The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/international-mental-illness-part-one

by paulpauper • 3 years ago

271 420 3 years ago

jonathanhaidt.substack.com

Flatcircle• 3 years ago

Saw a post on Paul Graham's twitter about this, turns out white, liberal female teens were the most depressed, for whatever reason, that's a strange specific group to be extremely depressed imho.

Juliate3• 3 years ago

Why strange?

ericmay2• 3 years ago

Do you think it's normal or expected? If so, why?

tekla• 3 years ago

This sounds EXACTLY the group to have an outsized representation.

tstrimple2• 3 years ago

These statistics are almost useless for determining rates of mental health issues. They measure mental health as reported by mental health professionals. Of course groups which are antagonistic or dismissive of mental health will be underrepresented. Folks who receive counseling for mental health issues at their Church will also not be represented in these numbers. That doesn't mean these other groups don't have mental health issues. It means they don't seek help for it or get help via resources that don't report these stats. All this tells me is that young liberal women are the most likely to seek help for themselves from professionals.

daltont• 3 years ago

The subpopulation that uses alcohol to deal with life stress likely skews male and more conservative.

I recently had a conversation with late '20s guy from a small town in Illinois who said guys in his town at any point in time were either working, hunting or drunk. He felt the need to get out of there.

waboremo• 3 years ago

Fantastic point, and I believe the only comment in this entire thread to accurately assess the discrepancy between the groups mental health professionals have a disproportionate access to.

I would be more interested in seeing the rates of mental health professional access regarding these girls, what's the rate both parents are also talking to their own mental health professionals, their male siblings too, how often do they talk to them, etc. If I were to guess, it would still disproportionately skew towards these girls primarily because of how mental health professionals are viewed as "problem fixers". You go to them, they fix your problem so people assume. I can see many parents encouraging their daughters to speak to one ("fix her depression"), but never seeking help themselves while simultaneously being ignorant to problems their stoic male offspring are dealing with.

IKLOL• 3 years ago

Huge overlap of social media use in that demographic I'm sure

ChickenNugger2• 3 years ago

White liberals are the only demographic with an out-group bias, and women rate higher in negative emotion, so this makes perfect sense to me.

out-group bias: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1074524252638982144.html

mxkopy3• 3 years ago

Those are the demographic criteria that I'd expect to maximize time spent on social media. White + liberal => probably middle class & have some time for leisure; girls => see the number of likes as a measure of their worth, i.e. "girls are pretty" ideology

sdwr• 3 years ago

Gotta look at which way the cookie crumbles or the beam shears - how stress is distributed in a system.

If you take for granted that there is a large amount of emotional strain floating around, where are the outlets?

Men bottle it up and retake control (school shootings, as an extreme).

People with precarious lives can express the stress as worry and fear (mostly women).

Depression is a luxury version of stress - not happy, but also physically safe and not worried for your well-being. "White liberal female teens" = privilege.

incone1232• 3 years ago

Depression is a spectrum of presentations, and severe cases render you entirely unable to work. In turn that means your physical well being is at risk if you depend on salary to keep yourself housed and fed.

Arrath• 3 years ago

Depression is a luxury version of stress - not happy, but also physically safe and not worried for your well-being.

That certainly is A Take on Depression.

notch898a3• 3 years ago

Suicide also appears to be a"luxury":

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/images/databriefs/401-450/db450-fig...

I'd be interested in the explanation behind the aforementioned.

shapefrog• 3 years ago

Give me an angenda you want to promote and a segment of the population you want to propagandize to and I can intersect the population by age/race/wealth in such a way that the statistics work and it helps you signal all the virtues at once.

dragonwriter9• 3 years ago

Saw a post on Paul Graham’s twitter about this, turns out white, liberal female teens were the most depressed, for whatever reason, that’s a strange specific group to be extremely depressed imho.

That’s…honestly, exactly the combination of race and gender I would expect to be most depressed right now, even thinking only about expectations people have been raised with about the direction of progress for their own conditions and how the reality currently manifesting clashes with it, and that’s without considering how concerns for conditions other than their own might play into it.

YellOh9• 3 years ago

Can you expand on your thoughts here? This is not a group whose lives I generally expect to be getting worse (in day-to-day life, barring social media effects).

alexfromapex• 3 years ago

I would love to explore Reddit's influence on this phenomenon. The timelines seem to sync somewhat and it seems like a perfect vehicle for adversarial nation states to use to influence public opinion.

tenpies• 3 years ago

Also falls perfectly within what Yuri Bezmenov (the KGB defector who explained the Soviet's plan to take down the West through ideological subversion) laid out.

At around that time, you would have the first batch of fully indoctrinated (trained by Socialists from childhood to adulthood, with no oversight or counterbalance) graduating.

That is also the group that sets the stage for the demoralisation phase of the plan and allows for the next phase: destabilisation.

Good summary here: https://www.oaoa.com/opinion/columnists/hart-kgb-defector-re...

And the original interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX3EZCVj2XA

I don't think this is purely a Soviet ploy working out, but you can't help but look at the Western education system and realise that's a big part of the problem.

Mordisquitos5• 3 years ago

I highly doubt that Reddit per se has any significant effect whatsoever—which is not to say that it can't be an instance of the overarching platforms that cause the phenomenon.

The reason I'm disregarding Reddit as a significant cause is threefold:

a) Reddit is overwhelmingly male, and the most affected group are teenage girls

b) Reddit is not that big of a platform in the teenage demographic

c) Even if it were, its popularity is not in any way homogeneous across countries. If Reddit itself had an effect, the USA would be much more affected by the phenomenon than the UK, for instance.

naasking8• 3 years ago

I can't imagine Reddit userbase having enough teen girls in 2012 to cause this, especially as compared to Instagram.

bluescrn2• 3 years ago

Wasn't Tumblr confusing teenage brains well before Reddit really took off?

But yeah, social media sites should be treated as the powerful propaganda weapons that they have become, not just a casual way to pass the time.

rayiner• 3 years ago

That’s not surprising at all. Each of those groups (white, liberal, female) is individually correlated with being more depressed. It’s not surprising at the intersection of those groups is the least depressed: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/03/how-to-understand...

steele• 3 years ago

Ah yes, his very area of expertise and authority. Did commentary include "interesting" and/or "looking into it"?

nradov2• 3 years ago

We discussed that issue here a few weeks ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35005368

chasd003• 3 years ago

therapy got really trendy with that group and a therapist labeling you depressed ensures more visits.

auganov• 3 years ago

Mainstream psychology is basically a more popular version of scientology with "therapy" instead of "auditing". Can you guess what my politics are more likely to be based off that sentiment? If so, then that tells you all you need to know.

TomK32• 3 years ago

Comparing a science with a cult is quite a far fetch. Pyschology comes without the secrecy, the Xenu bullshit, Führerkult, body thetons, exploiting clients for all their money and quite often the disconnect from members who leave, even close family members.

horns4lyfe4• 3 years ago

Because being a teenage girl was already hard, and now to be a good liberal teenage white girl you are supposed be some kind of self-loathing culture warrior as well. As opposed to, you know, enjoying life and being kind to the people you interact with.

kelseyfrog3• 3 years ago

It's funny. Somehow I don't think the standard of evidence[RCTs] we get calls for in nutrition studies(for example), will be applied equally here. It's an epistemological double-standard that's rarely given serious consideration.

I wouldn't give correlative studies much thought. It could be just as likely that people who were more anxious or depressed were found to be mobile phone users or any number of other things causing both anxiety and depression and increased mobile phone use. Critique of causal errors should be no different here than any other conclusion made from correlations.

11101010001100• 3 years ago

How do you propose to use RCTs to test the claim?

As an aside, do you think that the data, not the hypothesis, is accurate (i.e., that mental health has declined in teens)?

kelseyfrog3• 3 years ago

How do you propose to use RCTs to test the claim?

I'm not proposing to use RCTs to test the claim. I'm proposing that the conclusions be scrutinized to the same degree we scruitinize other claims made without RCTs. Nutrition studies are a great example that get routinely criticized here because they also rarely backed by RCTs. I'm proposing the same standard of critique.

As an aside, do you think that the data, not the hypothesis, is accurate (i.e., that mental health has declined in teens)?

I haven't seen the data nor the data collection methodology. Even so, there are basic concerns that relate to health and specifically mental health that we can ask.

Did reporting standards remain consistent throughout the study period? If we assume they did, this assumption becomes "baked" into the conclusions. Assumptions don't merely vanish once we reach a conclusion.

Secondly, mental health(/illness) is both an umbrella term and one subject to operationalization errors more than say(extending the analogy) weight is. We would be suspicious if a nutritional study measuring health outcomes relied on self-reported bodyweight. We should be equally suspicious when mental health studies rely on self-reporting. I'm not arguing here that we should instead fMRI subjects, just that having an appropriate level of self-reporting suspicion is healthy, rational, skepticism.

Finally, unlike weight, measuring mental health has unique and different operationalization characteristics. The connection between weight and physical health, as far as we can both agree, has a different associative-conceptual connection than self-harm admittance and mental health. We should reasonably rule out basic alternative hypotheses. Were there factors (economic, social, institutional) that could explain(even partially) the change in admittance rates? Did admittance standards change during the timeframe? Even a beneficial change, like awareness-raising campaigns could result in increased admittence. See Logic's song “1-800-273-8255”[1] as a good reason hotline calls increased after it's release that is arguably a good thing rather than indicative of a negative effect.

At the end of the day, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit left to explore. Coupled with the previously mentioned skepticism, I wouldn't exactly put my faith in this. Let's be mature and say that's different from saying it's wrong. We're all invested in finding out the exact nature of this phenomenon.

1. https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/mental-healt...

ouid4• 3 years ago

Psychology is fundamentally not science. I don't mean to devalue it as a discipline, but it is incorrect to call it science for a pretty simple epistemological reason.

Science depends upon the reproducibility of experiments. This means if I perform an experiment twice, then the second experiment (up to relativity) is done in the context of the experiment having already been done once, so the outcome of these experiments can be thought of as a fixed point of performing applying the have-done-the-experiment context (often with respect to all other experiments). Science is made up of these fixed points, which we can think of as the "set" of properties of the capital-W World.

Fundamentally, however, what it means to observe the outcome of an experiment, is to be able to condition your behavior upon that outcome, so if your own behavior is the thing that you are observing, there aren't necessarily any fixed points of this process.

This isn't merely a technicality either. For example: I measure that people experiencing insecurity about their performance are mostly pessimistic, and dub this phenomenon "impostor syndrome". I publish my results and, as a result, people assume that the insecurity they feel about their performance is explained by impostor syndrome, rather than being an honest evaluation of their performance. The next time I try to measure this phenomenon in the population, I might indeed find that it's the other way around, that people are optimistic about their performance, as a result of the previous experiment.

kelseyfrog3• 3 years ago

I'm straying a bit off topic, but while agree on some of the premises, I reach a different conclusion.

