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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

#481

Post by mikewarot »

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).…

>If we want a healthier society, we need to take a step back and give teenagers a chance to actually live life.

We need something like Rumspringa[1], a period in life when I young person is given a bit of slack, and is expected to eventually voluntarily take upon themselves the duties and responsibilities of an adult, or leave the community.

I can't find it now[2], but I remember either Joseph Campbell, or some other such person in a TV interview describing how in earlier societies, the children once of sufficient age would be set outside of society, and allowed to sleep in the ashes around the camp fires, until they resolved to join society as an adult, with all the privileges and responsibilities.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumspringa

[2] google really does suck these days, doesn't it?

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#482

Post by phlipski »

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'm 43 and I felt the pressure of getting into a good college back in highschool. I remember anecdotes of older kids talking about it when I was in later elementary school grades. I don't think the college pressure is all that new. Maybe more widespread?

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#483

Post by nradov »

taurath wrote: post #383
ethanbond wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presuming people who aren’t stressed about college admissions aren’t instead stressed about not going to college and having extremely stunted career prospects.

I remember being a teenager. I was stressed all the time because EVERY decision I made had a consequence and I wouldn't feel that consequence sometimes for a very long time and had no scope or scale of how much any mistake would fuck me over. Be with the right friends, get good enough grades, express myself my personality in the right way, every single thing I did affected my "future life". Every single adult was tel…

Military service gives many young people a second chance at college. They can earn some college credits while they're in, and then take advantage of the GI Bill after discharge.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#484

Post by paulmd »

cheschire wrote: post #479
paulmd wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I made this" dot meme. See? Shaka, when the walls fell. Yeah I mean if he's presenting them as ideas he came up with that's intellectual fraud which it seems like most people are uncomfortable with. To some extent we are all living in a soup of ideas and we're just synthesizing from a lot of the same sources and riffing on a lot of the same inputs. But if it's systematic and specific and presented as ideas he came u…

Tangential, and yet not entirely unrelated observation: it’s becoming more common for me to see someone writing this much and my first thought is “did they get ChatGPT to fluff this up for them?” Things are going to get worse before they get better, I suspect.

I know, that's why I said "the usual response is tl;dr" in the grandparent ;)

Sorry, I actually did write all that shit. Perhaps I am just a bag of words after all…

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#485

Post by fsckboy »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #100
carabiner wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

40% of high school students don't go to college (of any type). Of those, only a tiny portion are focused on elite universities. Many are just going to Long Beach State, University of Redlands and other 4 year schools that you've never heard of. They have lax admissions. Among adult Americans, only a third have bachelors degrees. Certainly the high pressure scholastic environment of certain high schools is not common.

You’re going to get a bias in here because a lot of folks are STEM focused / high achieving high anxiety types :)

> You’re going to get a bias in here because a lot of folks are STEM focused / high achieving high anxiety types :)

yeah, but you'd expect STEM types to know how to analyze data and realize they aren't the majority and that these studies are not representative of them. I am disappoint.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#486

Post by musictubes »

I’m blaming the parents. I’m a single gen-xer so I admit to not having skin in the game but it seems like my generation has managed to raise incredibly neurotic kids. I don’t think it is the fault of the kids. The parents have not allowed their children to develop any resiliency.

It doesn’t seem to me that whatever stresses that the current generation of American kids are facing are any worse than what previous generations have had to deal with. As a Cold War kid I was terrified of nuclear apocalypse. It was a big deal. Remember the “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” speech? It began with, “The Soviet Union has nuclear missiles pointed at the capitals of Europe…” Was that a greater or lessor stressor than climate change? Every generation faces stress, it’s how they deal with it that is important. The question is why is the current generation having so much trouble coping?

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#487

Post by datavirtue »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #346
antihipocrat wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The physical experience and effects of enduring a stressful environment is the same for everyone regardless of who they are, where they're from, or what they are doing. An equivalent high stress environment can occur whether working in an executive office, working in a call center or selling bracelets on the street. Learning to overcome high stress experiences is a transferrable skill regardless of the context in whi…

> An equivalent high stress environment can occur whether working in an executive office, working in a call center or selling bracelets on the street. This doesn't necessarily mean an equivalent high-stress life. The call center employee has fewer or worse options for dealing with stressors outside their job which they share with the executive. > I need to eat. > I need to travel. > I need somewhere to live. By and l…

...period. Just because you are overly stressed out about your BMW/Tesla repair saga doesn't mean it is equivalent to someone who NEVER has enough money for basic nessesities.

Your luxury car repair drama is fleeting. Being wracked with stress about your entire life 24/7 only lets up when your mind finds a way to squirm out of it for a minute by watching a show or powering through a package of cookies on your couch.

Stress is not equivalent across all.

Mr BMW has no idea how much his energy bill was last month, smiles every time he pays his mortgage. Single mom carries a past due balance of $800 and barely makes rent each month. Two different, not equivalent, worlds.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#488

Post by htag »

com2kid wrote: post #422
carabiner wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, exactly. There are tons of schools outside of this that still shape kids into productive members of society, even if non-elite. Places like University of New Haven (acceptance rate 94%, founded 1920), Central Washington University (88%, 1891), Western Washington University (96%, 1886), Stetson University in Florida... The list goes on. The vast of US college students attend these decent and non-selective school…

When I went to Western in early 00s, the CS department's theory seemed to be to allow anyone to attempt to join, and then just ruthlessly fail people in the first year. Between Ada, Scheme, C, and C++, class sizes shrunk fast . IMHO this is more fair than making the department hard to get into. Let everyone have a go at it.

1. It can look like a cash grab to take a semester or two of tuition from traditionally middle performing students before failing them out.

2. College admission and graduation rates are important and watched.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#489

Post by datavirtue »

matwood wrote: post #251
mouse_ wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guarantee most of these "high achieving high anxiety types" live with significantly less anxiety than customer service reps/bag handlers/food service workers.

I've done waiting/service type jobs. For me, the stress during the work period was way higher than anything in my software/business jobs. But, every night when I got off work, the stress was immediately gone. That shift was over, and the tomorrow really was new day. With my office jobs the max stress is lower, but it also never really goes away.

I ran entire kitchens of high volume restaurants...sometimes single handedly. I loved it. I wasn't happy unless I was getting crushed. Some of my best memories are from working mothersday and getting absolutely blitzed. Compared to being a developer, I wish every god damned day I could be back in a kitchen. But the pay is absolute shite.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#490

Post by [deleted] »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #384
password11 wrote: post #323

girls 15-19 that self harmed: 0.45% -> 0.7%. A 47% increase! boys 15-19 that died by suicide: 0.01% -> 0.016%. A 34% increase! Relative increase percentages (i.e. exponentials) are misleading when they are measuring linear phenomena like suicide rate. You could just as easily say there was a 0.1% decrease in the percent of boys who didn't die by suicide. It's misleading because the new 0.006% of male suicides are unr…

It's similar to how studies report that food X is bad and increases your risk of by 30%. Which in absolute terms is 0.01% -> 0.013%.

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