The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community • Hacker News Board

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

#521

Post by diob » Sat, Aug 03, 2024, 2:06 AM UTC

vishnugupta wrote: post #101

One big change I've noticed between growing up in a small town and now where I'm in my mid 40s in a big metro city in India is increased "transactional" nature of interactions of my daily life. Back then we had a deeper ties with all those who served us by which I mean vegetable vendor, carpenter, doctor, knife sharpener, cloth shop, grocer, baker and so on. Whenever we interacted with them it would be a small chit-c…

It's a mindset I think.

I love being in big cities (overseas) because I actually can cultivate this sort of community / friendship with the locals.

I go to the same coffee shops and get to know the folks there, bring them interesting coffee to try, etc.

I will say that this only has worked for me in other countries, not the USA. I think folks here are too burnt out by the lack of safety nets and such, I really don't blame them.

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

#522

Post by mewpmewp2 » Sat, Aug 03, 2024, 2:07 AM UTC

silisili wrote: post #472

jrussino wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, there was another big shift happening from 1940-1980: - in 1940, the top 3 were: met through family, met through friends, met in primary school. In that order, but pretty much equal - From 1940-1980, two of those three (family, primary school) trended sharply downward, as did "met in church", while these trended upward: met through friends, met in bar or restaurant, met as or through coworkers, met in…

> I have a strange feeling that some of those are just people too embarassed to say they met online Probably right. I don't really get the stigma, but I've known a few people personally who told the same lie and found later it was online. One in particular had a huge elaborate story about their bar meeting. His wife told me later one day he basically selected her from a website. So like most questions, probably worth…

Selected... What? Not matched? You are making it seem like she just listed herself for selection on a website and went with it?

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

#523

Post by vinnski » Sat, Aug 03, 2024, 2:08 AM UTC

pradn wrote: post #421

weberer wrote: post #21

I've noticed an uptick recently of large brands to start referring to themselves as "The [Brand] Community". The author pointed out Youtube here (who in an Orwellian manner calls their ToS "community guidelines") but I've also seen it with many other multi-million dollar companies such as Reddit, Twitter, etc. Young people today are reaching out for real support structures, but only receiving manipulation from corpor…

The words "friend" (everyone knows how shallow a "Facebook friend" is), "share" ("ride-sharing" instead of calling a taxi), and "community" (is the entire customer base of Facebook really a community?) have been shorn of their sociable, human meanings. It's as if a corporation were mining the good will humans have accreted to those words over millenia. Sometimes there are communities in these spaces - NUMTOTs or smal…

Seems like almost every community nowadays has to have their own Discord server or private Facebook group. Often a deal-breaker for the more privacy-conscious people, unfortunately

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

#524

Post by mewpmewp2 » Sat, Aug 03, 2024, 2:11 AM UTC

flappyeagle wrote: post #277

autoexecbat wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably have some internal churn targets to hit, else people will start to figure out that the app isn't worth their time and try a different one

It creates a much worse problem actually. Why have a committed relationship when you can always press a button to look at hotties and have a pull at the sex slot machine? If they design the system right, their audience just won't marry or have long term stable relationships

I think it really depends on the people. The slot machine would always get more boring and meaningless as time goes on and if someone wants meaningful relationship because they find the slot machine boring, this is what they will look to make happen. Maybe it is for the good to get it out of their system faster so they know what they want and get something meaningful.

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

#525

Post by mlloyd » Sat, Aug 03, 2024, 2:18 AM UTC

flappyeagle wrote: post #277

autoexecbat wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably have some internal churn targets to hit, else people will start to figure out that the app isn't worth their time and try a different one

It creates a much worse problem actually. Why have a committed relationship when you can always press a button to look at hotties and have a pull at the sex slot machine? If they design the system right, their audience just won't marry or have long term stable relationships

I think committed relationships are on the decline more because of the change in how women interact with and are viewed by society, than technology. Each successive generation of women over the last several decades has increased their ability to earn an independent successful living, control their sex life without negative labels, and remove the expectations that their only value is domestic-oriented.