I agree with you, and probably more broadly that studying systems which aren't fully isolatable is particularly challenging, but I think there is more than a single simple explanation for this. One we need to get out of the way is that there are things under the psychology umbrella that are science and ones that aren't and what is and isn't science isn't simply topic-based, it's approach-based.

For example, reaction-time is a psychological measurement. Is reaction time scientific? I think that's an ill-posed question. It's, like you mentioned, an epistomological question: specifically an ontological question[1]. In the sense that reaction-time is measurable and largely repeatable with respect to specific stimulus, yes, measuring it and analyzing the results can be a step in the scientific path toward knowledge. I'd find it surprising if most people disagreed with this.

Let's take a more difficult example, is behavioral psychology science? Again, an ill-posed question. Can we ask scientific question of behavioral psychology? Sure; Does the intervention of CBT in anxiety-diagnosed subjects (as opposed to a non-intervention control) result in lower post-treatment hospital admittance? That's a valid scientific question. Does it say anything about how CBT works? No. It relates a treatment to a result, and if we want to be more specific, a treatment at a point in time, for a specific group.

Anticipating the test-retest issue you mentioned above, it's being loose with assumptions and isolation. These things can either be controlled for, or assumed. We should be honest with ourselves that far too many times, they haven't been in practice, but let's not conclude from that that psychology has an essential characteristic of not being scientific. It has a social problem instead.

I think we can all be more transparent about assumptions, conditions, and generalization, but I think that's a benefit, not a disadvantage. It enables us to be more precise in our ideas, concepts, and language and that's a good thing.

Specifically regarding the fixed-point framing. It's an assumption of time-invariance. I'm not exactly an expert on the philosophy of science, but I'd be surprised not to find stronger and weaker versions of that assumption and that's a reasonable thing to be transparent about when communicating validity.

1. As an aside, it's funny that "Is reaction time scientific?" is itself not a scientific question.

fdgsdfogijq• 3 years ago

My bet is that there is a bidirectional relationship between medication and mental health. Meaning, teenagers are over medicated which is messing with their heads. Some of them need the medicine, others are unknowingly suffering under some amphetamine, antidepressant, anti-anxiety etc.

Would love to see mental health numbers of teenagers that:

1. Havent been medicated

    - I understand this biases the sample

2. Exercise

taylodl9• 3 years ago

Having been through several months of weekly group therapy sessions with my daughter and having seen dozens of kids suffering from anxiety and depression, I can tell you you're wrong on both counts:

1. They're not medicated. Boys are most likely to be medicated, but out of all these dozens of kids there was only one boy. Boys are so rare that one girl thought it was a girls-only therapy group and wondered where do guys go to get help?

2. Most of them were highly physically active - more so than most of the people I knew when I was growing up.

yung_steezy• 3 years ago

I graduated high school around 2010, before all of these dramatic declines in mental health seem to take place, and even back then I remember there being a lot of unhappy people in my peer group. Maybe a certain % of miserable teenagers is guaranteed due to the nature of puberty (and humans).

I hope we find a way to mitigate or reverse the trend these studies are highlighting. Schooling is essential and we can't allow it to become unbearable.

nvarsj2• 3 years ago

My experience is the same, back in the 1990s.

There was a ton of depression and even suicides when I was growing up. I felt like 50% of teens at my large HS were suffering from some kind of mental issue. And then you had major events like Columbine. The US school system has always managed to produce a lot of very miserable people, and no one seemed to care or do anything about it.

And now we have these studies all blaming social media, like there is some kind of epidemic that never existed before. But I am deeply cynical. I think these issues already existed, it's just there is a convenient scapegoat now.

stri8ed2• 3 years ago

In the article, the author makes a point to include objective metrics like rate of hospitalizations, and the data is quite conclusive in showing an actual increase. So these issues definitely did not exist before, at the same scale.

syzarian• 3 years ago

According to the article linked below teen suicide rates declined from 2000 to 2007 and then increased 56% in the following decade. It seems to me the teen suicide rate would serve as a useful heuristic argument in favor of thinking something is amiss. If there is greater mental health awareness today and greater acceptance of getting treatment then this rise is particularly alarming.

I think it is undeniable that that social media is bad for the psyche. I can’t say it is to blame for the current situation but I do believe if it went away we’d all be better off.

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/teen-suicide-rate-spi...

izzydata2• 3 years ago

But is schooling from 7am-4pm sitting a classroom trying to memorize information essential? There are probably much more enjoyable and engaging ways to teach children what they need to know to live in a society.

beezlebroxxxxxx• 3 years ago

I don't think it really should come down to a binary relationship between mental illness and "enjoyable and engaging", though. I do get your point. But, also, it's school. I don't remember always enjoying it or finding it engaging, but that didn't mean I was slipping into mental illness because a class was boring or didn't seem relevant when I was a teenager.

To your point, the model of school hasn't really changed in a long time; but, then again, we do see rates of mental illness changing. So, I don't really know if you can put the blame on the model of schooling in that instance.

As a side note, one thing that has changed in schools is the drop in physical fun, either in the expectations of gym classes, or during recess, or in school sports. It's either study like crazy, or focus on an extracurricular (possibly a sport) as if it's a second job to get into a good college; a lot of kids just aren't having good old physical fun as much as they used to, at least from my observation.

oh_my_goodness• 3 years ago

My experience was the same in the early 1980s. There was a string of suicides at my high school.

zwieback• 3 years ago

Next step would be to de-correlate smartphone usage, the prime suspect right now, from other trends happening at the same time. I have two daughters in that age range and I don't get the impression that social media is a big stressor for them in particular but I can easily believe that it is one of the primary stress factors for many young women.

ipaddr3• 3 years ago

Easy to test, take away their phone and see if stress levels raise

graypegg• 3 years ago

I think it’s probably better to just ask them what they think.

If you take away a teenager’s phone in 2023 you’re casting them away to a proverbial deserted island. Also not exactly great for mental health.

zug_zug3• 3 years ago

These always come up and there's always this internet-commenter tendency to be like "I KNEW IT: SMARTPHONES/INTERNET/LACK-OF-RELIGION/ABCDEFG ANYTHING OF THE LAST 20 YEARS I HATE", which is fine for a hypothesis and worth somebody saying once.

But it's really just a hypothesis.

Another hypothesis is that it's environmental. There's a lot of research showing depression and stress are correlated with inflammation. There are a number of other health biomarkers that are going bad fast (sperm-count, testosterone) and it's known testosterone levels inversely correlate with depression for example. Pollution is also correlated with health and mood.

So rather than declaring it over before the research even begins, let's at least consider environment.

gjsman-10003• 3 years ago

There are a number of other health biomarkers that are going bad fast (sperm-count, testosterone)

Which one caused which? Does hanging out on Reddit 8 hours a day not have an effect on sperm-count; or is the decline in sperm-count part of the reason you are on Reddit?

travisjungroth4• 3 years ago

Or there are confounders, like environmental effects are wrecking hormones. That would cause both of those things.

dsfyu404ed• 3 years ago

The phrase "positive feedback loop" seems relevant.

version_five2• 3 years ago

Another hypothesis is electromagnetic fields. There are more now than ever. Cell phones, 5G, Wifi

Sounds stupid right? There's a plausibility scale, and despite various hypotheses being possible, it's reasonable to rank them by what fits best with out prior knowledge, and social media is way more plausible than some post 2010 rise in inflammation, even if that could causally lead to depression in the first place.

zug_zug3• 3 years ago

post 2010 rise in inflammation

You're assuming that depression and other mental illnesses only started in 2010, which is theoretically possible, but not an established fact.

We've actually seen a drastic rise in most mental illnesses diagnosed going back at least 50 years. There is a hypothesis that it's diagnosis, but again, merely a hypothesis.

Some of the cases which clearly aren't "diagnosis" (e.g. nearsightedness) we have no explanation for.

giantg28• 3 years ago

It's also possible that there are multiple confounding factors at play. It's reasonable to investigate multiple angles as well as how they interact with each other.

twic• 3 years ago

sperm-count

Or maybe not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34830936

darth_avocado• 3 years ago

Another hypothesis is: *waves at general state of things since the mid 2000s*

johnfn• 3 years ago

You'd have to show that the "general state of things since the mid 2000s" has gotten appreciably worse than the time period prior to 2012. Rewind a decade and we had 9/11 and the Iraq war, so it doesn't seem immediately obvious that things got significantly worse.

bittercynic• 3 years ago

I suppose there are different pollutants all the time, but the areas I'm familiar with (SF Bay and LA) have gotten much less polluted in the last few decades, at least by how they look and smell. I suspect our air and water is safer now than 20 years ago, and much safer than 40 years ago.

Solitary entertainment has grown drastically more engaging in the last few decades, and it seems reasonable to think that it has contributed to increased isolation and sedentary behavior.

Even though it's not absolutely certainly the cause of all ills in the world, I think it's worthwhile to be cautious about digital entertainment.

luckylion8• 3 years ago

Humans might be fine with some form of pollution but not others, so "there's less trash and the factory isn't dumping glowing sludge into the bay" doesn't really rule out that there's some pollution that's less visible but problematic for a subset of people (or problematic when combined with other factors, e.g. veganism or listening to mumble rap).

zug_zug3• 3 years ago

I suppose there are different pollutants all the time, but the areas I'm familiar with (SF Bay and LA) have gotten much less polluted in the last few decades, at least by how they look and smell

I want to point out that pollution can be invisible. As a thought experiment - the amount of lead in your water it would take to permanently damage your brain would be invisible, untasteable, and miniscule. It's worth remembering how fragile we really are.

Is it water? Most water supplies only test for about 8-10 chemicals. Who knows? Is it the microplastics we eat?

As for why it would be worse now when our environment is getting better -- perhaps the damage is accumulating each generation (like sperm counts are going down each generation). There are a lot of cases where pregnant mother being exposed to something can have severe effects on the child, and sometimes even the grandchild (look up diethystylbestrol).

Anyways, this is just a hypothesis, but it seems to me it should be given as strong a starting consideration as anything else. I'm sure it's not too hard to take blood samples from a few thousand people to look for health correlations to these mood issues.

giantg28• 3 years ago

The first thing I thought of when they said pollution in this context was plastics. That's something that people have an increasing exposure to that also has a history of chemicals that are hormone disruptors. I don't think it covers the entire increase. But it could be one of many factors on the longer scale (not just the shorter term increase).

