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

#771

Post by leobg » Sun, Aug 04, 2024, 1:14 PM UTC

globular-toast wrote: post #596

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…

I think you're on to something. Everyone always talks about social media but I honestly think cars are the most harmful technology of our time. Not least because it's not even recognised by the vast majority of people yet. Social media is at least given lip service. Everyone working all the time sucks for many reasons. It's a trap that people have fallen for and the only ones laughing are the billionaire oligarchs. W…

I think that was beautifully phrased. Needless to say, I agree.

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

#772

Post by CapstanRoller » Sun, Aug 04, 2024, 1:23 PM UTC

jimmy1337 wrote: post #72

piva00 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while occasionally arguing with pseudo-anonymous internet strangers. Even this has been eroding, the amount of comments made by bots I see across reddit/Twitter has increased exponentially since the 2010s. It only got worse after LLMs.

I made an ‘Ask HN’ yesterday about the dire state of bots on the web and the lack of conversation around it. After a few mins, with 4 upvotes and one user reply it was [flagged] and I couldn’t even reply to the person. So I am left with the impression we aren’t allowed to discuss bots on the web on this platform. Edit: This comment not appearing for others?

You're probably not allowed to discuss it here because the people who own this website are currently making a lot of money from content stolen by bots, to be ingested by other bots.

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

#773

Post by anon291 » Sun, Aug 04, 2024, 1:35 PM UTC

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #657

anon291 wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sexual revolution is intrinsically linked to the lack of community. The sexual revolution is not actually about free sex. People have been having weird sex for centuries; with or without their partners knowing. What is novel about the sexual revolution is that it dismissed any needs for norms. Over the past two decades we've seen non-religious attempts to reinstate those norms (consent, kink, safe words, etc). Ho…

The Catholic sex abuse scandal was never about the actual abuse, which is presumed constant between religions. It was always about the coverup. Only the Catholic Church has the preexisting organization to pull off such a scandal; the others simply had controversial youth pastors who stopped showing up one day.

I'm not talking about youth pastors. I'm talking about foster care (Germany) and public schooling in the US [1] [2] [3] and lots of other places.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/oversight-failures-allow-sexual...

[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/has-media-ignored-sex-abuse-in-...

[3] https://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/misconductreview/...

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

#774

Post by qazxcvbnmlp » Sun, Aug 04, 2024, 3:08 PM UTC

bravetraveler wrote: post #753

seesaw wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is very similar. I believe there are two primary reasons for this: 1. People are wealthier, and wealthier people tend to be more independent. 2. Population density is higher. Places with lower density, such as villages still tend to have that people to people connection like in the old days

I grew up poor, in a village, but otherwise have had a fairly rich life. I've landed on the other side: well off and in the city. Still alone, however. The hassle of finding my way in life and finally doing it made me "overly independent" given common sentiment. I'm generally fine, yet outside of posts like this... I have absolutely no interest to connect. When people at work try to get close I actually feel saddened…

“why is it worthwhile” - generally human connection is a psychological need, if we are not conscious of it, the need will get filled with weird behaviors we don’t understand.

It sounds like you have been hurt by connection; I would encourage you to put some effort into understanding where your past experiences lead to you being exploited. If you can consciously learn how to identify safe people (they do exist) it will help with connection immensely.

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

#775

Post by Der_Einzige » Sun, Aug 04, 2024, 3:10 PM UTC

harimau777 wrote: post #659

7thaccount wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not wrong. Late stage capitalism sucks, but the alternative systems out there seem to lead to mass starvation or total collapse. People have been lifted out of poverty worldwide as well. Some kind of balance seems necessary.

The welfare states of Western Europe and the Nordic countries seem much better than America's system of late stage capitalism and they have not lead to mass starvation or total collapse. Likewise, America's economy seemed to be much more healthy when it had a more active/successful labor movement.

Those welfare states only exist as such because the US subsidizes their drug discovery, R&D, defense, spooks, and related.

Without the US taking one for the team, Europe could not maintain its social democracies or its welfare states.

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

#776

Post by intended » Sun, Aug 04, 2024, 3:15 PM UTC

phil21 wrote: post #180

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…

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…

There isnt a rush to abolish religious practices.

