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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

#61

Post by silverquiet »

llm_trw wrote: post #30
joe_the_user wrote: post #2

There are so many candidates for causes here. Thinking about and watching climate change can't be good for, say, a teenager imagining their future. Of course, that teenager is also watching the world not coming together to solve this problem so you could say the situation is connected to "loss of community" in a way.

Worrying about nuclear war was probably worse for mental health since you'd die quite quickly (if you were lucky), rather than some nebulous future were something's going to happen.

I'd rather be atomized by a nuke than die of heat-stroke in a wet bulb event after my air conditioning fails. I mean, I'd rather not die at all but given the options...

I don't know about the kids these days; I'm not one of them, but I'm personally rather terrified of the future that we are careening into in regards to climate change.

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

#62

Post by bustling-noose »

About 9 years ago I traveled to the US from India for education. Smartphones were still not very common in India cause data was not as cheap as it is today. When I was in the bus commuting everyone’s head was buried in their phones. I thought to myself this is such a sad thing. Look outside talk to each other but the every single person had an iPhone and was doing something on the phone.

Fast forward to 2024 and every person home here in India is constantly on their phones. In the gym, in the car, at work, everywhere. Naturally kids are also getting hooked on devices.

How can you talk to someone when they aren’t even looking at you or paying attention ? Communities and real physical social interaction keep people mentally healthy. All these apps and devices are doing is keeping people away from each other instead.

Of course no one wants to admit this but people are addicted to devices and distractions. The sooner they dissociate, the better.

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

#63

Post by gmoot »

fergonco wrote: post #57

Just a data point: In Valencia, Spain, in the 80s, children played in the street with no much supervision from parents. Occasionally we would stop the football match to let a car drive by. Forgetting your keys at home was no issue, you could get a glass of milk in ten different places while you wait for other (more attentive) members of your family. Nowadays there is hardly a place to park your car. Parents don't all…

We tried to counteract this with our own children by giving them a lot of freedom.

But these things are very network dependent. Yes we let our kids play in the street and bike around the neighborhood, but it is boring because there are not any other kids to play with, so they don't do it much.

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

#64

Post by warkdarrior »

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…

Frankly, same thing with a lot of OSS projects. Everything is a "community," joyously writing code together and following community guidelines while singing and dancing! It's grotesque.

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

#65

Post by TylerE »

ponector wrote: post #14
TylerE wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s so much more than that. It’s the continually enshittification of literally everything. It's a hypercapitalist hellscape.

That is not true. Many things are much better now than 20 years ago. Not mentioning even poor western people are living life in better conditions than the richest people lived 300+ years ago.

Things in isolation may be better, but the totality is far worse.

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

#66

Post by philip1209 »

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.

- America went from poor to rich, but still behaves like a developing economy. Public healthcare + public education + low-income housing availability are poor, while there's a big class of people who can afford private education + private healthcare + McMansions. I think this deteriorates the idea of "we're all in this together" because there's such unequal opportunity.

- Wars used to be a way to unify a country, but we're in the era of proxy wars - which don't have the same aligning effect.

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

#67

Post by chemeril »

frithsun wrote: post #44

We lack the moral courage to be honest about why real world community disintegrated and are therefore doomed to suffer these pedantic lectures that miss the point and point in random directions.

Notably absent from your comment is what you honestly think caused the disintegration of real-world community. I'd posit that it's an expected systemic outcome of unbounded and undirected capitalism.

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

#69

Post by aklein »

frithsun wrote: post #44

We lack the moral courage to be honest about why real world community disintegrated and are therefore doomed to suffer these pedantic lectures that miss the point and point in random directions.

You are implying the author(s) are disingenuous or are drawing the wrong conclusions. What makes you think this?
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