Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed
economist.com
economist.com
We treat them as adults in school (by making them responsible for their own performance through grading and measuring) from a very young age, yet we don't really cut the umbelical cord (grant them autonomy) until they're in their twenties.
Socially they're expected to act in their long term interest, at the expense of social and emotional self-realization (i.e. "maturing") for a long time, and the only alternative is failure (now on prominent display on social media heh...)
Really? I feel like even in college students don't always feel like they are responsible for their own performance & grades (and an honest one at that). Look at all the cheating and grade inflation and grading complaints (even by parents!!) that have gone towards becoming the norm over the last decade or two in college. In the adult world it's not like your mom can call your boss and complain about the fact that you got a bad review or something (at least not successfully...). It's not like it always used to be like this in school either. Kids are honestly just not maturing into adults as they used to, whether it their own fault, or their parents', or social media's, or the government's, or anyone else's.
Don't be so sure about that. Parents are starting to talk to university professors on behalf of their adult children.
If your parent calls your boss they can threaten to fire you and there's nothing mom or dad can do about it.
This article has some key points in it that address the comments in this thread [1].
Excerpt:
"Working with the quote-unquote best and brightest, I was seeing more and more [students] who seemed less and less capable of doing the stuff of life. They were incredibly accomplished in the transcript and GPA sense but less with their own selves, evidenced by how frequently they communicated with a parent, texting multiple times a day, needing a parent to tell them what to do."
[0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OO2LJS2/ref=as_li_tl?ie...
[1] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-murphy-jr/want-to-raise-...?
> yet we don't really cut the umbelical cord (grant them autonomy) until they're in their twenties
The problem pointed by GP is that kids are expected to behave responsibly at school (as if it were work), but parents are not giving them enough autonomy in life. Most of them never "become responsible", because they're taught from early age that they shouldn't (and that feeling is reinforced later, when parents call colleges, and the things you talk about). There's a lot of cognitive dissonance there.
I think this has to contribute a lot to today's anxiousness of teenagers - who hasn't been caught yet, should feel in constant danger. I would be anxious about this if i was a teenager today.
My kid is one and a half right now, in a few years I will have to explain him how important it is not to get taped doing stupid things...
Without image recording devices it would still be possible to share embarrassing text conversations and stories, but they don’t have the same shaming power as video. And without social media, embarrassing videos would mostly languish on some GeoCities backwater. It is the confluence of the two that creates the current situation.
This in itself isn't the problem. We all have done stupid shit that we are embarrassed by. The real problem is that, for some reason, we never forgive anyone for their mistakes.
This is an extreme case but otherwise I agree, long lasting traces are really to be avoided if it removes innocence and joy in kids.
I don't think so. I think it started when there are more free stuff to consume than the time we have to cobsume it. In a way it is connected con consumerism but when the products are free.
With most tricky parenting issues, the answer is probably that you're on the right track if you're even thinking about it and asking the question
We can't afford to follow middle class myths any more, because the middle class is vanishing.
bad: johnny complains that he got a 'C' on his freshman writing seminar term paper, so you go to the professor to argue his case for him. johnny is stressed out because he is finding it hard to concentrate on school and find an apartment for next semester at the same time, so you take over the apartment hunt for him.
good: johnny needs to find a job, so you capitalize on your extensive network of successful friends and colleagues to put him in contact with people who might give him an interview. once he gets the interview, it's on him to prove his worth. or, johnny just transferred to a new school and his transfer credits are not immediately accepted so he cant register for any useful classes that semester. the counseling people tell him it will take a few weeks to evaluate his transcript and registration will be closed by then, so he may as well give up and start planning for next semester. luckily you happen to know the dean, and the process is expedited so johnny can actually make some progress that semester.
the key is to distinguish between important challenges that the kid can figure out themselves (with some work) and structural obstacles that are simply insurmountable without the application parent's resources/experience. helping excessively with the first will result in you raising a manchild. helping with the second can actually give your kid a time advantage over their peers that doesn't hamstring their development.
It's inflation, pure and simple. (Alternately, any forced work without reward is called "slavery", and since it's [biologically speaking] totally fine to make slaves of the disenfranchised, that's why we're OK with doing it to children and low-status adults.)
You can't afford autonomy until you're in your mid-twenties even if you actually want it; good jobs for high school students stopped being a thing coincident with the decline of North American manufacturing (both the US and Canada have this problem; Europe's solution is to make everything free but this doesn't solve the motivation problem).
So one of two things have to happen. Either the education bubble gets popped by some external force (maybe you have to justify spending on a degree to get a loan, or we just ban employers from asking about certifications other than 'has completed Grade 10' unless the job actually requires specialized training, or we start training individuals for trade work much earlier than we do now), or the economy undergoes a rapid expansion (typically a war).
Either of those things will go a long way to fixing society's social media problem: once you have a shortage of manpower, the power of society/employers shrinks and stupid videos captured of you have much less an effect when you are less replaceable. Social authoritarianism always coincides with economic decline- you don't get to infantilize an adult and assume it'll have no effect on their children.
