it could happen but the odds are looking quite low). And unlike Trump, the new administration won't simply drop-kick Ukraine or otherwise be in a hurry to cut a dirty deal just to get this thing over with.

Yet you're fine with handwaving

I'm not; I'm saying it's a question I'll trust to the Ukrainians to evaluate and decide for themselves.

That's something entirely different from what you're suggesting that I said.

[Don't underestimate resilience of dictatorships; the Iran-Iraq war went on for 8 years]

That's actually an argument for why time is more on Ukraine's side.

If Russia gives up after 8 years, or even 10 or 15 -- then Ukraine will have squarely won.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#395

Post by SoftTalker »

nozzlegear wrote: post #389
mensetmanusman wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has also been about a 70% drop in number of marriages since the 50s.

And as someone else noted, a significant drop in the number of divorces since its peak in the 1980s.

Does that include breakups? Can't get divorced if you were never married.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#396

Post by bilbo0s »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #318
bilbo0s wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Marriage rate and divorce rate have plummeted since 1940. Probably not much to do with electronic media there. A lot more likely that financial and social pressures are squeezing what were previously considered cultural imperatives. ie - church, marriage, home ownership, etc.

Or simply that fewer marginally good fit marriages are occurring. Fewer teen marriages, shotgun weddings, ect. There were always a lot of financial imperatives to wed.

There were always a lot of financial imperatives to wed.

The point is that now the financial imperative is not to wed. ("Girlfriend get serious! Why marry some loser who can't even buy a house?" or "Bro what? Do you know what will happen if you get divorced?")

The financial imperative is not to go to church. Working on Sunday has become the norm as people are regularly expected to be available on the weekends. This is especially true in the startup or tech space. And don't even get me started on how workers in the services sector, who would in any other era be the most likely to attend church, get so few weekends free between their multiple jobs, that church is now an afterthought for them.

The financial imperative is not to purchase a home. ("Bro! You don't have that kind of money! And what if you have to move for your job?")

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#397

Post by [deleted] »

StopTheWorld wrote: post #145
kelseyfrog wrote: post #82

Well, yes, we've doubled down on mediating social interactions through economic relationships. Most of the interactions adults have in their lives are with or in the framing of economic relations. Homes, are being invaded with tablets and mobile devices which bring along with them framing interactions as economic relations through ad and consumer frames. Workplaces are inherently settings of economic relations, and t…

Professor Michael Rosenfeld at Stanford does research on how heterosexual couples in the US meet ( https://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/ ). In 1940, over 50% met via friends or family. About 36% met at school. In 2021, about 20% met via friends or family. About 10% met at school. Over 50% met online. So the majority of US couples are now meeting via profit-maximizing corporations. He has a 2019 paper on this (and it ha…

[deleted]

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#398

Post by tivert »

Miraste wrote: post #187
tivert wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thinking about and watching climate change can't be good for, say, a teenager imagining their future. That doesn't make sense. Kids in previous generations had to grow up with things like the omnipresent threat of nuclear annihilation, which had greatly faded into the background until very recently. Also (at least in the 80s) destruction of the environment was a an issue kids were made very aware of. At least when…

I don't think increasingly poor mental health has much to do with climate change, but the threat of nuclear war is a bad comparison. Bombs either fall or don't. Climate change is a creeping, progressive issue that's visibly worse every few years, and the government has effectively said that that there will be no intervention.

I don't think I can disagree strongly enough.

Creeping changes are something you can adapt to and get used to. Nuclear war was (and still is to an extent) a looming boogeyman whose simultaneous distance and nearness, slowness and quickness makes it a literal nightmare horror-show. I mean, it's a literal sword of Damocles.

> and the government has effectively said that that there will be no intervention.

The government said that about nuclear war, too. No one has ever seriously considered getting rid of the bombs.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#399

Post by SoftTalker »

Animats wrote: post #239
phil21 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mad rush to as quickly abolish religious practices in mainstream U.S. culture without any form of societal replacement is puzzling to me. I am no fan of religion having grown up in an exceedingly religious environment. But it was always completely obvious to me even as a child that the primary purpose of religion was to form local communities and have others with shared values to rely on. We seem to be doing it w…

> The mad rush to as quickly abolish religious practices in mainstream U.S. culture without any form of societal replacement is puzzling to me. In the US, it's been a slow process over 35 years, since 1991.[1] England and Wales are much further along - believers are below 50%. But Islam is on the way up in the UK, at 6%. The high-intensity religions, the ones that require religious activity once a day or more, seem t…

I'd say longer than that. I'd say religious participation in the USA has been declining since at least the 1970s.
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