Aunche5• 3 years ago

Nothing dramatic has changed in terms of pollution in 2010 though, especially in developed western nations. If anything, it's been getting better as we've been transitioning to cleaner burning natural gas and renewables.

carimura4• 3 years ago

It's very likely both with the rise of processed food, hormone disruptors, and the "app explosion" where negativity gets engagement/clicks.

naasking8• 3 years ago

Another hypothesis is that it's environmental

Social media and phones are environmental factors. Increasing obesity is definitely a factor. Whether sperm and testosterone are decreasing is still speculative because the old data being used for comparisons is pretty poor. I think air pollution has actually gotten better since the 80s last I checked. Maybe increases in 'forever chemicals' are having some effect.

tick_tock_tick3• 3 years ago

I mean "RELIGION" in and of how it normally goes hand in hand with stronger and closer communities it disappearing is probably a large factor in the current issues. I'm not religious but even I can recognize that for the vast majority of the population this support structure going away with nothing to replace it hasn't been great for a lot of people.

BryantD4• 3 years ago

That’s interesting data. I wonder: is there any possibility that part of the change is because we’re telling kids that it’s okay to admit to depression? I.e., are we just reporting more accurately now?

unyttigfjelltol• 3 years ago

It is kind of depressing to realize we all inevitably will die, our world will turn to dust, the sun will expire and everything will freeze into a profound and eternal coldness. So, maybe it's Wikipedia's fault?[1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_univers...

stri8ed2• 3 years ago

The authors address that by looking at hospitalizations for self harm.

BryantD4• 3 years ago

That’s a powerful part of the narrative for sure. But … ugh, I need to be less lazy and dig into the supporting material, actually, some of my questions may be answered there.

The big one is “does that mean there’s more self-harm, or does that mean parents are more willing to ask for emergency help?”

edmundsauto• 3 years ago

There is also a feedback cycle - people open up about it more, reach a larger audience who sees this modeled/discussed, making it more likely for them to A) be aware in their own life and B) mirror and amplify.

Bad metaphor - if we think of ideas spreading between people like neurons, we have increased the interconnectedness (social reach) and decreased the activation energy (removed stigma/provided language/triggered introspection).

BryantD4• 3 years ago

Yeah, this doesn’t seem totally implausible, although postulating it doesn’t mean it’s happening. More generally, there’s no doubt that we’ve vastly increased communication bandwidth and that could easily have effects. For a few years now I’ve been thinking about gatekeepers in old media as damping rods that prevented new ideas from spreading quickly. There are both positive and negative ramifications to removing those damping rods.

at-w• 3 years ago

That also raises the question of whether increased focus on these issues can negatively affect at least a subset of people.

We know that severe mental (and even physical) symptoms can "spread" in social groups (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness), particularly among young women who are now experiencing the sharpest rises in mental illness. There is also strong evidence that affective states (e.g. happiness or depression) spread socially, with even next-door neighbors of depressed people being significantly more likely to be depressed than those on the same block but not next-door (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3830455/).

While the TikTok Tourette's phenomenon is clearly an extreme example, it seems possible that something similar could be happening to kids constantly hearing about anxiety and depressive disorders as an immutable trait that everyone around them seems to have.

alecnotthompson• 3 years ago

The answer is obvious: life without agency thanks to capitalism with the increased ability to watch the planet deteriorate in front of our eyes.

threads2• 3 years ago

Maybe it's economics.

mseepgood2• 3 years ago

Why hasn't anyone asked those affected what they are anxious and depressed about?

Workaccount2• 3 years ago

They probably have no idea, or will give generic responses because that's the best they can figure.

CatWChainsaw2• 3 years ago

Because kids don't know anything, least of all about themselves, of course. /s

cat_plus_plus• 3 years ago

Well, it also has been a tough decade - global financial crisis, wars and flood of refugees, political turmoil partially as a result of these, worries about climate change. Social media certainly amplifies these news and makes it hard to ever unplug, but we could also use better news. As for progressive teens, well their ideology is getting some serious pushback worldwide, so that's one reason to get depressed. Another is that their ideology is degenerating into self hatred and catastrophizing. To be fair Florida is going in much the same direction about different things these days, so I expect conservative teens to get depressed as well.

ipnon2• 3 years ago

Before there were good times and bad times. The 40s saw the worst destruction imaginable, practically apocalyptic, while the 50s were all sunshine and automobiles (depending on who you ask of course). Now we live in a world of constant low level turmoil, never disrupting the flow of information and goods, but seemingly irresolvable too.

em500• 3 years ago

Pretty much every decade could be called tough. Post-WW II in the US we had:

- 1950s: Civil Rights, Korean war, dawn of the Cold War

- 1960s: Vietnam war, more Cold War

- 1970s: stagflation (high unemployment + high inflation), Watergate, even more Cold War

- 1980s: more stagflation, worries about AIDS, environment (ozone layer, acid rain), urban decay and crack epidemic, rise of Japan, Greed is Good

- 1990s: amongst the more optimistic decades in the US, but there was still lingering AIDS anxiety, dim employment prospects for the over-educated coming off age ("Generation X"), domestic terrorism bracketed by Waco and Columbine High. Abroad there were the Rwanda and Yugoslavia wars.

- 2000s: 9-11, war in Iraq and Afghanistan, financial crisis

And there's probably tons more anxiety inducing events in each decade that I forgot.

deltarholamda• 3 years ago

This is true, times are always hard for those living in them. Life is hard, after all.

Which lends credence to Haidt's suggestion that smartphones/widespread Internet is a primary factor. People tend to associate that with social media, which I would think is certainly part of it, but simply just being exposed to ideas can inculcate sympathetic ideas in people.

All your friends are depressed? Hey, life is hard for me too, and I'm kinda sad, maybe I'm depressed too. It sounds trite, but people en masse do work that way.

Social contagions were around before the Internet, but the Internet is an excellent medium for social contagions to grow quickly and spread widely.

sircastor• 3 years ago

I recall seeing commentary recently from mental health specialists that noted that young people are increasingly facing a sense of existential dread over climate change - that there's nothing they can do to stop it, and will feel the impact more heavily than previous generations.

I wouldn't discount social media and related issues out of hand, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's a contributing factor. I understand there was a similar sentiment in the 70s and 80s where there was a certainty that nuclear war was going to happen.

version_five2• 3 years ago

Existential dread over climate change is a symptom, not a cause of mental health problems.

Daishiman4• 3 years ago

Why would this be? It is obvious the existentially complicated things create anxiety.

erfgh• 3 years ago

Where do you live where young people give a damn about the climate? I find this amazing.

jimhefferon• 3 years ago

I'm a college professor in VT. They care a lot around here, anyway.

ccity88• 3 years ago

You don't just develop existential dread about climate change out of nowhere. First comes awareness, in this case the younger generation grew up being educated about climate change. Then you get exacerbation/increased attention - in this case social media and traditional media which have fuelled doomsday rhetoric and alarmism in general. Not to say that it isn't a big issue, it's massive; but doesn't help that we're feeding young minds with constant negative stimuli about how we're all going to die and there's nothing we can do about the problem.

ipaddr3• 3 years ago

There is a big divide between the young who think the world is over climate and the older who know better

carimura4• 3 years ago

now imagine spamming their phones with tik tok videos about the end of the world due to ____________. In your example, it's climate change. Maybe it's that, but it could also be that we can now mainline hours and hours of highly provocative content directly into a growing brain.

stuaxo• 3 years ago

We grew up with the threat of nuclear destruction, as well as global warming, in the 1980s.

dumbaccount123• 3 years ago

I care more about hypergamy and dying alone than climate change as a young person.

tempsy2• 3 years ago

No you read that from a "some experts are saying" article.

Aunche5• 3 years ago

The evolutionary purpose of dread is to motivate people to leave dangerous situations. When you hear about people surviving dangerous animal encounters, they tend to notice that something is "off" before they actually spot the hungry bear or mountain lion. Feeling dread for something you can't control is completely irrational, however. It's inevitable that you'll succumb to age related illness, so it's logical to be concerned about it to a certain extent, and it can be good to channel that into motivating you to be healthy. However, the fear of death is motivating you to doomscroll WebMD and causing pain in your daily life, you have a psychological problem. The same goes for human climate change. Unless if you live in a place like Micronesia, climate doomerism is a product of social media more than actual climate change.

ouid4• 3 years ago

Coming to the conclusion that there is nothing you can do serves no evolutionary purpose either. You should continue looking for an out as long as any possibility remains, no matter how remote.

taylodl9• 3 years ago

Seeing as how my daughter has gone through ten years of therapy due to depression I'll throw my hat in the ring and tell you what I think at least part of the problem is:

Late stage, winner-takes-all & loser-gets-nothing, Capitalism.

Those of us who are well-entrenched in our careers may not understand how vicious the world is for the entry-level and those aspiring to launch careers. The secondary schools preach and harp about college nearly every single day. If you don't go to college then expect to work meaningless jobs and live in squalor. I'm paraphrasing, but only a bit.

If you don't know anyone going through today's college admissions process then whoo-boy! There have been a recent spate of articles here on HN complaining about developer interviews and how insane they've become. Multiply the insanity by 10x and then re-label it as college admissions. You'd better have made sure you played the right sport, had the right extracurricular activities, volunteered for the right organizations, and be a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. That should at least guarantee you a spot at your state college, maybe even a scholarship or two.

And speaking of scholarships - you need money for college. Lots and lots of money. More money than your parents could have ever possibly saved - and that's if your parents are in the top 10% of wage earners. You're going to be taking out loans, maybe spending a significant part of your adult life paying back those loans.

Why would you do this? You don't want to have a menial job and live in squalor do you?

Meanwhile while killing themselves to get into college they're watching billionaires literally buy the government and pass the laws they want passed. They watch politicians gerrymander so that the majority doesn't actually have a say. They watch a moral minority strip them of every personal liberty they have and tell them how to live their lives.

Oh, and all these assholes are completely destroying the Earth, and their future, without a care in the world for what will come after them. In fact they don't think there's going to be a future because Jesus Christ is going to float down on a cloud and save them all and leave your sorry ass behind to suffer.

And we're wondering, actually wondering, why an entire generation is depressed and apathetic and looking at the older generations with derision.

Meanwhile the depression will continue until they rise up and burn the place down. That is if they're not so downtrodden they can't even lift their heads any longer.

But yeah, let's blame smartphones instead.

lezojeda• 3 years ago

Add increasing concentration of wealth in less and less people, increasing job insecurity due to technological advances rendering many jobs completely useless (and transfers even more wealth to those that are already haves and removes it even more from have-nots), the instant access to compare yourself to millions of others around the world...

I seriously can't understand why some people scratch their heads around the youth's mental health crisis. I'd be baffled if they weren't depresesd.

taylodl9• 3 years ago

These were all the things the kids were talking about in group therapy - and this was nearly 10 years ago!

BUT - I wouldn't expect people who haven't been paying attention to the environment to be paying attention to their children. Or maybe it's the other way around?

luckylion8• 3 years ago

We've seen much worse wealth inequalities in history, we've seen much worse job markets, we've seen much worse wars and pandemics, history was a lot more violent.

Really the only thing different there is that "instant access to compare yourself to millions of others". Which is essentially social media.