If people are thriving they will be more productive, more receptive and more motivated. This is not controversial and by now well established in business practice, but it's pretty far down the list of what we endow our children and students. Of course the dean will say all these things, but they're platitudes and the money says otherwise. It's just not a priority.
As the current president would say, SAD.
All images, little content and no good way to really communicate. The heavy users I’ve known just endlessly scroll through images of attractive ‘influencers’, dogs, makeup ads, or just photos posted by friends (mostly using it to show off as mentioned in the article).
While Facebook will have discussion and links to interesting articles depending on your network, Instagram doesn’t seem to have much of that.
I have a bias though because out of all the social apps I find it to be incredibly banal and boring.
If you read comments here, you will find a few people who lost their significant others, because they got too many friends from Instagram and irreversibly changed!
That’s a rather serious claim to make without a source to back it up. What makes you think that reading is more “benign” than social media?
And people are doing different activities on their phone including games and reading news or whatever they want.
It's a no-brainer why more people are depressed. From increasing environmental concerns including global warming, to violence and conflict, and a myriad of domestic issues that we can't not be aware of any more. I remember a time when I lived in a small town and was very incubated from the world's problems. That incubation no longer exists.
When I'm sitting on the train I'm studying the people and things that I see around me, trying to look for the poetry in everyday life. I'm a songwriter but the approach works just as well with a travel set of watercolors and a sketchbook for the more visually inclined.
I have never seen good art being made by people who spend their time confusing Instagram for reality. If you have I would question wether you have the ability to recognize good from bad art. You must learn how to read before you can appreciate a good novel and the same applies to understanding other forms of art.
Good art will have a profound effect. It will literally give your life meaning and purpose. It will change the way you think about your society and your role in it.
Bad art is consumed like a fast-food hamburger. It might be superficially entertaining in the moment but will leave you feeling worse off after a few hours.
Good art doesn't need to appeal to the art critic or the marketplace but it must leave a deep satisfaction in the hearts and minds of those that take the time to appreciate it.
https://www.rsph.org.uk/about-us/news/instagram-ranked-worst...
Also merely photographing someone else's art doesn't quite count as being an artist. That's just cheap mimicry.
Books and newspapers have the power to enrich the mind with knowledge. Writing a book requires dedication and thought out arguments.
Apps are designed to get you hooked on rewards. Twitter allows people to communicate with each others, but if its just garbage coming out, then it does more harm than good. Look at the president.
Books are like fruits and vegetables. Apps are sugary drinks.
You may have an idealized notion of books.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_magazine
There are literally tons of junk books out there.
The internet is an amazing tool to connect with people. It's also an tool for marketers and corporations to mediate friendships, romantic relationships, and consumption of media in ways that are far more effective and inescapable than anything that came before it.
One more note. I find it a bit disturbing that among my peers this is not really a discussed or considered social issue. A lot for teens just accept it as it it without any realization. It would nice to see my peers accept a different attitude to social media. Not necessarily shunning it completely but at least having a realistic understanding of the role it can play on their lives.
It's not that IG is intellectually inferior to how people entertained themselves back in the day, it's that it's qualitatively different, in some disturbing ways. What used to be shameless (innocent!) diversion and escapism has morphed into an odd kind of media that requires everyone to produce content, content that everyone knows in their bones, one way or another, broadcasts the quality of their lives and their person into the ether. Creating such content is arguably more intellectually demanding than consuming that crime novel, not less, but it's also exhausting and anxiety producing. The commute or checkout line is no longer a quick and simple respite.
I don't think social media is making people dumb or brainless as people thought tv would back in the day. Rather, it's making the average person smarter in a very 21st century kind of way - savvy, harried, and insecure - overworked brand managers.
Although it would suck if they did the same thing at home.
I mean if you're using your phone during a dinner with loved ones or friends, that's something else. But commutes are pretty universally despised.
All in all, I think a growing awareness of the worlds problems and their individual struggles to be in a position for themselves is a pretty good reason for teenagers to feel more anxious and depressed.
That reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of economics. While there are indeed predatory business models where this is true - casinos etc. - most highly successful people and businesses become successful by creating value, not siphoning it from others.
Would you prefer that they starve to death because they have no work? I assure you, that's worse than working at Foxconn.
The adolescent here could be observing a short term trend relative to an underlying bigger picture. People are competitive by nature and the modern information age may be amplifying this for them, at least in perception.
[1] http://www.inscc.utah.edu/~tgarrett/Economics/Physics_of_the... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_heat
> that their success in this society will rely on using and stepping on others who will now have less as a result, if not in their own community then in the international stage.
by saying that if the teenager in question properly understood economics they would understand that "most... businesses become successful by creating value, not siphoning it from others" and therefore not hold the opinion in that quote.
