Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

afterbabel.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 824 posts

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

#401

Post by SoftTalker »

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…

Teens also used to work at McDonalds. Now it's middle aged people who look and act like life has been kicking them in the face since they were born.

I also used to eat there quite often but I almost never go now because I don't like waiting 10 or 15 minutes for a sullen, indifferent person to hand me a bag of food that might or might not contain what I ordered and like you said the prices are crazy.

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

#402

Post by tivert »

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…

> Over 50% met online.

Is that actually true? I read something recently (in an recent article in a major publication about how online dating sucks and people are getting tired of it), that the proportion is much lower. Like people put all this money and effort into dating apps, but must successful relationships still form outside of them.

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

#403

Post by DoingIsLearning »

drooby wrote: post #60

I have recently started traveling and working remote at "co-living" hotels. And I must say, this is the ideal way I wish to live my life in my 20s-30s. Community makes life fun. Someone needs to import co-living to the US. And I don't mean these "co-living" apartment complexes that exist in our major cities. I mean like, actual communities with character and life.

I'm gonna be a old man shouting at the clouds. But co-living spaces work because they are generally small projects and have very driven and charismatic people leading those projects.

The moment something like that grows or scales to a tipping where real estate funds take interest then it will naturally enshitify as most things in society that have been monetized by large scale investors.

I agree with everything you said but with the risk of gate keeping I worry that the only way co-living projects will work is by having a bunch of stubborn fun people starting it off and keeping it at a non-industrial scale.

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

#404

Post by mistrial9 »

nineplay wrote: post #382
mensetmanusman wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all religious societies are like that. Doing it properly looks more like exercise towards a higher good than fear of failure.

I think it's unavoidable in Christianity. Even if one's immediate religious society doesn't believe in hell, it is trivially easy to find other societies which do, and other societies that believe that everyone is damned except for people who've accepted the 'right' concept in the 'right' way. I can't tell you how relieved I was when I realized I could become an Atheist and mostly put the matter out of my mind. Quick…

this is really odd to read, since almost all of the Protestant-related theology in the US West seems to have dropped evil and hell almost entirely. At a graduate theology seminar on the History of Religion in America, Professor Robert McDermott asked the group "How many of you believe in 'evil' ?" and only half the class raised their hands (about a dozen).

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

#405

Post by alexfromapex »

whythre wrote: post #199
alexfromapex wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so accurate. There's been lots of talk of enshittification and it really is just everything now. Monetizing the well in modern capitalism means poisoning it. It all can be traced back to lobbying in politics. They need to ban money from politics immediately and everything will improve.

That just means the money moves in stealthier ways. Instead of soft corruption you get hard corruption.

Money moves in stealthy ways already, and there are ways to identify that. The problem is the legislature is supposed to be supervising the government entities that pursue financial corruption. Instead of reducing all problems to economic problems, where only the very rich have a voice, we should be encouraging a legislature with integrity to do what is right for everyone.

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

#406

Post by throwaway4aday »

hateful wrote: post #367
goethes_kind wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in my 30s but I'm feeling this so hard. Growing up we used to have these kid/youth centres that were run by local Catholic organizations. We used to hang out there after school. Ostensibly the point was that there'd be 30 minutes of catechism doctrine, but we didn't really care about that. To us it was just a the place where everyone would be. I miss that so much. A place where you can just go and meet people you…

It should be noted that this wasn't free - as you said, you had to sit through a 30 minute ad before participating.

Ironically, to meet your definition of free you would have to violate the definition of community provided in the article.

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

#407

Post by svieira »

nineplay wrote: post #382
mensetmanusman wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all religious societies are like that. Doing it properly looks more like exercise towards a higher good than fear of failure.

I think it's unavoidable in Christianity. Even if one's immediate religious society doesn't believe in hell, it is trivially easy to find other societies which do, and other societies that believe that everyone is damned except for people who've accepted the 'right' concept in the 'right' way. I can't tell you how relieved I was when I realized I could become an Atheist and mostly put the matter out of my mind. Quick…

Speaking as a Christian I think Hell is often looked at the wrong way. It's easy to fall into, yes, but not because "you're just doing it wrong" but because "you want to". I can't speak for other denominations than Catholic, but no one goes to Hell because they just-didn't-know. They go to Hell because they want to serve someone other than God.

The reason to be afraid isn't "here's someone who's just waiting for you to fail" it's (speaking for myself) "I'm _very_ stubborn and _very_ set in my own ways. Can I do the work of letting God work in me? He's eager to work in me, but He won't without my consent. Can I die to myself to serve the good?"

What about those who never had a chance to hear about God? That is between them and God. But God isn't looking to throw them into Hell - if they go to Hell it is because they decided they'd rather serve "something other than the good" even if they never connected "the good" to God.

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

#408

Post by weitendorf »

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…

IMO the two culprits are high rents and efficient capital markets. Definitely many factors contributing to the first, but one of them is also the efficiency of capital markets.

Basically it's too expensive to make spaces available for below market rate due to the direct cost of rents (a middle or upper-middle class person could drop $1000/month on a passion project, but not so easily $5k/month) and there's a very high opportunity cost to forgoing revenue/profit, because you can find buyers willing to buy you out for 3-25x incremental profit. That opportunity cost makes it tempting for any community space to instead chase profit. But it also makes non-residential property more expensive because you're bidding against companies that are able to convert incremental $1000/mo profit to $50k-100k in realized value, even if you aren't intending to do that.

Rents themselves are very competitive not just from low supply but also because technology has made the rental market very "efficient"/liquid - it's easy to market a property and accurately price it, so sweetheart deals/underpriced leases are difficult to find. Plus rental properties themselves have been very well financialized as well - increases in incremental revenue/profit of commercial real estate can be recognized as many-times-more increases in equity by lenders, which can be accessed by loaning against the equity. So sweetheart deals are more costly to lessors than before.

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

#409

Post by trallnag »

jeffbee wrote: post #132
philip1209 wrote: post #66

The books the authors cite are great and worth reading. Some personal observations: - The USA lacks a unified cultural identity now. There are lots of reasons for this. But, it's considered taboo to express a love of the USA - which hurts our community + culture. - People put a lot of effort into work, and work is becoming more transactional. No more "life-long employment with the buddies" kind of situation. - Americ…

> The USA lacks a unified cultural identity now This is why we need to pursue annexation by Mexico, so we can finally be a country with some culture.

Looking at the demographics of the USA you just have to wait a few more years

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

#410

Post by jvandreae »

Filligree wrote: post #203
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. > 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. It is a problem, but…

[flagged]
Post reply on HN