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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

#781

Post by [deleted] »

y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #274
diputsmonro wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respect that viewpoint and would be happy to adopt it in different times. But it's not as simple as political tribalism. For example - Several of my close friends are trans. For the last decade or so, Republicans have been viciously attacking trans people and several states are actively taking away their rights. The entire right wing media ecosystem uses every chance they can to demonize trans people in the new cul…

> How can I fault them for having a gut reaction to not engage with Republicans? And if someone is still happy to call themselves a Republican after all this hate, I think that reflects something about their character. Yes and sometimes it's worth peeling back the layers to find out why they are embodying that character. An offensive strategy creates a defensive response, nothing will ever get resolved that way; it o…

[deleted]

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

#782

Post by Der_Einzige »

SoftTalker wrote: post #401
extr wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even economically mediated third places are being phased out in some respects. When I was a teen we often hung out at a local McDonalds. Super cheap food, free refills, as long as you didn't cause trouble you could stay for awhile. I went back there somewhat recently and I was shocked at the difference. It's been remodeled to have less seating, no refills, most of the lobby/counter area is touchscreens, and of course…

Teens also used to work at McDonalds. Now it's middle aged people who look and act like life has been kicking them in the face since they were born. I also used to eat there quite often but I almost never go now because I don't like waiting 10 or 15 minutes for a sullen, indifferent person to hand me a bag of food that might or might not contain what I ordered and like you said the prices are crazy.

That’s a sign of a good economy. The “hot waiter/waitress” index is real as hell in economic circles for a reason.

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

#783

Post by goda90 »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #769
goda90 wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many people complain about a lack of community specifically because their own preferred idea of how it should be isn't what's popular. If someone has little positive face to face interaction with people outside their immediate family, I don't see how you could argue that's not a lack of community.

People can leave their home, people can travel. If digital media expose to the curious a given community of shared interests, you have more avenues than ever for discovering it, and making contact. I simply can't see how this is worse than not even being able to find such communities while stuck in your supposedly superior town/neighborhood community of the people who live around you.

Sure they CAN leave their homes, but they aren't. There is a lack of positive face to face interaction with people you can see often. We need more than text on an online forum. We need facial expressions, we need body language, we need smell and touch. We need people who can see that we're in a low spot because they see us all the time to know the difference. We need the chance to do the same for others as well. We need to interact with people who have different opinions and interests or are at different stages of life. We need to be told we're wrong and to see the impact on others when we screw up.

So much of that just doesn't happen online.

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

#784

Post by Der_Einzige »

pickledish wrote: post #148
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…

If anyone's interesting in reading more along these lines (the weird state we've gotten into where everything in our lives needs to be viewed through an economic lens for some reason, and the damage it causes) -- check out the book "Capitalist Realism" by the late Mark Fisher -- I really enjoyed it! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6763725-capitalist-reali...

Why should we recommend yet another example of a postmodernist critical theorist who went crazy and killed either themselves or others?

You didn’t learn after althussar, or deleuze, and now you make the same mistakes. Don’t be surprised if it comes out later that he was a child diddler, much as it has for the previously well respected Foucault.

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

#785

Post by dh2022 »

harimau777 wrote: post #710
parineum wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The countries you are likely thinking if who say they are those things are still capitalist countries with a touch more of social welfare than other similar countries. There are other countries who claim to be socialist but are just totalitarian dictatorships (not surprising, in order to control the economy, you have to control the people), are lying or both.

That's just semantics. Whether we want to call them left wing forms of capitalism or moderate forms of socialism isn't really important. What's important is that there ARE nations with successful economic systems that are better than what people call "late stage capitalism".

These successful economic systems are still based on private ownership rights and the right to assemble (in this context the right to form business partnerships with low exit costs). In other words: the core capitalist building blocks.