Your reading of the teenager's statement is, it seems, willfully narrow. It's true that if most businesses simply screwed their customers, they wouldn't survive long, with the exceptions that you mention. But I'm sure that's not what the kid in question meant, teenagers these days are smart cookies. They know that you can treat your customers well while screwing them sneakily (productize their data), screwing their community (use market dominance to force suppliers to lower prices, thereby accelerating offshoring and killing jobs), screwing some other community (locking in cheap resource contracts by bribing weak governments and thus fanning corruption), and the list goes on and on like that.
> attends one of the best schools in the nation
um, what?
I get this feeling if you don't go to one of the best schools in the nation - like me - but I'd be very surprised to see the same attitude at Harvard or Stanford.
Those guys are so happy!
My wife has a hole deep inside her from years of childhood abuse. She has no career, is early 20s like myself, and has yet to figure herself out.
As the months went by, she filled that hole more and more with her connections on IG and less with our family/relationship. Her follower count grew from a few hundred to 10,000. She started spending more and more time taking videos for her followers.
It got to the point where I would come home from work, ask how her day was, she’d say “fine.” And then about an hour later or later that night, there would be a multi paragraph long post of hers about her day. She put more effort into her relationship with IG than she did with us. It makes sense, I mean shit, every single post she would get hundreds of comments saying all sorts of nice things. I tried to keep up. But IG filled that hole in her heart much faster than I could.
Keep in mind we weren’t just some random marriage. We were best friends for a year before we even started dating.
She decided she is “pansexual” and “polyamorous” and no longer wanted to be “tied down”. She refused to leave me because I pay all the bills. So I suffered for a few months while she brought home different people. Eventually I got my own apartment and walked out.
Even though I technically walked out at the end, she left me mentally long ago. She now spends all her free time with her IG cliques instead of getting a job or going to school...or anything worthwhile really. Just more photoshoots. More posting. More spending.
She doesn’t have an remorse or regret to her. She thinks she is on the path to her greatness, blah blah blah, monogamy is ownership, all these things she just keeps repeating from memes she reads from “woke” accounts. Fake facts and stats from “sources” that are just anonymous accounts posting bullshit. Millenials (my generation) browse this shit, read it, and believe it without any doubt in their heads. Meanwhile I’m paying about ~$4k a month in just rent and car bills for her. Not including anything else.
OH and did I mention - the main girls she hangs out with from IG, 4 of them, are ALL going through divorces in the past two months. 4 of them. And they don’t see any connection between them. Either they are lying to my face and have some sort of secret pact going on to be single...or that’s some seriously strong groupthink right there.
Social media echo chambers are real.
Edit - I left out this private details because I originally deemed it unnecessary to share, but I think it might explain why I’m being so “nice”. She thinks she’s lesbian, or bi. She’s been bringing home women. She has a girlfriend now. If it was guys then yeah I think it would be easier to just be all pissed off. But the fact that it’s women, rational or not, for some reason makes it more confusing for me to deal with. Sorry for leaving this out.
Thank you for all the feedback and advice. All if it is extremely helpful.
The funny thing is that the IG clique she’s in is ALL stay at home moms...being a mother is a big part of their identity. The irony that they are all completely not present in their realities with their children is totally lost on them. You really couldn’t write this shit.
I would think (not sure) that one significant contributing factor in psychological harm to children in context of divorce is the undermining of notions of love, loyalty. And I would think being front row observers of instability in human relations is also damaging to young ones.
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My sincere condolences to OP regarding this awful situation, but please consider if continuing this situation will in fact have the same (if not worse) adverse effects on your little loved ones as a divorce.
You also mentioned your so-called-wife has broken relations with her parents. What about your parents? It is critically important that FAMILY love, fealty, support is demonstrated to your children.
Often nothing at all.
Have you thought of what you'll do when she hits reality and comes back begging for forgiveness?
And 4K just for bills. Not including the every-other-day $200 trip to Whole Foods for shit to juice.
You need to talk to a psychologist.
He has already made several fatal moves:
1. Left the marital home which the courts will consider abandonment. She just won legal custody.
2. He is paying her $4K or whatever a month without any judicial order. None of this will count towards future spousal or child support - instead it is a gift that establishes her minimum financial need.
3. He is (probably) not documenting, down to the minute, the time he spends with his child. Again, there goes custody.
4. The next call from the playbook will be to get him for domestic violence. As the man, it is absolutely irrelevant if there is proof or not (see the Duluth Model). He's not recording every interaction with her, though he should be.
If you do nothing else, start reading: http://forum.mensdivorce.com/viewforum.php?f=12
I left the home because she kept asking me to stop sleeping in my own bed so her girlfriend could sleep there with her. I endured that for months. What else was I supposed to do? I’m not going to make the mistake of becoming physical, nor do I have the reactionary desire to.
I’m going to contact a lawyer today.
1. His wife was bringing home lovers to have sex with in the marital bed while he was home. He was not okay with this and asked her to stop and she became violent, combatant, abusive and irrational, yelling, screaming, throwing things in front of their child.
2. He is paying for his child to live in his house. He has asked his wife to surrender their child to him and she has refused, saying she wants to raise the child in a commune with other pansexual stay-at-home house wives.