I'm sure there are other factors and everyone can speculate what they are, but "the world is terrible today" is hard to argue because it was much worse before, yet this didn't happen.

ipnon2• 3 years ago

The US is so close to a near ideal mixed economy. If the cartels holding oligopolies on housing, healthcare, and education were disbanded life would be dare I say pleasant in America. Today GDP keeps rising because of a few free money trees, while quality of life for many is deteriorating. Becoming middle class is stressful here, and while it shouldn’t necessarily be easy it should at least be formulaic. Young people seem to sense this formula is disappearing before them.

taylodl9• 3 years ago

The formula is disappearing before them and the formula is getting harder and harder to execute. Failure, or what's deemed as failure, is seen to carry more dire consequences than ever.

What we're seeing is exactly what you would expect to happen if the middle class is indeed disappearing.

p_j_w2• 3 years ago

If the cartels holding oligopolies on housing, healthcare, and education were disbanded life would be dare I say pleasant in America.

These are three of the most important things one needs in life, though. If there are cartels holding oligopolies on these, how can you possibly conclude that the US is close to a near ideal mixed economy?

dw_arthur• 3 years ago

American society has always been ruthlessly capitalist, I don't think that explanation holds for why there is a recent increase in depression. People have gone through much tougher times and seemed to thrive once the bad times ended. I refuse to believe today is any tougher than what past generations went through.

I think what is going on isn't that complicated. The biggest problem is that internet and smartphones have reduced the meaningfulness and weight of local and in person interactions. When we hung out as kids and teenagers the people around you were all you had. They mattered much more to you because what else was there to do?

Also, we measure our social status in a relative manner and the comparison group is no longer the people in your town or high school. It's the whole country or world in some case.

You meet a new person and find out they are really good at an instrument. In the past that would garner a decent amount of respect. Now using your phone you can instantly pull up thousands of people who are better. Thirty years ago imagine the ego sustenance a person would get from being the best guitar player or artist at their high school.

Basically the social value of the younger generation to each other has decreased. How would that not cause widespread depression?

SketchySeaBeast2• 3 years ago

People have gone through much tougher times and seemed to thrive once the bad times ended.

If I were a teenager I'd wonder when the bad times were going to end. In most previous "bad times" we've had an exit condition - usually beat the bad guys. What is it now? What are we fighting against to rally in commonality with others? Also, we didn't sample mental illness previously, so we don't really know how teenagers weathered the great depression. Thriving once the bad times ends doesn't indicate how they were doing during the bad times either.

taylodl9• 3 years ago

The internet has simply exposed the BS of the ruling class. Their lies are plain for all to see. In the past it was much easier for them to use smoke and mirrors to hide what they were really up to.

Also kids today respect the abilities of their peers, just like they always have. After all, mass media is over 100 years old.

How do I know? I work with kids outside of work time, and I have kids of my own.

Apocryphon• 3 years ago

People have gone through much tougher times and seemed to thrive once the bad times ended.

My theory is that in fairly recent memory, in America you had relatively good times that went from the '80s up to 2008, with the '90s being a particularly tranquil time at that (no major war between Desert Storm and 9/11). So to regress from a time of security and prosperity into a bad time provides a sort of trauma of its own. Especially since, as others have pointed out, there seems to be no exit condition.

zackmorris• 3 years ago

I've been trying to post less online because it's, well, depressing. But I agree with you 1000%.

The main way to curtail late stage crony capitalism is to raise taxes on the wealthy. We're at about half the tax rate that sustains a healthy middle class, which is directly correlated with wages being half what they should be, the lack of personal savings for the bottom half of the population, etc. It's been well-understood since the Great Depression, but empires have always known that there's a limit to what workers will accept before they revolt. I believe that we passed the point of stability around the Dot Bomb and 9/11 2001. But a strong argument could be made that the writing was on the wall by 1990 when the USSR separated but world powers kept funding their own militaries to create new bogeymen like terrorism to control the population.

Everything since has been theater: from the way we reward financiers and penalize employees, to how our legal system protects status quo players like the RIAA/MPAA, and how threats to our environments are just treated as externalities and not addressed directly because that goes against "free market" capitalism.

I learned about the situation we're in today with looming global threats like nationalism and fascism in high school AP government class back in maybe 1993. Back then, guys like Robert Bork, Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh were curiosities, and Newt Gingrich was just getting started. Never in our wildest dreams would we have imagined that Fox News would dominate all media, thanks to bitter old men like Rupert Murdoch. They created such a dark reality that I feel awful for young people today who think that this is how it always was and always will be.

The silver lining is that every bully eventually realizes that everyone is laughing at him. I think we're in one of those moments now with stuff like the TikTok ban hearings illustrating how comically out of touch bitter old men are. Their time is ending, and I still hold out hope that when Gen X attains power in government, we'll pull the plug on the fear mongering. But I'm generally wrong about these things, so I also expect the powers that be will prevent us from ever gaining any power whatsoever. Which is why it's so important to organize outside of whatever circles the mainstream media deems appropriate. Thankfully Gen Z appears to be doing just that.

ipaddr3• 3 years ago

This happened under Obama.

CatWChainsaw2• 3 years ago

You're downvoted almost to flagged, but nobody has really responded to what you wrote. And what you wrote amounts to: kids these days see multiple trends that their quality of life will never equal the prosperity of their predecessors, and they're being lied to about it, and there aren't any real ways out of that reality. There is no rebuttal because downvoting does not rebut the truth.

ryandrake• 3 years ago

I agree with this take. The biggest difference I see between the world I grew up in in the 80s/90s and today is how everything has moved to this horrible "winner take all" mode. Not just in education, but everything. Every aspect of life has turned into this zero-sum slugfest where very few win the lottery or kill their way to the top, and the remainder are expected to live with nothing. Used to be there were careers available for A students, B students, C students, D students and so on. We're very quickly moving towards this bimodal: ultra-luxury standard of living for a tiny few elite who ended up #1 (or lucked into it through their parents), and squalor for everyone else.

My kid asks me what career she should be when she grows up and I honestly don't know what to tell her. Every job category is fighting for its life against the capital ownership class's unquenchable need for more of the pie. The truth is that it probably doesn't matter. Unless I'm a multimillionaire and pay her way to the elite club, she doesn't really have anything besides downward class mobility to look forward to.

grammers• 3 years ago

The article has a point, but there's no proof for cause & effect.

A completely different explanation could be that our societies are so advanced by now that we can finally listen to mental illnesses and take them seriously - while in the past people just had to 'function', no matter what.

extasia2• 3 years ago

That wouldn't explain such a drastic rise in one demographic (teenagers)

PuppyTailWags11• 3 years ago

It might, since "teenager" is about a decade, and the opening paragraph cites... about a decade ago.

ilammy• 3 years ago

Explains it rather well: older people dismiss their symptoms as “not real illness” because that’s what society taught them when they were kids.

izzydata2• 3 years ago

Teenagers are yet to be broken in adults who accept things aren't going to change.

TylerE• 3 years ago

Everything has changed. You can’t look at one thing in isolation. Todays teens are not the teens of the Boomer generation. Was t that long enough that many were married by the time they hit 20.

onos• 3 years ago

Nor the sudden increase among this demographic.

bluescrn2• 3 years ago

Take away the social media, and I suspect the teens would have far fewer mental health problems.

Forgeties79• 3 years ago

Just like divorce rates in some ways. It’s because it wasn’t really an option for many (typically women) until recently. The social and financial repercussions were too severe.

cornholio2• 3 years ago

While I agree there is no statistical proof in the article, it's a very strong hypothesis: we somehow only 'listen' to the mental problems of female teens, who see geometric increases in self harm, suicide and various disorders, twice or three times the pre-social media levels. Yet other categories see linear or token increases.

Could it be just a coincidence that young females are exactly the demographic that is constrained by a gender role where aesthetic appeal and social interactions are the most valuable assets? And those are exactly the type of things that social networks exploited, monetized and massively gamified in the last decade?

What's more likely: a rapid change of the cultural norms and roles associated with growing up as a woman or of those related to recognizing and treating mental health issues (all in a single decade!); OR: a purely technical revolution that put interactive screens in the hands of each kid and made the former much more effective in harming their development and leading to the latter?

At least for the young female demographic, I think there is a massive burden of proof for anyone claiming the epidemics is not social-media induced.

giantg28• 3 years ago

"that is constrained by a gender role where aesthetic appeal and social interactions are the most valuable assets?"

In theory we should have seen a spike and then slow decline as gender norms and roles continue to become less segregating.

"Yet other categories see linear or token increases."

Yeah, because other categories may manifest their problems differently. Such as young men turning to violence and drugs more than intentional self-harm (almost the inverse of young women). That doesn't mean it's not the problem, just that it's not such a great proof.

giantg28• 3 years ago

One possible contributing explaination that I don't see addressed is that our lifestyles and opportunities have peaked in prior generations and are backsliding. Technology and politics are so invasive that you can't necessarily get a fresh start somewhere else. Young people realize this and figure "why even try". The difference in boys and girls with the graphs are that boys tend to act out and girls tend to self harm.

Who knows if this is a possibile contributor or not. Would be interesting to look into.

artificialLimbs3• 3 years ago

Maybe we should look at ways to get back to 'just functioning'.

brabel• 3 years ago

I may be old fashioned, but learning to "just function" instead of constantly crying and expecting the world to listen to me and be the way I want it to be is just called growing up.

vore• 3 years ago

It's easy to say this when you're not on the wrong end.

scythe2• 3 years ago

A completely different explanation could be that [...] we can finally listen

The article references massive increases in ER admits for self-harm, among similar data. That isn't a matter of "listening".

Haidt continually publishes detailed analyses and meets with retorts like this that obviously didn't engage at all with the content.

WeylandYutani3• 3 years ago

Statistics like that don't always make sense. Prior to the 1960s you will barely find incest in any official report because society wasn't ready to talk about it.

paganel• 3 years ago

A completely different explanation could be that our societies are so advanced by now that we can finally listen to mental illnesses and take them seriously

I lived in the Eastern Europe of the 1980s and the 1990s, not the best of times, economically speaking. I used to play football with Rroma children that were walking strange, at least that's how it looked to child-me, only later to find out that most probably they had been afflicted by polio in the past. All this to say that things were tough.

Even so, as a kid back then I had no acquaintances of my age who were harming themselves or, the worst of all, who were off-ing themselves. We would have known, kids used to know this sort of stuff because we were almost always outside, playing together.

Suffice is to say that things are now totally different. I've heard of kids harming themselves at 11-12 years of age and I know of a young lady who took her own life (at 16 or 17). Again, that was unimaginable 30 to 40 years ago.

SoftTalker3• 3 years ago

Is it at least partly a case of getting what you incentivize?