Where in the past women settled for a number of reasons, including economic and societal/familial expectations, they no longer do. And because women are much less apt to settle down, men settle down less too. More free women = more free men = less committed relationships. (assuming we are seeing fewer committed relationships - I didn't fact-check that)

Not at all scientific, just a vibe.

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

#526

Post by tenacious_tuna » Sat, Aug 03, 2024, 2:18 AM UTC

silisili wrote: post #472

jrussino wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, there was another big shift happening from 1940-1980: - in 1940, the top 3 were: met through family, met through friends, met in primary school. In that order, but pretty much equal - From 1940-1980, two of those three (family, primary school) trended sharply downward, as did "met in church", while these trended upward: met through friends, met in bar or restaurant, met as or through coworkers, met in…

> I have a strange feeling that some of those are just people too embarassed to say they met online Probably right. I don't really get the stigma, but I've known a few people personally who told the same lie and found later it was online. One in particular had a huge elaborate story about their bar meeting. His wife told me later one day he basically selected her from a website. So like most questions, probably worth…

Also interesting insofar as what "met online" means. Dating apps are certainly the most common, but one of my partners and I met on a Discord server for a shared interest, which is certainly "online" but not necessarily in the same context as "dating apps"

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

#527

Post by paulryanrogers » Sat, Aug 03, 2024, 2:23 AM UTC

Dalewyn wrote: post #475

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.

>A lot more likely that financial and social pressures are squeezing what were previously considered cultural imperatives. We are living the most affluent lives ever known to mankind, even so-called low income people. We all have more money than we know what to do with, let alone more money than our forefathers. Rather, I think the drop in marriage (and by extension divorce) has to do with increasing individualism an…

> I frankly find marriage to be nothing short of a human rights violation anyway.

Just curious, but how could marriage be a rights violation?

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

#528

Post by Yhippa » Sat, Aug 03, 2024, 2:30 AM UTC

crooked-v wrote: post #431

vegadw wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What frustrates me is that, it seems (Read as: the following is just my vibe) that the majority of 3rd places left are religious in nature, but I, personally, don't want to be religious or raise children that are. There are some options, of course, but they're limited and often of poor quality, at least locally. Libraries are trying to adapt to fill this gap, and maker spaces spring up but most don't have funding to…

One of the major issues with libraries these days is that because a lot of cities want to pretend really hard that homelessness doesn't exist, libraries end up as the only social resource available to many homeless people, which leads to other people avoiding them.

In a few of the local libraries near me homeless people occupy the bank of public computers and are frequently watching hardcore pornography. I'm terrified of my young children seeing that.

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

#529

Post by joveian » Sat, Aug 03, 2024, 2:35 AM UTC

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.

Maybe similar to what is called cohousing in the US? See:

https://www.ic.org/directory/community-types/

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

#530

Post by tmnvix » Sat, Aug 03, 2024, 2:37 AM UTC

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…

This was essentially brought to us by neoliberalism. It's covered well in the documentary series 'The Century of The Self' (freely available on YouTube).

There are many different definitions of 'left' and 'right'. One perspective that can be useful is to think in terms of 'collective' and 'individualistic'. On this axis, neoliberalism is firmly to the right (not in the centre as is often portrayed). Communities are collective by definition and neoliberalism is inherently anti-community.

When I was younger I was always confused by the incessant political drive to 'privatise' everything despite the obvious bad outcomes. On the whole, the cost of services didn't go down, they didn't improve, and they didn't become more efficient. The opposite would happen, despite the promises to the contrary.

My eureka moment was when I realised that it really was simply about ideology. The essential aim was not to improve anything. It was to ensure all activity was turned into a 'market transaction' so as to provide those with capital more opportunities to invest. From that point of view, the push for privatisation makes perfect sense.

We have been fooled into selling our communities for profit (as if that's the only way to improve our lot).