3. He has reconstructed down to the minute all the time he has spent with his wife, and all of the mistakes and problems his wife has had with him. He has cell phone logs and text messages which corroborate this, as well as GPS locations.
4. I suspect that recently, while he's talking with his wife about how to amicably separate and take care of their child, his wife will physically attack him and he will call the police and show him the bruises.
I hope you’ve re-read what you yourself wrote here and realize how ridiculous it is.
I urge you to take some people’s advice here and talk to a lawyer immediately, start cutting her off of her privilege, and stop enabling her actions.
You’re doing her harm, you’re doing your kid harm, and you’re doing yourself harm. You’re not helping anyone in this situation by letting it go on like this and the soooner you recognize that, the better.
In fact, you’re making the situation worse with some of your actions. Talk to a lawyer. Talk to a lawyer. Talk to a lawyer. I can’t say it enough.
But I mean seriously. I didn’t ask for this so I still love/d her. Tell the person you love, the mother of your child, that you’re done putting a roof over their head. It’s hard. I know that’s no excuse. I need to grow a pair. But fuck. It’s hard.
The reality is that you’re contributing to your wife and kid’s long term demise even though in the short term you feel like and think you are helping them.
I can’t understand how difficult this situation is for you, but realizing that you are not helping at all with your money or your actions seems an important step to mentally take.
Think about the long term implications, not your short term attachments.
Read about the perspectives of children who had to suffer trough broken marriages where the parents stayed together for the kid. Nearly all of the kids say it would have been better if their parents had just broken up instead of keeping the facade going and fostering a toxic environment.
Send me an email (it's on my profile) and I will send you a couple of materials to help you cope with that kind of life situation.
Stay strong.
And agreed. Makes me wonder how many are struggling out there with something similar. Tons I’m sure. Not only on a romantic level, but in all types of friendships and relationships. Social media is not helping our shallow human tendencies.
"Early 20s" seems to be the major problem here. Not everybody wants to settle down at this age
Except if she wasn’t sure she didn’t want to settle down...she shouldn’t have. We didn’t have kids until after we were married. And even still I’m younger than her and I prefer being “settled down” or whatever you want to call it. She betrayed the commitment we had without ending it first. She tried to have her cake and eat it too.
As you have said, she had a void that needed to fill and a very difficult past to deal with. Being sure about what ones want is not that easy in that scenario. She probably got engaged with you hoping that you could fill that gap or simply because it could bring some stability to her life.
I don't blame you for having tough thoughts about her. You'll need a thick skin to get out of that relationship but it's not as simple as saying "if she wasn’t sure she didn’t want to settle down...she shouldn’t have".
Are you forced by the courts to pay her that $4K+/month? Because it would probably be better (not only for you, which is obvious, but for her) if you didn't.
I pay for her because honestly I’m scared of the lifestyle my child will live. She doesn’t work. She makes no money. She would be on the streets honestly. Doesn’t speak to either of her parents.
I recently emptied our joint bank account save $100. She flipped. Every time I cut her off more she gets more and more spiteful. So I’m in the process of cutting the lease on her house. Of selling the car. It’s just gonna take time, but I’m trying to avoid the court as well. Not that I have done literally anything wrong - I’m not scared of a judge ruling anything in her favor. I just want to avoid any chance of being in that situation though. Seeing I have about a lot more per year more to lose than she does...
Hiring a lawyer isn't something you'll regret for years, not doing so on the other hand...
I would admonish that you get a lawyer ASAP and talk out your options. This needs to be handled legally before someone does something they regret.
The early childhood abuse, unstable relationships and “the void” seem like a strong fit.
One possibly good outcome is she has no access to your finances and you stay married. That way no court orders you to do anything.
Definitely recommend spend $1k with a divorce attorney to see your options.
If she'd be on the streets, that's her choice. Give her an ultimatum and let her live with the consequences.
Thanks for the advice. Going to seek those options.
You can always decide to be more generous later, but let that be your decision, not hers or some disinterested third party that will assume that you went on living this way because you consented.
Think it's really important to get involved in a local community where you can forge high-quality long-term relationships with emotionally healthy people whenever you move to a new place. Loneliness can kill you otherwise. For me, it'd usually be a church where I can focus on developing myself personally and spiritually, as well as bonds with others in a really non-judgmental environment. Realize that's not for everyone, and that many people actually experience church to be a very judgmental place. Sorry to anyone who's been through that.
Sounds like you're still supporting her financially. Don't know if you're hoping to get her back, or if you've given up and cut her loose. It's possible that the only thing you can do is cut her loose at this point because you're only acting as an enabler. I am not a psychologist. Wish you well. edit: realize from the other comments, maybe alimony is involved. If so, very sorry to hear. IANAL, but that sounds like a really raw deal where you should consult a lawyer, if that's the case?
And no, no alimony. No court order. Just trying to figure out how to cut her off in the right way. We are used to a pretty lavish lifestyle and honestly I just feel bad for her. I need to not.