I was a teen in the 1980s, never knew of anyone who harmed himself other than accidentally. But we also didn't have doctors and counselors incessantly asking if we were depressed, or thinking of hurting ourselves. A kid today who says "yes" to either of those questions is going to find he's getting heaps of attention all of a sudden.

I have been thinking about this because I was at an orthopedist this week for an orthopedic isssue and I had to answer their "depression screening" questions. Trying to decide if these are being pushed by big pharma to get more people on antidepression meds or where else this might be coming from. The whole time I'm jsut thinking "you people aren't mental health specialists, or even general practioners, why are you asking me these irrelevant questions"

nradov2• 3 years ago

To some extent just functioning no matter what is protective against certain mental illnesses. Exhibiting the overt symptoms of a mental illness can sometimes cause the illness to become more severe in a feedback loop. Cognitive behavioral therapy has been proven effective in treating many mental illnesses and works in part by giving patients the mental tools they need to just function.

julosflb• 3 years ago

I would think this would equally affect both boys and girls.

lordnacho8• 3 years ago

The issue with that explanation is the synchronous timing. Why would it happen over the last 10 years or so, across a bunch of countries?

Tiktaalik2• 3 years ago

It could be that yes we're finally just now listening, but that doesn't explain the crazy spike in self harm

wpwpwpw2• 3 years ago

Can't this just be the effect of teens being more aware of their own mental health issues and reporting them more?

tempsy2• 3 years ago

wpwpwpw2• 3 years ago

These one word proofs everyone makes use of nowadays might be one of the reasons mental health is not in as good shape as it could be.

dang5• 3 years ago

Please don't do this here.

Eumenes• 3 years ago

I had no phone as a kid, I tinkered with PCs and programming, but spent most of my time outside, with friends. Riding our bikes or skateboarding till the sun came down. We played basketball and met new friends at the mall. We explored abandon buildings and found places on the map we wanted to visit when we got cars. None of us had ADHD, depression, or were on SSRIs. Nobody made up mental illness or gender identity. This is so obviously a result of our screwed up culture and social media, and prevalence of phone usage from a young age. I have several young cousins and they are in bad shape. Fat (like real fat), sedentary, addicted to anime, rarely play outside, and of course, have all the mental illness acronyms.

examplary_cable• 3 years ago

If this is true, then I believe it will unfortunately get worse. Given the curve of technological progress and social media trends and the overall turn humanity is going right now I believe the future is going to be increasing polarized in terms of happiness. Half of the popular will be extremely happy while the other half will be extremely depressed. Not exactly like this but the psychological well-being bell curve is going to get away from a normal distribution and become more distorted.

beefman• 3 years ago

As much as I respect Haidt's other work, his recent investigation into teen mental health is non-rigorous. None of his conclusions are supported.

yhavr• 3 years ago

Thank you, will quote this article as another great illustration why I don't want to have kids, or to be precise, don't want to expose them to the homo "civilization".

It's another example that "sapiens" are so lame, so even having AbUNdAnCe TeCHnOlGy and PrOgResS they manage to terribly screw their environment. A handful of ancient greeks living in "undeveloped" conditions with infant mortality, slavery and no mcdonalds managed to produce philosophies, which are heavily quoted today. Take stoicism, it manages my mental health like charm, and I'm only shallowly practicing it. "Developed" countries have thousands of universities full of "educated" people who have access to orders of magnitude knowledge than the guy who taught at Stoa. They should've cured not the teenage depression, but the mental health issues at the scale of humanity. If they are _really_ developed and educated, of course ;-)

bentt• 3 years ago

I would like to see this conversation turn from "Did phones cause these problems" to "Here's exactly how phones caused these problems". There are many ways to use technology, some better than others. We need literacy in these areas for both parents and children, and things are moving so fast, it's the companies that are getting to write the rules, not the culture. It's time for the culture to push back but we need to know how, specifically, the harm is being caused.

loup-vaillant4• 3 years ago

First though, we need to establish with enough certainty that whatever we are doing with phones is indeed the main culprit. I don't find it hard to believe to be honest, but we need something a bit more solid that this one correlation.

giantg28• 3 years ago

If it is phones, we'd have to have different experiments to investigate different possible methods of action. Is the content being consumed, is it something related to lack of physical interaction, is the anonymity promoting more hostility, etc.

lordnacho8• 3 years ago

It's a multipart series, I'm hopeful the evidence will be presented in the next parts.

jl6• 3 years ago

If we take the approach of not overthinking it, we might notice that many of these mental illnesses feature dissociation, and what does an iPhone do if not dissociate you from your physical being?

Teenagers (and younger) in their formative years are pouring a significant part of their lives into virtual environments and identities. Their digital lives are literally disconnected from their physical lives. Their sense of self is tied up in a system that has completely different rules and exists in some nebulous otherworld.

The physical basis for being is deprioritized and a new way of being is sitting uncomfortably alongside it.

Why doesn’t this affect everyone the same way? Some people are able to keep a lid on it, and reintegrate their iPhone lives into their real lives. Some people are not.

scohesc• 3 years ago

I can relate - in my late 20's and spent my teens and most of my early 20's online-only, just going outside long enough to go to college courses for IT.

I don't really know who I am as a person because I spent all my time online and not spending a lot of time with people. Not developing as a person, not realizing who I am and what I want to be. No social skills, etc.

Is it some kind of ego-death or personality-death? If not death, then something that hadn't been developed and is now far out of my grasp as my brain cements itself as I head into my 30's?

It sucks and I constantly remind myself of it, but maybe there's hope for the younger generations now that we've lived through the early stages of social media and know how it can harm the younger ones.

saiya-jin• 3 years ago

Not entirely scientific, but I am sure you know many parents with kids. Mentally split them into 2 groups - those who let digital and social entertainment run free so they don't have to raise kids because its annoying and hard for them (any fool claiming raising kids today isn't hard didn't actually raise his/her kids) and those who often painstakingly severely limit/block screen time.

My friend, I can tell you from my personal perspective that the difference is staggering and very consistent. Anybody I ever talked about this shared same opinion. So there you have it, some opinions.

I want more specifics too, it would help tremendously to fight against it compared to 'technology=bad', but we still have no fucking clue how our brain works, how our personalities form etc. Without time machine, I don't think we get much further in this century (nor millennium). Just bunch of theories, some wilder than others, with variable amount of proofs out there in the wild. While people often can't have rational debate about basic aspects of life.

joshlemer• 3 years ago

In your first paragraph you say that there is a huge difference but don't say what those differences are, which approach is better and what are the differences?

PuppyTailWags11• 3 years ago

Note that this isn't an unbiased source. This is working with Jon, the co-writer of The Coddling Of The American Mind, which uhhh is not without its critics for inaccuracies and stretching of truth. Check it out:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-coddling-of-the-am...

censor_me• 3 years ago

Linking a podcast isn't very good sourcing. I'm very intrigued to hear how the cuddling that's happening college campuses isn't happening, since anyone can see it in real time.

PuppyTailWags11• 3 years ago

Here is a list of the referred critiques in the show notes:

The Miseducation of Free Speech (https://www.virginialawreview.org/articles/miseducation-free...)

College and the “Culture War”: Assessing Higher Education’s Influence on Moral Attitudes (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00031224211041...)

The Myth of the Campus Coddle Crisis (https://academeblog.org/2018/12/28/the-myth-of-the-campus-co...)

What ‘Safe Spaces’ Really Look Like on College Campuses (https://www.chronicle.com/article/what-safe-spaces-really-lo...)

Are College Campuses Really in the Thrall of Leftist Censors? (https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/03/hypersensitive-camp...)

Speaking Freely: What Students Think about Expression at American Colleges (https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/student-attitudes-fre...)

‘Not all cultures are created equal’ says Penn Law professor in op-ed (https://www.thedp.com/article/2017/08/amy-wax-penn-law-cultu...) How

Right Wing Media Has Tried to Stifle Student Speech at Evergreen State College (https://psmag.com/education/the-real-free-speech-story-at-ev...)

I'm a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me (https://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afrai...)

In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/judith-shu...)

bigbillheck• 3 years ago

I'm very intrigued to hear how the cuddling that's happening college campuses isn't happening, since anyone can see it in real time

They were saying the same things when I was in college 30 years ago.

FredPret• 3 years ago

Cuddling on campus sounds like a good idea and has been par for the course for generations. But coddling is a problem

ModernMech5• 3 years ago

Interesting reading this sentiment, after first reading the recent thread about Stanford's "war" on students. The prevailing attitude there seemed to be that Stanford was in fact antagonizing their students by banning drinking, when in fact they should be providing an environment that is insulates students from real-world consequences to allow for experimentation. Now I guess this opinion is that doing so would be coddling, and that is a problem in itself. Seems like a complex issue where people can have a reasonable difference of opinion. So maybe it's not that people are denying the coddling, but they just think it's not a problem.

ChickenNugger2• 3 years ago

This is just an ad hominem.

Address the content/message, not the speaker.

dang5• 3 years ago

I agree with you about ad hominems but unfortunately your account has been using HN primarily for political/ideological battle, and also is arguably breaking the rule against trollish usernames here (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...). I've therefore banned it. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future - they're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. If you want to do that, we'll happily rename your account to something less trollish.

(If you didn't intend your username to be trollish, I apologize, but I'm seeing signs that other people are taking it that way.)

xupybd• 3 years ago

It's fair to say that this falls under the current "culture war". Any criticism may or may not be politically motivated. Any support may or may not be politically motivated.

The results of this data gathering exercise is alarming regardless.

detuned• 3 years ago

He's also known for hinging a lot of what he says on the concept of rapid onset gender dysphoria (the idea that kids are spontaneously turning trans with no previous indicators due to a "social contagion"). The original study for it is a survey of posts from parents who don't want their kids to be trans. It shouldn't surprise anyone that those parents weren't in the best position to catch any hints when their kids might have caught on to the idea that their parents might not like them being trans.

naasking8• 3 years ago

You are way overstating this. Haidt might have been one of the early ones raising alarm bells, but it's well established now that the cohort of people declaring themselves to be trans has shifted dramatically to young girls only very recently [1].

[1] https://www.bmj.com/content/380/bmj.p382

MichaelMoser123• 3 years ago

Did anyone look at the case histories? Was there a second opinion on the diagnosis? Maybe big pharma trying to push even more medication may be part of the problem. Interesting that the no one is mentioning this possibility...

Mordisquitos5• 3 years ago

How would big pharma pushing medication achieve such a consistent and simultaneous effect across different countries with radically different healthcare systems and policies? And why would their lobbying have a greater effect on diagnoses in the teenager demographic, which due to the risks and side effects involved in psychiatric medication make youngsters less likely to be prescribed them than fully developed adults?

