To be fair, it's not new (only magnified).
I remember a kid in highschool in the 90's. He was the best in our entire highschool at math. Any math contest in our school, he would win it.
He go accepted into Aerospace engineering at an elite university. Suddenly, his math skills were only mediocre compared to his new peers. He became depressed after this. He was always the "math guy"... now what is he?
That was in the 90's.
> I remember a kid in highschool in the 90's. He was the
> best in our entire highschool at math. Any math contest
> in our school, he would win it.
A lot of us were "the smart kids" until at some point when we found ourselves in an environment where we were surrounded by other people just like us when suddenly we were very average or even below average.
There's also the related phenomenon, where a smart kid NEVER moves on to an environment where they are intellectually challenged and they develop an ego problem.
We all know somebody like this, right? You know: smart kid slacks his way through high school. Doesn't do college or work his way into some kind of career. Winds up working some menial job where he's a super genius compared to his coworkers, so he winds up thinking he's a super genius.
SUPER common problem among anybody who was able to do well in school with little effort at some point
Another thing I noticed at university was "improvers syndrome". When I took up some new sport or hobby, I always thought I wasn't progressing very well, because I was comparing myself to the people around me who were all improving too. It was only at the start of a new year when lots of newbies arrived that I realised how much I had progressed.
This was told to us as well, with a reminder that some of us never had to do much work in high school -- this was about to change. There were multiple people who just didn't know how to study any more, and dropped out.
Personally, I almost gave up programming in university when I saw there are others who are so much better than me, thinking I'm missing some innate gift they had. I'm glad I soon realized that I'm actually one of the better ones anyway, just not the absolute top of the class I was used to being in my small home town.
> Suddenly, his math skills were only mediocre compared to his new peers. He became depressed after this.
With a fixed mindset, you think your ability is static and so it can get you down when you stop being at the top.
With the growth mindset you know that your ability is not static and can get better with effort. Think of the opportunity he had to learn from his new peers.
Hopefully he got over the depression.