Except the one sided polygamy thing, that is plain old cheating. Through, I don't get why you did not divorced? You would still have to play for children, unless you fight to have them with you (or dual care), but chances are it would be less then you pay now. She is in early 20s you say, so it is not like she would be really dependent on your money cause she sacrificed career or something. Frankly, it sounds like the best thing for her would be for you to stop paying her bills.
And I hear you, but - I work from home. When I said “come home from work” I just meant it like...end of the day. I don’t know why I still use that phrase. Sometimes I go work at coffee shops or something, so then I’ll come home. Sure maybe I’m not as present, since I am working, but she has it so much better than so many others out there..
I’ve worked from home for years. She’s had me home. I help with our child. I cooked dinner. I did the chores. It wasn’t like she was even the only stay at home parent...
I haven’t gotten divorced yet because I hold onto that vision of her coming back and begging for forgiveness. But I should know that’s not going to happen. And even if it did, after all this, idk if I could even take her back. I should probably just file...
If you by the end of your home work have to ask how was the day and then are surprised over those Facebook details, then there is not much difference against being at work from the relationship standpoint. I don't mean it as blame you, just that this would factor in into relationship social network present or not.
But you know, that does not explain polygamy part still. Not your fear of child being used against you.
I’ve been going to therapy for 2 months now independently. We did one appointment together. She cancelled her follow up.
We agreed to go to counseling together over a year ago but she just never followed through, even when I tried to.
You are contributing to her horrific lifestyle. You need to cut everything off. There is no other way to save her and yourself.
Its hard to effectively choose for someone you care so deeply about, to suffer. Even if they need it badly.
But for a few years, he's probably on the hook for half his income since she was stay-at-home with no career.
I know you're hurting. I've felt it. Sometimes it feels like the end of the world. But nothing happy will come from vilifying her or blaming her. She might feel like she had to look out for herself. It's the only life she'll ever get.
If she's truly polyamorous, then that means there is space for you too, you know. You just have to attract her.
But you should ask yourself if you really want that. She's a different person than the idea of her you're clinging to. Do you love her? Or are you afraid of being alone?
If you love her, and you want to pursue it, realize you might still lose her. But one chance is to wait for her to finish exploring whatever she wants to explore, and then see if she comes back. Keep in touch and try to talk about something real, something deep. Without arguing. Let her have a voice.
It's not enough to pay someone's bills. They're a person. And one step towards a healthy relationship is to shed the "if I do X for you, then you do Y for me" mindset. It's poisonous, at least in my own life. Maybe it's different for other people.
Best of luck. If you want to chat, shoot me an email.
Trust me. If she was just bills to me - I would have stopped paying a long time ago. We shared a deep deep connection. Why do you think I got married so young?
Do you think she'd be willing to go to couple's therapy? It's very expensive but it can be worth it.
If you're ever looking for someone to just listen, let me know.
I have been trying to get her into couples counseling or even just individual counseling for over a year. She just never makes it happen. I started counseling individually 2 months ago. She came to 1 session, I booked her a follow up, but she cancelled it. She has theoretically agreed to couple counseling in the past, but now couldn’t be bothered.
She thinks her IG friends are her counselors, starting the echo chamber cycle.
I made a few different calls this morning and setup an appointment with a lawyer later this week to sit down and get everything better sorted.
I started talking to a couple of my friends more about it and they have been surprisingly supportive of me, calling me, etc. Not feeling as alone as when I wake up at 3am and realize I'm all alone, which I'm not used to, but at least I know I'm sadly not alone in that boat and can relate to others.
Thanks again for reaching out. I'll shoot you an email.
Just try to remember, it's temporary.
As someone who is living a non~monogamous lifestyle, I want to chime in about that aspect. When two people are in a monogamous relationship and one person decides/discovers that they want to open it up, they don’t get to just do that to their partner. It is still not consensual if they never got informed, non-coerced consent. It needs to involve lots of talking (much more than simply saying “I’m doing this now”), it may need to involve marriage counseling, and it absolutely needs to be done with love. The label “polyamory” in particular designates multiple meaningful, loving relationships, I.e. not just bringing people home, especially if you as her first partner aren’t cool with it. That ain’t polyamory, or any kind of consensual non~monogamy, because her actions are not taking your well-being into account, so if she’s calling it that then she’s fooling herself. (This still applies even if you agreed to try it out and it became clear that it didn’t work for you and you told her as much.)
Opening up an existing relationship is not an easy change to make, and it requires both partners to be on board, and it is absolutely fine for you to know that that’s not your relationship style and that you don’t want to continue a relationship with someone who has decided that it is hers. There is no need to feel bad about discovering that you are incompatible with each other and going your separate ways. I’m sorry that she didn’t know or care enough to handle the situation constructively though, that’s extra pain that could have been avoided.
It’s a shitty situation but you can bounce back from it. I was 29 when I got out of my bad relationship. That was 6 or 7 years ago now and I’ve been enjoying life more than ever! Just make sure to spend time taking care of yourself, and don’t be afraid to ask people for help when you need it. Best of luck to you.