PuppyTailWags11• 3 years ago

Its interesting that this cites a "mental illness epidemic" but only seems to cover anxiety/depression. I want statistics on ADHD, PTSD, autism, eating disorders, psychosis, and personality disorders too! If there is a major rise in ED (primarily women) it would explain why there are so many hospitalizations, because EDs are deadly.

p_j_w2• 3 years ago

Sorry, what is ED in this context?

amilios3• 3 years ago

eating disorder

PuppyTailWags11• 3 years ago

Eating Disorder.

CaptainNemo17• 3 years ago

Erectile Dysfunction. It's gotten so bad it's hitting our women!

notacoward2• 3 years ago

Eating Disorder, but in general it's more commonly used to mean Executive Dysfunction and (in a different context) Erectile Dysfunction. Bad idea IMO to use it without first-time expansion in such an ambiguous context.

spiralx• 3 years ago

I assume that would undermine the argument, as ADHD and other disorders are underdiagnosed in girls and women compared to men. And in fact anxiety and depression are most likely underdiagnosed in boys and men, which also helps their argument even more. Both of these make me sceptical of this "epidemic", plus Haidt isn't someone I trust to be impartial or accurate nowadays.

SubiculumCode• 3 years ago

Just like with autism, this is unlikely a change in the true rate of mental illness, just more awareness of and less social stigma against mental illness.

amilios3• 3 years ago

(Seemingly) Inevitable climate change and ecological destruction, growing income inequality and falling standards of living, a deathly pandemic that's still killing people while we pretend everything is back to normal (+ long covid probably bringing about a disability crisis in 3-5 years), increasing tensions between various nuclear-capable states (Russia, China) and the West, changes in the age distribution in most western states meaning that most young people will probably work until they die (retirement? lol) etc. etc.

This is a multi-faceted issue and let's face it, part of the problem is that the world is just getting depressing as hell for young people who see less and less of a future for themselves.

deepsun• 3 years ago

less and less of a future

Everything is relative. My grandfather's biggest dream was to live in a city, that's it. Now young people dream (and envy) of way more.

So I'd say there's more and more future for youth. They can afford, at least once in one's life: travel abroad, snow skiing, parachuting, going to a restaurant. It's just baseline jumped.

Xeoncross2• 3 years ago

The disconnect might be wasting young peoples lives having them spend hours looking at influencers, reminding them of all the ways they might die from things, and keeping them busy scrolling and up on the latest trends of today.

When you stop paying attention to the deluge of alerts and articles, you can focus on your own tasks and get to experience some neat stuff and wonderful people in this world.

tayo42• 3 years ago

My grandparent's traveled the world and the US. Bought a big house and well obviously had a family.

harimau777• 3 years ago

Living in a cosmopolitan city is a pretty unrealistic dream for many people now that housing prices have gone off the charts.

skwosh• 3 years ago

Relatively speaking...

Cultural optimism is likely to follow periods of growth and abundance, like buying a property in the 1970s for $5K and selling it in the 2000s for $2M. The last couple of decades have seen a reversal of this effect, so I don't think it's unreasonable that more people are feeling pessimistic about the future and their place in it.

ttt3ts2• 3 years ago

Or the world has always had issues and the lense through which we now view the world is an everpresent fear coaster.

Step away from the news & social media for a few months. You can't effect the outcome anyway and you might find you're happier.

irq• 3 years ago

Ignorance is indeed bliss, right up until they’re at your door. I like to have advance warning.

thaw13579• 3 years ago

Agreed the world has always had problems, but it feels more like a megaphone than a lens these days (found not only online, but also at work, school, and among friends). These problems also eventually reach people's doorsteps where they cannot be ignored by disconnecting from social media or socially isolating.

mxkopy3• 3 years ago

This is really easy to say for someone who doesn't experience these issues firsthand. Not reading the news isn't going to make your existential anxiety go away if you or your parents give it to you, either by helicoptering or living paycheck to paycheck.

Also, you really don't think that, in between building aqueducts and nuclear missiles, nothing has changed? You really think we have the same problems today as we did N years ago?

andreyk• 3 years ago

World events and economy aside, there are also clear trends with teenagers (and people as a whole) having fewer close friends than ever - loneliness is more common than ever. Our culture and society as a whole is declining in its ability to foster community and friendship, which really is deadly in its own way.

AnIdiotOnTheNet2• 3 years ago

Imagine that: a culture that promotes individualism and the pursuit of profit over all else leads to a generation of people with few close friends and lots of loneliness and stress.

Syonyk• 3 years ago

... loneliness is more common than ever.

But it's also very profitable if you're the advertising delivery system, or somewhere sucking money off that pipeline, because you can convince lonely people to spend money to buy things that might help with that!

The whole "isolated, atomic person, only interfacing with the world through a screen, with every interaction intermediated by for-profit tech companies providing a service for a fee" model is very profitable. It's just horrid for everyone who's nothing more than a wallet and set of eyeballs to be tapped for as much as they're worth, then given loans to keep consuming.

I utterly hate the characterization of people as "consumers" these days - I'm trying to be more deliberate about using "citizen" or something along those lines. There's more to life than consuming as many "consumer goods" as possible.

Unfortunately, the wealthy end of the tech industry makes their money from this sort of social destruction, and so I don't expect many changes while people are still willing to pay for the chains of their cell phone. Fortunately, I think that's changing.

WalterBright7• 3 years ago

the world is just getting depressing as hell for young people who see less and less of a future for themselves

I heard exactly the same thing in the 1970s.

amilios3• 3 years ago

Compare housing costs in the 1970s vs now.

tick_tock_tick3• 3 years ago

How do we fix this complete disconnect from reality? I guess in the same vein how did they get such a incorrect view of the world state in the first place?

revelio8• 3 years ago

Teenagers are impressionable and exist in an environment where they aren't allowed to seriously disagree with their teachers. They're also under huge pressure to conform to what seems popular.

A lot of unrealistic climate doomerism is however created by adults. Even climatologists are now realizing they've badly overdone it, but of course the monster they created just turns on them when they try to restrain it. See the fun Zeke Hausfather has been having lately with being called a climate denier.

For teenagers to get restored perspective and realize the future isn't going to end, and will in fact be pretty awesome, it is required first that their parents give up the doomer beliefs too. And that in turn requires people to get skeptical, to start seriously pushing back on those who tell people to never think for themselves. It's a hard social problem that goes well beyond teenagers.

FormerBandmate2• 3 years ago

If long covid was real it would have happened already. I had covid a year and a half ago, and am fine as is everyone I know (who have almost all had it at some point). At some point it's the flip side of the vaccine side effects that antivaxxers keep insisting will emerge at some point

horns4lyfe4• 3 years ago

Lol, really, a long covid disability crisis in 3 years? Gee, I wonder where the kids are getting all this unrealistic doom and gloom from.

obscurette2• 3 years ago

I'm a father of teen kids, teacher and educator. I don't think that there is a single reason here. All mentioned things contribute – social media pressure, climate problems, economical crisis etc. But I'd like to add another one – declining quality of education. I see increasing number of teens depressed because they don't have teachers and their education isn't good enough for jobs they'd like to get in future. And at least some of them are certainly right: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32539424

Xeoncross2• 3 years ago

Yeah, The US education system seems to have more money than most countries, but we're still 37th in the world for in Math last I checked.

Whatever is happening in public schools, you'd do well to increase your child's odds by putting them into something else if you can afford it.

Private school, tutoring, homeschooling, college (dual-enrollment), etc..

seanmcdirmid2• 3 years ago

Middle class and above kids still do as well in math in public schools as they do in private schools. The problem is that students from more disadvantaged backgrounds don't do as well, and its not like they can afford private schools anyways.

grog454• 3 years ago

One of the most important things we can teach kids today is how to teach themselves. I wouldn't have graduated college over a decade ago without Wikipedia and there are far better resources now.

lordnacho8• 3 years ago

Did that start in 2010, across several countries?

lsllc2• 3 years ago

I'm not sure you can blame problems such as climate change, economic issues -- every generation had its own existential crisis: WW2, Korea, Vietnam, numerous recessions and until 1990, recent generations lived under the specter of the atom bomb.

I think it's social media, that's what's really changed: Every single teenager is now comparing themselves against every other kid in the world instead of just their local peers (and maybe a few grainy MTV stars over 525 scan lines). And of course the "popular" ones they're comparing to are the most successful, most good-looking, most privileged i.e. the most "perfect" ones (because that's how they got to be the most popular). It's a terrible yardstick for anyone to measure themselves against, let along impressionable young minds.

carimura4• 3 years ago

this 100x. And in the young brain, every single person looks amazing because that's how everyone is posturing constantly. Image filters can even literally make someone better looking. It's basically an arms race to 0 on who can posture the best.

TheOtherHobbes2• 3 years ago

I think social media - which is not so much about media but about performative competition - is just part of the problem.

Reality for kids seems so much more competitive and ruthless in every way. And there are so few resources available to them to help them deal with it.

At the same time opportunities are shrinking and pressure to perform is increasing. It's not enough to be adequate, you have to be outstanding in looks, talent, ability, work ethic, party ethic, lifestyle, income, and education.

But you can't be. Because you're not competing with a small group of relative peers, you're competing with the entire online world.

At the same time there's incoming doom in the form of climate change, Covid mismanagement, outrageous and crippling economic inequality, various wars, and now the threat of AI.

It would be strange if kids weren't getting depressed under these circumstances.

sacnoradhq2• 3 years ago

I had recurring nightmares about a malfunctioning nuclear warhead that slowed abnormally and spiraled in a flat spin leaving a smoke/vapor trail as it neared its ultimate detonation height.

The movie Red Dawn was the ultimate manifestation of 80's red hysteria and triumphal American exceptionalism.

~625 scanlines (PAL)? We only had ~480 scan lines with NTSC.

My parents had a roof-mounted VHF/UHF antenna that could be electrically rotated with a dial. Looking something like this

Antenna:

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

Channel Master:

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/WXgAAOSwGJJfoJlz/s-l640.jpg

My grandparents had an analog HBO pirate cheat box with a fixed, directional antenna. I remember watching George Carlin standup specials.

sidfthec• 3 years ago

Every single teenager is now comparing themselves against every other kid in the world instead of just their local peers

This is so out of touch. You might as well be using the "It's the video games!" excuse of yore.

Teenagers and those in their 20s see what their parents were able to do. They hear what their parents bought their house for, they know about their pensions, they see that their parents could afford raising a child into their teens, they find out that college was actually affordable. They know that's now all out of reach.

Some even see their parents struggling, and know it's going to be much much worse for them.

You all really think this is about influencers?

gsatic• 3 years ago

Totally agree. Social media built on top of collecting Likes and Followers, causes brain damage not just in kids but in adults too. That architecture has to be dismantled.

But parent comment abv has a point teaching is a big factor here. And teaching in the current environment has become much more complex.