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

#786

Post by leobg »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #245

I think it's less the lack of community, and more the lack of the ability to feel like you matter. Before the world was globalized, anybody could do something that would stand out in their community. On a global scale, virtually no one is good or big enough for anyone to care about. It doesn't matter anymore if you're the best soprano in the choir or the best basketball player on your team. You need to be one of the…

That would mean the winners will be those who turn towards a local community. Which makes sense. I often wondered how lawyers who are terrible at their craft can stay in business. Thing is, they just don’t compete. They build relationships with local clients over decades. And those clients, once they know, like and trust these lawyers, don’t even see how bad they are. I guess the same applies to AI experts, etc..

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

#787

Post by naasking »

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…

> Whenever we interacted with them it would be a small chit-chat, exchange small updates (how's your son doing, is he married yet?) and then finally do the actual purchase. All of that is now gone. Every single interaction I have now with vendors is 100% transactional. I don't even know their names nor they mine.

Interesting note: economics would quantify this as a significant productivity increase. You can now get more tasks done per day!

Lesson: economics does not fully capture human values.

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

#788

Post by naasking »

sublinear wrote: post #755
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…

I don't mean to be so brutal about it, but these small social interactions were simply never valued that much by the majority and maybe even seen as a nuisance.

Until you need that person, then they're a life saver. People often can't see beyond their own nose.

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

#789

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

datameta wrote: post #137
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can't be treated like drug addiction, though. Most people I know have a _relatively_ healthy relationship with alcohol or cannabis. The addicts, especially of hard drugs, are the odd ones out. With phones, and before that music, and before that newspapers, it's a social norm. If you are trying to talk to people you feel like the weirdo. And I get it, cause I don't like making myself vulnerable. I wish I talked to…

I would argue it should be handled exactly like drug addiction ought to be. That is, as a widespread medical issue. But it is more complex than drug abuse due to interaction with people expressly being part of the equation. One's phone is ever available and there are very very few places indoors or outdoors that it isn't considered socially acceptable to use their smartphone for social media. The same is not true for…

That's fair, I guess we agree that an epidemic of addiction is treated different than a couple cases of one-off addicts

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

#790

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

robotelvis wrote: post #752
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s weird that groups like the Elks have declined so much in recent decades, because it feels they really are the solution to a problem everyone complains about. Social orgs can supplement a healthy community. They can't replace one, however. A healthy community is one where it is trivial for kids to go on their own to a safe space. A place where they can Kid together, free from interfering adults.

To some extent the Elks is a healthy community. Our lodge is definitely a place where kids can hang out together free from interfering adults - that’s what our kids do there with their friends all the time. We show up, they run off and do their thing with the other kids. We find them when it’s time to go home. It’s a place with a fence so they can’t wander of, where you know everyone is safe to be around, and where y…

> To some extent the Elks is a healthy community. Our lodge is definitely a place where kids can hang out together free from interfering adults

I do get that. Between scouting and youth leadership I have been part of organizing and running similar environments many times over.

But they are not communities. They are adult-generated, curated experiences. They are facsimiles, built out of patchy facades.

One facade: Moving the adults to an adjacent space and pretending that is adult-free time (I've done it).

As far as we think these simulations meet kids basic needs, we're fooling ourselves. Placing kids in adult constructs denies kids their autonomy. Every time. Mostly by design.

Worthwhile autonomy includes kids being able to come and go fully on their own. Trivially.

It's through autonomy (and genuine independence) that kids' critical growth happens. Organic kid-spaces are fertile soil where ambition grows.

They are the safe spaces (safe from adults) to make the kind of mistakes that teach strong interpersonal relationship and vital problem solving skills.

It's what every generation of kids had throughout human history, until we adults eradicated it - seemingly everywhere we could.

We adults put cars everywhere. We blast out false stranger danger messaging. We made criminal trespassing the default and maximized development. And we made lots of other kid-hostile changes to society that I'm certainly missing here.

sidebar: Compounding this is that parents are stupidly expected to fill all those new gaps in kids needs. Parents are now required to have the wisdom of all those nearby adults that disappeared with communities. And parents now have to spend 10x the time parenting, compared to their recent ancestors.

Together, this is all an unimaginably enormous loss for kids. These simulations you and I put on aren't really capable of mitigating it.

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