I did see a picture where we are happy in an open marriage. But not even close to the one that she is painting right now - the one she has gathered from the influence of IG influencers. And she has let me know many times she is not stopping.
Thanks for your insight.
Social media can't be responsible for that.
At least you didn't have kids. My sister's friend (a man) was married to a woman who left him for another woman. Two kids from the 6 year marriage. There was no "social media" element to the story. Sometimes people just change or snap, and is most likely because they get married too young in the first place.
Another person I know, a man, got married to his girlfriend - they'd been together for about 4 years and were happy. Big expensive wedding. Less than 12 months later he left her for another woman. Again, social media not involved at all. Just human relations.
And we have one child.
It sounds like you've been a good husband to her. Women don't forget good treatment, even you feel like it's not being recognized. If she was abused by a man, it's possible she sees all men as villains, including you, as a consequence of the trauma, and that's not your fault.
You have to take care of yourself first. Put on your oxygen mask before helping others, etc. But it's obvious you still care about her and that's commendable.
Don't rely on forums like this for advice. People here tend to be bitter and antisocial. Stick with the therapy. It sounds like you are emotionally dependent on her, and that's not helping. If your therapist isn't helping you, try another one. Your goal should be fixing you. Not her.
Also: you keep mentioning how you work from home. If you do get back together (which it sounds like you won't, but stranger things have happened), do yourself a favor and get an on-site job. Your relationship will improve instantly.
Messenger is a really useful tool to stay connected. Pretty much everyone I know is available there, so using it is a net positive for me. Can't say the same about the news feed itself.
(I know that the article isn't talking about Facebook in particular, but I just thought this is worth sharing.)
Super weird to see that we're coming full circle; it used to be that you had to install a special app to chat with your friends, same as it ever was today ..
I can’t imagine what world you live in where this is a realistic options. I couldn’t even persuade my tech friends to do this, let alone my wider friend group who work in different fields.
I would say the only part of the FB ecosystem I cannot leave yet is Messenger. I could quit using Instagram more or less easily. But losing access to quickly have a word with my closest friends and family is something I cannot do.
If there was a way to communicate with my best friends and family without having to be a prisoner of some large MNC's ecosystem, I could leave FB completely.
I fully agree. I use messenger more than texting. Peoples phone #'s or email addresses might change but Facebook stays constant. This tool's especially useful on Android, where my iPhone friends are hesitant to text me bc of the dreaded green texts.
Instead of TV, with its advertisements being broad and un-targeted, people are building their own hell by searching for what they want. Then the machines learn get an idea what they want, and show it to them. Part of the nature of advertising is convincing people they need these things, otherwise they will be "out" (old, poor, unpopular, etc.).
Instead of maybe one ad in an hour (or a day) triggering you, you're bombarded with reminders of what could be, if you could afford it. Of course the promises are unrealistic and easily broken, but I don't think most people have the mental tools to realize that at the time.
There's all this great positive content out there too! Educational videos, science, all that. But it seems the impact of bad things outweighs the good, which just seems to be human nature - we regret things a lot more than we are thankful for what we do not regret. Even if they aren't selling anything to us.
It's true that we're comparing across the world now, and there will be someone better than you. But that's almost always been true, although for a lot of the time you didn't know who was better, or they were simply some distant name written in a book, easily forgotten. For example, I think few will rival Aristotle, but nobody seems to care about that.
Fear and regret are powerful motivators, but dangerous ones as well. If you can't act for some reason (lack of money, lack of opportunity/ability) it just seems to gnaw at you until you snap. I don't think it's any different than TV, except now amplified via personalization.
My grandfather has slowly been slipping into a deep depression. Not trying to slap correlations with a causal label, but man oh man how he has started to rely on social media.
To continue being anecdotal: getting rid of my Facebook has (after a few years) greatly helped me feel butter (intentional typo, you betcha).
Before recorded music, getting to hear a performance was an event in itself. I can only imagine it was savored. Now, the constant, high-speed bombardment of new music has made our tastes fickle and cheapened the experience. It's not "bad", but it has changed that part of being a person.
We've done it to everything. Food, film, clothing, books, and social interaction. These things we criticize are just specific symptoms of the overall trend, but I can't imagine a scenario where it doesn't happen. It's an unavoidable outcome of our increasing the pace and availability of things. Again, not even sure it's bad, it just feels weird. I don't know how you scale a civilization any other way.
As you get older, it's common to think of yourself as having been born "too late" for something, and I try to be mindful of that tendency. However, it's one thing to lament not being able to be a cowboy, it's another to wistfully look back on life having any manageable pace.
I have felt this myself having for a period followed the 'it' group in my city. These people were in the best clubs, restaurants, yachts, holiday destinations almost all the time surrounding by beautiful and what appears to be interesting people. Hard not to feel deprived when your monkey mind perceives that as somewhat normal. Despite a very, very small number of people who have this lifestyle, there are enough for this type of life to appear pervasive.