There is endless over stimulation and distraction which ruins environments where learning is possible. And secondly information has exploding. Kids can easily get overwhelmed just looking at a Wikipedia article. Teachers have a very hard job keeping things on track.

lossolo• 3 years ago

20 years ago, when you finished your school day, week, or semester, you could go home, on vacation, etc., and not have any contact with your schoolmates unless you wanted to. Nowadays, you see them and they can interact with you or talk about you 24/7 on social networks. There's no escaping your bully by hiding at home anymore, as you can be publicly bullied on social platforms all the time. This is likely a terrible experience for many young people. Additionally, the constant feeling of inadequacy due to having fewer likes, comments, or friends on your profile compared to the popular kids can be quite disheartening.

mseepgood2• 3 years ago

and until 1990, recent generations lived under the specter of the atom bomb

Has this specter gone away?

sadcodemonkey• 3 years ago

I agree that social media is a huge factor, but I suspect other generations dealing with the crises you mentioned had high rates of mental illness as well, but it wasn't tracked, or wasn't tracked the same way, or there were different but equally serious manifestations of it than self-harm and suicide.

zeruch• 3 years ago

"I'm not sure you can blame problems such as climate change, economic issues -- every generation had its own existential crisis: WW2, Korea, Vietnam, numerous recessions and until 1990, recent generations lived under the specter of the atom bomb."

All of those issues felt less existential (or at least had very clear points of no return that we managed to avoid going over the brink on), and climate change for many, maybe quite reasonably so, feels like we will be the proverbial boiling frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog

It feels different because of the complexity and scale is no longer definable or predicated on a clear discrete set of objects (e.g. Nuclear powers, key banking systems, a hot war with defined participants) but is by global definition....everything.

It's abstract yet ever present (e.g. all the recent climate weirdness, and the disasters that have followed, both in terms of pure environmental impacts as well as economic and overall regional stability as byproducts thereof) and that becomes much more difficult to "manage"

WalterBright7• 3 years ago

There's also been a corresponding dramatic drop in the number of teens who have had any sort of job. Not many things are as fulfilling as doing a job and getting paid for it.

I remember when I realized I was making enough money that I could pay all my bills and no longer needed anything from my dad. It felt really good. For me that was the dividing line between being a child and an adult.

TheOtherHobbes2• 3 years ago

Kids today can have two or even three jobs and still not earn enough to pay the rent on a place of their own.

Broken_Hippo• 3 years ago

Not many things are as fulfilling as doing a job and getting paid for it.

Sorry, I don't get fulfillment from a job, nor do I base my personality on it. A job is a thing that I have to do to live and do some stuff I like.

That's it, nothing more. I'd never do actual work unless I had to, and I'd never work full time if I didn't have to. I'm never going to be motivated to work harder for a fancy car if I can have a reliable, efficient car. I'd like more space, but it needs not be huge or pretty (though, I'd like to cook and make art).

Making art is fulfilling. I enjoy making food - work means I eat more convenience foods. I don't need to be paid to help folks, either. I can get a sense of accomplishment by doing things that are difficult, from projects to playing games.

lordnacho8• 3 years ago

It used to be good, but my guess is a modern kid, particularly a middle class one, doesn't get as much out of it. Minimum wage has stagnated, but also people these days have their eyes on internships that will secure a career. There's simply no point in pursuing burger-flipping if you can't find a way to hang around a law firm or a hedge fund, and those firms won't care at all that you worked hard in a menial job.

When I was a kid there was never a time when I could pay for everything. The first time that happened was an internship I got during college, and then my first job right after.

rgblambda• 3 years ago

Also the freedom a job gives a young person will be unlike anything they've experienced up to that point. Prior to a teen's first job their experience of the world outside their home (i.e. school) is highly regimented, with little opportunity to just be a normal human being around other humans. A job provides that outlet.

wrp2• 3 years ago

I wonder about the timing of these social changes. My impression was that the tradition of high school students having jobs started to fade away in the 1990s.

sacnoradhq2• 3 years ago

I have potentially a bazillion questions:

0. How do kids socialize without devices these days?

1a-b. Do they meet new people like them and/or unlike them?

2. Do they go outside and explore the world nearby?

3a-b. Do they get in the same or different kinds of trouble as past generations of kids?

4a-d. What are the fundamental social values they share that differ from 1-4 generations ago?

5a-c. Do they have as much curiosity, work ethic, or resiliency to setbacks?

Here's my neon fuchsia fanny-pack, old personitis for reference:

When I was a kid, I had to wake up at 5:45 am to get ready to walk 1.3 mi (2 km) to a school bus stop when there was a perfectly good school 0.25 mi away. (Supposedly, I was denied a slot due to race-integration busing but I attribute it to paranoid parents rationalizing their lack of resolve.) The bus ride was 90 minutes each way for 3 hours total, depending on traffic. It was a magnet school where there were many kids from broken homes, abuse, poverty, undocumented parents hanging on, and situations adjacent to drug gangs. The non-IEP classroom material was too slow for me and I was often bored. The turnover of teachers was about 50%/year. Many substitute teachers. There were bullies, girls who behaved in age-inappropriate manners, carved graffiti-encased desks, and mountains of scantrons and dittos (spirit duplicator). No school uniforms, but gang colors and teen pregnancy were omnipresent concerns. Hardcover textbooks were worn to where bindings had saggy wrinkles. No computers and no cell phones.

nibbleshifter• 3 years ago

I can answer a some those. Have family members who are teachers, friends who work with youth, etc and this whole thing comes up a lot.

I've used your numbering system to organize answers.

2. Less than previous generations.

There's simply far less places that will let kids just hang out.

Until a certain age its likely CPS will be called and police will be involved if your kids are out exploring, and after that age said kids hanging out is deemed antisocial and undesirable... So private security or the police hassle them.

3a-b: some the same, some different. Underage drinking/smoking/fucking is down, illicit drug use is down somewhat, but smoking's been replaced by vapes, and the drugs are different - often pharmaceuticals (real or counterfeit) such as xanax, etc.

Actual antisocial behavior is way down, but perceived antisocial behavior is up. Behaviours that previously were deemed largely benign (kids hanging out) are deemed unwanted. As per answer 2.

4a-d: the kids tend to be significantly more "tolerant" than previous generations. Make of that what you will.

5a-c: yes? They are still curious as all fuck, but work ethic is a funny animal.

Most traditional avenues for teenagers to "work" (outside of academics) are being closed off due to labour rules, liability, etc.

So a lot of younger people try make money online, have some kind of hustle. This ranges across the board of legality, morality, etc. Be it flipping clothes on Depop, dubious schemes involving dropshipping or selling knockoff designer gear online, selling artwork/crafts, trying to become an influencer/streamer/whatever... There's massive pressure to try monetize any hobby.

Resilience? Its teenagers. Some are hard as nails, some are drips.

seydor• 3 years ago

Out of those i m trying to understand climate problems. They dont affect daily life in a visible way. Climate anxiety however has become a thing because of too much media fixation around it. It s so prevalent that some psychologists think it should be classified as a disease

wrp2• 3 years ago

...declining quality of education.

I'd like to add some nuance to this. While student performance seems to be clearly declining (at least at the college level, which I'm familiar with), I don't know how well we can distinguish the contributions of poor teaching and poor student preparedness.

I'll give a concrete example from South Korea. For several years, the English proficiency of incoming university students was so high, there was serious talk of closing English language programs as no longer needed. Within the last few years though, student ability levels have plummeted, requiring drastic dumbing-down of the curriculum at the school where I work. I know many Korean primary, secondary, and college teachers, and I don't think the decline in student achievement is due to their slacking off. It seems to be due to something going on in society outside the schools.

another_story• 3 years ago

As a longtime educator, I see a lot of experienced teachers leaving. In fact, I'm leaving this year, though I'm unsure if it's permanent.

It's a mixture of reasons, from low pay to high demands, but I think a large part is a lack of respect from students, parents and admin. Teachers have been stripped of most of their power to do anything about it. The last year I taught public school a student was verbally abusing others and threatening them in class and I couldn't get him removed. It ruined the class and scared other students, but because he had documented issues they said they couldn't do anything.

I teach in overseas private schools now, and the kids are fantastic and the pay is decent, but the job has an increasing amount of non-teaching related stuff which detracts from the what matters, the kids. Also, the syllabus for CS is so outdated, and I find myself apologizing to the kids since I need to to teach it to them for their exams. I teach around the syllabus as best I can, but you still need to get results.

TLDR: Experienced teachers leaving, lack of autonomy, curriculum suck

tennisflyi• 3 years ago

Not sure it's about education. Ladders seem pulled higher and sending your resume to the ether and the dog and pony show that is interviewing...

crsv• 3 years ago

The main cause is the proliferation of social media. There's other factors of course, and I'm not dismissing any of the depth of nuance of all the externalities acting on that generation, but it's undoubtedly the thing that our societies and social structures aren't designed for: facebook and instagram.

WeylandYutani3• 3 years ago

World: Am I out of touch? No it's the children who are wrong.

wktra2• 3 years ago

"prepare the children for the road, not the road for the children."

marze• 3 years ago

Besides the hypothesis in the essay, an undetermined link to smartphone use, proposed causes from the comments include:

-declining quality of education

-poor sleep from late-evening screen use

-social media use

-influencer culture makes ones own situation look dull

-overmedication

-state of world (wars, ecological risks etc)

-measurement artifact

-electromagnetic fields

-health issues that cause inflammation

-junk food/poor nutrition

Did I miss any others?

EntrePrescott2• 3 years ago

That article (i.e. the author) seems to have a weird understanding of mathematics:

"Note that there are two ways to calculate increases. We can measure an increase in absolute terms, e.g., a rise from 5% to 15% of teens with a diagnosis is a ten percentage-point increase, or we can report it in relative terms, e.g., a rise from 5% to 15% is a 300% increase, relative to the anchor point"

Uhm… maybe in an "alternative mathematics" universe? Where I learned math, an increase from 100% of the anchor value to 300% of the anchor value is not a relative increase of 300% but of 300%-100%=200%.

In contrast, A "300% increase, relative to the anchor point" would be adding 300% of the anchor value to the 100% of it that it already has, i.e. resulting in an end value of 400% of the anchor value. So in the case presented by the article quote, to come back to the absolute terms, it would be a rise from 5% to 20%, not to 15%.

sbirch• 3 years ago

I think you've mixed up relative and absolute differences. Both of your examples are in terms of absolute percentage points (pp, sometimes ambiguously labeled %), but relative changes are measured in percent (%). 300% relative difference just means 300/100 = 3x.

EntrePrescott2• 3 years ago

Both of your examples are in terms of absolute percentage points

No, they are both about relative increases. I didn't even write about absolute increases because (unlike relative increases, where the article makes a mistake) absolute increases were the part that the article got right: a rise from 5% to 15% would be an (absolute) increase of 10% … just like the article says.

300% relative difference just means 300/100 = 3x

…My point was: 300% relative INCREASE (i.e. positive relative difference) means that it's the DIFFERENCE (increase) between the initial value and the end value that is 300% RELATIVE TO the initial value (thus the end value being 400% of the initial value), not that the end value is 300% of the initial value (which would only be a 200% relative increase).