There is a rush from many to just leave it.

I read the article, it has one major fatal flaw - people don't WANT those old communities, especially religious communities he describes.

People are seeking community, and finding it, elsewhere.

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

#777

Post by Der_Einzige » Sun, Aug 04, 2024, 3:21 PM UTC

anovikov wrote: post #618

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In many countries where dating balance (i am not saying gender balance... because it's not really about numbers of guys and girls but about difference in their interest in dating), is not as skewed as in the West, this is still the case. You can actually write anyone, even on a free version of a dating app or website. Girls' feeds get a bit spammy, but not terribly so, it can still work. I know it sounds crazy but th…

Most westerners don’t understand that the modern “phenomenon” of incels is mostly due to shitty 80s movies that connected cerebral people to nerdy stereotypes.

Rewatch wargames and note how insane the kids skills are, and how this acts as something which makes the MC more interesting to the fairer sex. Compare this to today, where busting a command line out in public is more likely to get you arrested by some idiot dogooder thinking you’re hacking the airplane instead of acting as some kind of evidence that you’re intelligent and thus possibly good partner.

Meanwhile go to the third world where life is hard and stereotypical “jocks” or “bullies” are the poor, downtrodden of society. Often these societies love nerds and cerebral people, and physical prowess isn’t valued as much here.

John Hughes is the father of the modern western incel and all related phenomenons.

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

#778

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Aug 04, 2024, 3:22 PM UTC

trealira wrote: post #509

silverquiet wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect empathy is mostly nature with some influence via nurture. Once you encounter a few genuine psychopaths who aren’t particularly good at hiding it, it sure seems like it’s just something innate to them. Certainly you can instill reverence in people - give people a challenge that involves using a cross as a hammer to complete and they’ll recoil instinctively, but I think that’s just software tapping into somet…

This is just my conjecture, but I think that it's that psychopaths lack the capacity for empathy, and empathy is otherwise like a muscle in that it can be trained. I suspect this because I've grown more empathetic compared to when I was a kid, and some other people I've talked to said it was like that for them (not very scientific, I know). I remember being somewhat selfish and amoral. I think it's a combination of t…

[deleted]

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

#779

Post by somenameforme » Sun, Aug 04, 2024, 3:22 PM UTC

alwa wrote: post #718

somenameforme wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mildly interesting to consider that one of the main arguments against an economically deflationary society is that people would have a motivation to hoard money which might deter things like investment or lending, yet in an inflationary society few seem concerned about the fact that we create a system that motivates trying to hoard 'things', including land. It also motivates trying to rent things to people inste…

I take your point that I’ve never really been asked to think about inflationary economies encouraging hoarding things, especially things whose scarcity stems from natural limits rather than economic will. But at the risk of showing my naiveté—wouldn’t it be OK for me to exchange money for enough stuff for me to be content, as soon in my economic life as I can, and hold onto it? For that matter, isn’t it to my advanta…

In the past decades there were still plenty of businesses renting things if you so desired. And, even better - they were often pretty small scale enterprises, because we hadn't yet entered the realm of corporations buying up basically everything in existence, including other businesses. Actually you made me look this up and it's kind of a neat factoid. Hertz's rent a car service started in 1918, with a dozen Model Ts! [1]

So the basic functioning of the economy would probably be unlikely to change in a really fundamental way. But I think what would change is that overall society would have a much healthier distribution of wealth/'things', with the cost being that the overall GDP and economic growth would probably be significantly slower.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertz_Global_Holdings#The_comp...

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

#780

Post by Der_Einzige » Sun, Aug 04, 2024, 3:25 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #616

mlloyd wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pa…

Also, being in a relationship with a bad partner is worse than being in a relationship with no partner, especially for women who are in more physical danger. Therefore, with increased ability to live independently, expect more risk adverse behavior, which means a larger percentage of the “bottom” of the dating market goes uncoupled forever.

Women claim this but the success of dark triad traits and the “I can fix them” meme imply that most people actually do want to be in a “bad relationship”.

I’ve heard women unironically say “I want him to fuck my life up”. Risk aversion is only a trait in the poor or those with significant trauma, which the dating market reminds us, are dysgenic traits…