In the past our exposure to this subset of people was extremely limited. Fashion and gossip magazines would do profiles giving a small glimpse into the world. Generally the incredible lives some people have was hidden.
I think it is probably best not to be frequently reminded of a lifestyle that is likely out of your reach. If one thinks not obtaining this lifestyle is a failure (work on this thought if you do!), don't reopen the wound several times a day.
Not mention how often these displays of a better person/better life are exaggerations or straightforward lies.
So is it (just) comparison? "Everyone else's life is amazing / I'm the only one who's faking it."
What about unhealthy levels of screen usage in general? Do kids who play video games instead of going outside/socializing face-to-face feel the same way (to some extent)?
Maybe media (news/commentary) intake through these services contributes? We all have our echo chambers of ever-spiraling outrage at the Evil of the Other Side -- does this add to feeling powerless, or that the future is hopeless? Certainly aren't being exposed to reasoned debate...
Broader, do our modern technologies now allow more complete, socially acceptable escape from 'real life'? And the further we get from non-virtual interactions with _anything_ the more ill we become?
I don't understand. "Ignorance is bliss" surely can't be an antidote to depression.
When you're feeling depressed or anxious, being bombarded with a feed of artificially happy people only makes you more depressed or anxious.
Being free is better than acting busy.
Imagine if you were actually doing something on your phone, somewhat important or necessary in some way. And you found out the person near you was assuming you were pretending, that you were acting, in other words you are fake. Not very nice of them to assume that is it?
First of all, the feed/timeline/wall delivery system of information delivery must have some play in this. On instagram, I follow friends, family, coworkers, artists, creators, meme curators, technical brands, etc. They all deliver very different content, but I’m generally exposed to them in the same feed. So while I scroll through my feed, I do so much context switching that I get attention-motion sickness. I enjoy the post as I scroll though but I don’t retain anything. I could scroll through hundreds of posts in just a few minutes, and I’ll hardly remember any of what I’ve seen. It’s like an exercise in half paying attention, or an exercise of forgetting. But, we do it every single day, all the time. The information highway has gone from an open platform for sharing to a fast lane of content mixed with brands and ads shooting right through my conscious.
Then, we have the nerve to call it social. Yes, there’s a lot to say about the amount of connectivity these platforms have given us. But they’ve also changed the conversation we have. Sure, when I directly interact with people on these platforms, I’m doing something kinda social. But you know what’s not social? Staring at, or talking to a wall. No matter who has wiped their shit on it. I’m no biologist, but I know humans have mirror neurons which fire when interacting with other humans/things. So, we have a mechanism(s) in the body that respond to actual face to face interaction. How does an abstraction of technology interact with those mechanisms? I can only assume that the iPhone does not account for this in their UX meetings.
It is a little silly to me to assume that the staggering rates of depression and suicide come from reflection on the content these kids are seeing on social media. Social media, when used as designed, does not offer the time to reflect.
(I want to say that there are obvious other dangerous aspects of social media that may lend themselves to dangerous behavior as a result of reflection, such as obsession and stalking, bullying, etc)
Now enter the internet on top of this and it's a perfect storm. The media loves stories, however fake they may often be, of wunderkind 11 year old creates nuclear reactor in basement during downtime between giving violin solos at Carnegie Hall and solving world hunger. And the image crafting of social media only further adds to all of this.
Most people are not special, and that is okay. Even when I was young this sort of treating everybody as special had already started to seep into education. The anecdote of Einstein failing at math in high school was one that came up more than a couple of times. Of course he didn't. His response to that rumor, perhaps started by a misunderstanding of a grade change scale, was a laugh and comment that he never failed in math and statement that before he was fifteen he'd mastered differential and integral calculus. It's similar with efforts to posthumously diagnose him with various sorts of disabilities, or even attributing, in part, his success to his wife who failed to achieve a teaching certification -- unable to pass the mathematics component, she gave up after two attempts.
Ultimately I think we should treat nobody as special. And require people prove it through their own deeds. There should be every possible opportunity for anybody to achieve such merit, but people should not be expected to be special. It's simply unrealistic and, even if it may make us (as in the parents and teachers creating this facade) feel better about ourselves, I don't think it's achieving the intended effect.
When you see someone who is popular and successful, the normal and healthy response is admiration and inspiration. If you fail to have your own wins of some kind, then this could be the source of unhappiness, but that is because you didn't have a win, not because others did.
The latter two examples being poor examples, but yet, there are products/services all around us which manipulate our mind. I have always been keen on building something, a product or service, something morally and ethically just - no advertisements, no gimmicks, etc. I.e. Spotify should have a optional pop-message say: "You have been listening to music for five hours. You should let your ears rest and make some pumpkin pie." Or from Netflix: "You have just watched the entire season of two shows. You should really go lay under a tree in a park and eat some grapes." Again, the latter two examples are not likely, they are dream-like features but this is what I dictate to be a movement towards more healthy products/services to which we need.