Let's take, to better illustrate the point, an example with a relative increase below 100%. Let's go with an example with 40% relative increase. So let's say:

* in the reference year, your company made a profit of 5 million dollars out of a revenue of 100 million dollars, i.e. a profit margin of 5%.

* the next year it still made a revenue of 100 million dollars but managed to be more profitable, making a profit of 7 million dollars i.e. a profit margin of 7%.

* The ABSOLUTE increase of the profit margin is (7%-5%)=2%,

* The RELATIVE increase of profit margin is the absolute increase of profit margin divided by its initial reference value i.e. (7%-5%)/5% = 40%.

And my point is: having a 40% relative increase of profit margin means that your end profit margin is 40% higher relative to your initial reference profit margin and is thus (100%+40%)=140% of your initial reference profit margin, not that your end profit margin is 40% of your initial profit margin… which would be a 60% relative DECREASE (i.e. -60% relative increase) of the profit margin.

funnym0nk3y• 3 years ago

To me the theory seems to not fully explain the data, at least not the switch in phone types and instagram. IMHO it takes some time for a mental illness to form and the right circumstances are needed. It's nothing you catch like a cold.

I think the causes are multifactorial. First, you need a social structure that promotes or at least not inhibits mental illness. That I think is given in industrialized countries because of high stress for parents, little commitment among people and always increasing speed of life. In addition the middle class got smaller and smaller. Three are only two outcomes, poor or rich with little in-between. Then you need some awareness of mental illness. Even today mental illness is highly stigmatized, but back then it was even worse. There are a lot of older people who are visibly not well but won't get treatment for whatever reason and thus won't show up in statistics. And then, yes the media in general. My mum told me that back when she was young the sentiment of the media was more positive, there were articles about achievements without a critical differentiation. More negative news more frequently. All of that set the stage for young people to feel the need to get ahead to survive combined with a larger group for comparison results in a feeling of hopelessness in many.

gibbonsrcool2• 3 years ago

Is it possibly because they're not sleeping with each other? Seems to be all over the news lately, the decline of young people having sex. The older I get, the less I see sex as optional for human health and well-being. There's no time you crave it more than adolescence, so going without it then could be even more damaging. Sex is not just a fun experience, it's a basic psychological need. Both the left and right in the US are way too puritanical and I really hope there's a big shift in popular culture to stop censoring sex and maybe think about toning down the violence.

golemotron2• 3 years ago

Let's see.. it was simultaneous and synchronized across the Anglophone countries in the early 2010s.

It's sort of peculiar for Puritanism to appear suddenly and simultaneously in widely distant countries that share a common language but have different cultures, right?

No, I think the change in phones and what they enabled in social media is a better explanation.

gibbonsrcool2• 3 years ago

The decline in young people's sexual activity is a recent event: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-have-been-...

exclusiv• 3 years ago

Social media. Overly medicated. Sold a raw deal with college tuition costs. Social justice and their desire, and ultimately heavy mental weight of trying to change people and systems. Intolerance of those that think differently or disagree. The Media divisiveness machine. Their own families dividing themselves over political differences. All these things are incredibly sad.

I think social media is the main culprit, but there's a lot behind that.

I think PG's identity essay comes into play.

"Most people reading this will already be fairly tolerant. But there is a step beyond thinking of yourself as x but tolerating y: not even to consider yourself an x. The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you." [1]

As teenagers pick up all these various identities and labels, it makes them dumber. And it's also exhausting for them mentally to defend them or champion them.

A teen may have as part of their identity: atheist, climate change activist, transgender rights activist, feminist, liberal Democrat, goth, aspiring influencer, etc.

Back when I went to school, you might just be a jock or a nerd but it wasn't anything you felt compelled to defend. There weren't that many identities or groups organizing to recruit you to their cause. You didn't have the weight of putting all your time in so many things AND maintain some bullshit presence on social media.

So how do you address this? Only thing I can think is to help our young people develop a mindset or philosophy for dealing with bullshit. How to be resilient in a dynamic world that really gives zero fucks about you. Once you accept that as a fact, I think it is infinitely easier to be happy.

I had a professor say once something like "nobody gives a shit about you except maybe your family and a few close friends" and that you need to be compelling and memorable. The class was about helping students reflect on that and how they wanted to tackle the world.

I already had that kind of outlook at the time, but you'd be surprised at how many students had a completely stunned look on their face because they were raised in an environment where they were the center of their parents' lives and were told that everyone loves them, that they are super special and that if they go to school, do this, do that, then they'll be good. So the professor shocked them with that statement.

In my opinion, that's part of the core issue. We aren't preparing our youth with this mindset. And they get frustrated when they take their identities and dreams and run into the world's brick wall. It overwhelms them. As Neil deGrasse Tyson was told by his father - it's not enough to be right, you must be effective.

If we teach them to accept that the world gives zero shits about them and that they need to develop skills to be compelling, then they can be more effective and get more reward.

I'm not advocating for that message to just be dropped on teens as is, although I think all universities should have that course along with personal finance. But when raising kids and in our elementary and high schools, we should be challenging them in a way that let's them know that if they want their way in anything, they should think of compelling reasons and they should be able to articulate those reasons without raging on others, to be effective.

Ultimately it's the fault of the parents and society. People are showing kids that it is ok to just rage on your friends and family when you find out they disagree with you. Defriend, talk shit behind their back. Constantly comparing themselves to others. We've been grooming citizens with strong identities with every form of media and built systems around divisiveness and social outrage. It's a nefarious engine that rips families, friends and communities apart. And this leads to mental illness with teenagers and their parents too.

The only solution is to try and disconnect from that engine. It's extremely powerful though. May take a generation unless someone or something with major influence is able to connect with the youth in a meaningful way.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

dahwolf• 3 years ago

I think the smartphone theory is plausible, which I translate as follow: we've become programmable.

I grew up in the 80s with a material wealth that is probably 10% of what modern teenagers have. The era also contained a massive economic crisis with actual record high unemployment and interest rates triple the current "high" rate. Also, the nuke could drop any day.

I don't remember spending much thought on any of it at all nor was I worried about any future. Why would I? I'm a teenager, I spent the early teens largely outside playing with friends and the late teens partying.

However, if I'd replay my childhood in modern age conditions, I'm sure I would have been far more miserable. That's what I mean with it being programmable. Modern teens are far more lonely than I was and spent that lonely time filling their head with garbage at a very critical part in their development. They've already given up before they even started.

lamontcg• 3 years ago

In our 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and I presented evidence that the same trends were happening in Canada and the United Kingdom—not just the rise in depression and anxiety, but also the overprotection of children, the rise of “safetyism,” and the shouting down of speakers on university campuses when students deemed the speaker to be “harmful.” It seemed that all the Anglo nations were setting up their children for failure in the same ways at the same time.

And there was exactly zero evidence of this having anything to do with it, and none of it really fits the bill of having "switched on" around 2010 or a little before (hint: facebook).

whats_a_quasar• 3 years ago

People should really read Jonathan Haidt's full series of posts. This one is post # 8 out of N, and they are meant to be read in series. The author's arguments build on each other, and all of the criticisms people are making in the comments are addressed in prior posts.

Full series here: https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/archive

I find the complete argument really compelling. It convincingly argues that teen use of social media has drastically reduced the time spent in person with friends, and drastically increased social comparisons. These two effects are awful for the mental health of a human who's brain is still developing. The specific issue is the combination of smartphones with cameras and social media based on images and video, which only became prevalent in ~2012. Social media is causing a public health the scale of COVID, Opiods, or smoking - a tremendous amount of unnecessary suffering, and 2-3x the rate of teen self harm and suicide.

Here's the longer version of the argument, with citations:

Teen mental health has unambiguously dropped off a cliff. Both self reports of depression, and objective measures like hospital admissions and suicides, have increased drastically since ~2012 [1].

The decrease in health does not correlate with the economy [2], or with academic pressure [3]. It does not correlate with 9/11, school shootings, or any particular American issue, because the decline started at the same time in all Anglophile countries [4].

There is no evidence of the "doomer" hypothesis: that teens are right to be more depressed because the world actually does suck, and they're just the first to notice [5]. And that thought pattern is itself specifically characteristic of depression: Depressed people view the world as worse than it actually is [6].

The decline in mental health does unambiguously correlate with social media use. And every class of study that examines causation has shown that social media causes declines in mental heatlh. The issue seems to be specifically the combination of smartphones with cameras and social media based on images and videos. These two technologies both became common ~2012, at the same time mental health started dropping [7].

Some combination of social media has radically altered the social life of teens, in ways that we know to be terrible for mental health. Time spent by teens in person with friends has decreased ~70% [8]. And I don't have a specific source for this one, but it sure seems like social media has vastly increased social comparison. Nothing else can explain the decline in time spent with friends. We know depression and anxiety are tightly linked to social support - how could time spent with friends fall by so much and not cause a crisis.

I think tech-savvy people are so used to baseless moral panics that there is a set of defense instincts kick in whenever something seems like a moral panic. But all of the evidence is that this time is different. If you don't think social media is a major contributor, at least understand the evidence that it is, or use evidence for your alternative hypothesis.

[1] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/the-teen-mental-illness...

[2] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/i/104255435/conclusion-so...

[3] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/academic-pressure-socia...

[4] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/international-mental-il...

[5] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/mental-health-liberal-g...

The same point is made better and I think less ideologically by Matt Yglesias in the link before. Half of the piece is behind a paywall, but the first half is the most important.

https://www.slowboring.com/p/why-are-young-liberals-so-depre...

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beck's_cognitive_triad

[7] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-ill...

[8] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/the-new-cdc-report

leftbit• 3 years ago

Wondering if pesticides, especially neonicotinoids play a role in this epidemic. Neonicotinoids are neurotoxic and have effects on mammals...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid#Harms_to_Mammali...

barrysteve• 3 years ago

It's hope. Teens need it. It's a theological virtue that we've publicly discarded in pursuit of a more theatrical lifestyle.

taylodl9• 3 years ago

Another factor not mentioned: 24/7 news and the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine.

Honestly, in my work with kids I'm not seeing social media as being a big problem. Mass media has existed for well over 100 years. Kids have always known kids who were exceptional.

The difference now is kids are much more aware of the news and thanks to the hyper-partisan news reporting they're being continually bombarded with Bad News. Not bad news as in airplane crashes and stuff like that, but bad news with a political spin: the economy is crashing, AI is going to take all our jobs, the left wants Big Government to take away all your rights, the right wants to create a Christian theocracy - the list goes on, and on, and on, and on.

If anything, kids' social media, i.e. where kids actually hang out, gets them away from all that crap. That's why kids love TikTok. They watch videos of kids doing cool and interesting things. No politics.

The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

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