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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

#541

Post by candiodari »

lovecg wrote: post #396
candiodari wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Societal acceptance of such dangerous activity has been dropping lately: https://reason.com/2023/01/30/dunkin-donuts-parents-arrested...

That’s got to be an outlier? Small remote town + over aggressive cops with nothing better to do. This same exact story comes up in these conversations repeatedly. One would think that if there was an epidemic of parents being arrested we would hear more about it. Around where I live (suburban though not as remote as the place in the article) I see groups of kids by themselves all the time. Older than age 9, but still…

There's a LOT of different organisations that all had to contribute to create a result this bad. Cops, yes, but that's just step 1. Social workers, of at least 2 different organisations. The justice system, including prosecutors and judges ... because if they wouldn't back the social workers there's nothing they could have done.

... which adds up to a lot of people that could have stopped this if they wanted to. NONE of them did.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#542

Post by jabroni_salad »

faeriechangling wrote: post #453
jabroni_salad wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a diagnosis also gives you a set of tools to actively deal with your issues. Personally I have trouble with avoidant personality disorder, and I really wish I had gotten diagnosed earlier. Maybe school and my early career would not have been such a dumpster fire if I understood how to properly deal with myself back then.

So I think there's lots of examples of diagnosis's helping individuals, my specific concern is why it is if all this diagnosis is apparently just helping everybody, why is the general population getting more mentally sick over time? I can think of only two reasons - 1: That the mental health system is actively harmful at the population level. or 2: That the mental health system is impotent to address mental health is…

Are there any positive connotations for the personality disorder umbrella? I really struggle to think of any. It's cool that the ASD camp has managed to become "differently neuro'd" or whatever but everybody I have talked to in the PD camp knows we are just subject to different flavors of unhelpful irrationality and not much else.

Except maybe shizoids who can count on being aloof to any bad interaction instead of being uncontrollably dragged around by them, but miss me with the anhedonia thing please.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#543

Post by Shocka1 »

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).…

Sorry you went through this as that sounds like some terrible teenage years. You should of been having the time of your life at that age. When I was 17 I was screwing around more than anything else and basically having a blast 24/7. Was a mediocre C student at best, but ended up jumping through the right hoops after HS and got all but 4 classes of a CS Master's at a well known Upstate NY university completely paid for. This is not meant to brag, but just wanted to bring up that even a total idiot kid like me did well.

I've seen it again and again. Parents and communities pushing on their kid's academics and sports lives to no ends. I was lucky to have well grounded parents that mostly just let me be a kid and figure things out for myself. Unfortunately I don't see this strategy getting bigger any time soon.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#544

Post by ceejayoz »

zabzonk wrote: post #223
purpleblue wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My son is 10 and is naturally accelerated across many subjects (12th grade proficiency in ELA, 9th grade proficiency in Math, talented in music, writing, etc). We have been actively indoctrinating our kids with the idea that college is not the be-all-end-all, that they should NOT apply for Ivy schools, 3rd tier schools are very good and if they want to go abroad or even eschew college altogether, we will support them…

you do know that "indoctrinating" is not a positive thing to do?

Sure it is. We get indoctrinated that murder & rape are bad, that eating vegetables is good, that you should brush your teeth, that the scientific method is a good approach for discovery, etc. Raising children is an exercise in indoctrinating them; no one (typically) objects.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#545

Post by gwbas1c »

derangedHorse wrote: post #535
gwbas1c wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know where you got those numbers. For the past 20ish years or so, the rallying cry in American politics is that everyone needs to go to college in order to have a job. It's only recent that the left is pushing for jobs that don't require college degrees.

It’s closer to 40% now but it’s still not close to a majority. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/educatio... I also haven’t heard of a change in the narrative where jobs that don’t require degrees are pushed by the left. If anything I see people calling for higher washes for low end jobs but that’s a separate issue entirely.

Biden was promoting them in his state of the Union on Tuesday

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#547

Post by mensetmanusman »

yafbum wrote: post #465
mensetmanusman wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Culture is imposed upon people by those with power. That’s why our culture is defined by hollywood at the moment.

? The most watched news media in America is Fox News. The leading party in Congress is the Republican party. In actual statistical terms and in actual political power terms, that's the definition of mainstream, but somehow those who have the power like to pretend Hollywood has it, so they can sell a narrative of victimhood even as their culture is , just as a matter of fact, the dominant one.

Less than 2% of Americans watch Fox News, everyone else absorbs cultures from entertainment.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#548

Post by lmm »

nradov wrote: post #477
lmm wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't median real wages in developed countries dropped since the 1970s or so (even more so if you include housing costs in your inflation number)? The world as a whole may be better off, but that's cold comfort when your future in your country looks worse than your parents'.

Median real total employee compensation in the US has increased significantly since with 1970s once you account for non-wage benefits like employer-funded health insurance premiums and retirement plans. (I am not familiar with the data for other developed countries.)

If the reason people are getting paid less is that health insurance has gotten more expensive then that's interesting and relevant as an explanation, but hardly refutes the idea that their lives are getting worse.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#549

Post by fsckboy »

ido wrote: post #522
fsckboy wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is very a common & a very hard to completely avoid bias your entire life. I had tenured (internationally renowned) math professors at university that would sometimes intuitively react like that to stuff in everyday life. Cut people some slack.

> Cut people some slack.

yes, I agree, that's what I was advocating: HNers with a personal anecdotal axe to grind frequently throw away the value of good posts because they have just have to grind their axe axe again.

Whether social media is harming children's development is an interesting and important question and of a scientific nature, so

people here should cut the researchers some slack and at least read the evidence at face value

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic began around 2012

#550

Post by CatWChainsaw »

1234letshaveatw wrote: post #121
ok_dad wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we want a healthier society, we need to take a step back and give teenagers a chance to actually live life. We (American here) need to take a step back and let everyone enjoy life. That means providing healthcare, food, and shelter to every single person so that they can live their life and work in a non-anxiety-inducing way. Every therapist I've talked to in the past few years has told me that they think the nu…

right, teen kids are so worried about healthcare costs! Gimmie a break, your comment has nothing to do with the article, it's low effort and a better fit for reddit

Teen kids are worried about inheriting a dying planet. But something something bootstraps, right?
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