In modern day, we must then be extra aware of what we consciously consume and put in our head day in and day out in our everyday life. We might even decipher if this is what we want to consume, if it is healthy, if it is the way we want to lead our lives. The latter being an approach I took to deciding to stop: watching, reading, and listening to the news, bookmarking countless of articles I find (Pocket, the bookmarking saving tool, is particularly overwhelming), sticking to just a few websites I regularly visit, not using/having any social media account, etc.
Above all, I'll finish this comment off with two of my favorite quotes and a video about everyday virtue that I think is appropriate in regard to the article and something teenagers should come to know:
Thomas Merton: "The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds.”
Andrei Tarkovsky from Sculpting in Time: “Modern mass culture, aimed at the 'consumer', the civilisation of prosthetics, is crippling people's souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of his existence, his consciousness of himself as a spiritual being.”
Everyday Virtue, an analysis of the independent film Paterson with support from ideas of David Foster Wallace (it's about awareness, normal and ordinary everyday life, etc): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnGvWTRQ9j4
That said, I believe that once addicted to social media, the bubble of safety that we feel from "eating social junk food". The screen bubble, can become alluring and some people fall into it. I remember at the Prague hackerspace, how we'd all be sitting around the table, and I'd be confused, why people were laughing and interacting without words. It was a while till I realized that they were chatting on IRC.
Though I think the hacker space example is not bad, the technology helped people come together, and brought them closer (at least initially)
I think that this is a relatively new phenomena, which occurred during the urbanization caused by the industrial revolution. Urbanization caused social bonds to be broken, and people became unhappy and hard working.
There is a super creepy tshirt from one startup I know, which has the text "the pyramids were not built by happy people". I've always wanted to ask them about what this means. But I've never had the nerve.
But it has always haunted me.
I’m now reading Marx’s “Grundrisse” and at some point, while he has just started explaining the essence of capital, he mentions the story of an English priest who on visiting the island of Jamaica complains that everyone in there is lazy, that they don’t want to work more in order to achieve more in life than just obtaining their daily food, and that was the way to disaster. When asked by said English priest on why they were working just enough to put some food on the table the Jamaicans answered him that there’s no reason for them to work more than strictly necessary, they’re happy with what they have.
Marx’s book was written in the 1850s so that I reckon that the English priest’s story dates from the early to the mid-1800s, i.e. when the Industrial Revolution was on full throttle in Britain.
That is my real concern - nobody lives a perfect life or is perfectly happy as a teenager. But you take action to find a better life, and grow in those years, on multiple levels, and come out of it having developed into the person you will really be. So who will these kids be who spent those formative years staring at devices? I really don't know... is it just a new flavor of the same growth, or will it be different?
Call me oldschool.. I'm just 43 and I still have that split second confusion every time I see someone speak aloud in the metro or tram here with their glassy stare, looking in front of them, while speaking to apparently no one. Every god damn time I'm like "(0.3 seconds) OH..."
But am I not wrong. I don't need to "understand" anything. My body is that through which I know myself and everything else. All of what we call "reality" is experienced through, and as, a body.
If anything technology should honor, and augment that instead of dissociating us.
In the UK we have 'silent carriages' on trains but after a while the 'loud and impolite' people started to realise there was little or no enforcement so, although we still have them, they are pretty much redundant.
In Spain (where I'm living now) there seems to be a class divide (much more in the UK) regarding etiquette for loud talking and phone conversations. Local busses and trains can be sheer hell yet longer distance services and flights tend to be quite civilised.
Humans evolved in environments that usually involved absorbing a limited amount of fairly stable information, and dealing with communities of limited size (say, less than 100?), also fairly stable. Now we have to process thousands of faces (some in person, some through media), millions of pieces of information (news, commercials, trivia, education, business emails, social media feeds) and thousands of different micro-skills (learn the latest feature in smartphones, adapt to your bank changing its electronic banking policies, based on latest research now you need to learn to look for a low-carcinogen version of your favorite food, etc.)
I wonder whether this is what's causing many people to zone out, some to retreat into private shells and a few to resort to senseless armed violence...
Meanwhile school homework gets more and more ridiculous and children get medicated with who knows what kind of psychoactive substances because they cannot deal with it, but no, that's not the cause of teenager mental health problems.
Parents need to adjust their expectations, or the kids are caught between a rock and a hard place. The school won't show mercy.
I guess this is very specific to the US phenomenon explained in the article.
In my German schooling history, cheating the homework was trivial and well established. Everyone got the degree and it was a running gag that grades are inflated. If you fail you can just switch systems and do the degree somewhere else; no hard feelings. If you don't want to switch (because let's say you can't get another school to take you in the area and want to continue to live with your parents) there is a second educational path (zweiter Bildungsweg) which allows you do retry to get the degree.
From my perspective, the pressure I was feeling was entirely self-made and - in retrospective - unnecessary.
Therefore: I would love to see evidence whether or not those findings get approved in other educational systems like in the German speaking countries.