Record levels of sadness in teen girls, CDC reports
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Taking into account my friends/acquaintances that I'm familiar with their kids, so a sample of probably about 25ish teen girls. There is a big correlation of social media/cell phone access and issues.
Bullying, exposed to adult content, comparing yourself to others, drama, all have one consistent source, social media and cell phone apps. Personally, I don't allow social media, and my kids don't have cell phone access. They're in a very tiny minority compared to their peers. To me the benefits of this far outweigh any drawbacks.
I'm not saying that bullying doesn't happen outside social media, or anything like that, however, there definitely seems to be a heavy correlation between cell phone use and general teen angst. My girls, a small sample of two, seem to not have the same issues their peers have.
I strongly recommend evaluating the use of cell phones with your children for their own mental and emotional well-being. It has actually made me use social media a lot less because of it.
How is this working out? I assume your kids must have healthy social lives and don't feel left out, otherwise you'd have reconsidered. My kids will get to device-using age someday and I'd love to do something similar with mine. But am somewhat amazed that parents can enforce this even at the teenager stage.
They also have access to Youtube using my old phone. However, I have very clear rules about Youtube, which I can share if someone is curious. Finally, they have Amazon tablets with parental settings for their age group, and pretty much everything disabled except for books and kid apps.
I'm explaining all of this so people can understand that they have access to some electronics. Basically, I have covered some electronic needs that they have like music, watching an occasional video, play video games.
One of the advantages is by having specific devices for specific things I know what they are doing without having to watch over them.
Youtube is the biggest exposure my kids have. I have my account logged in, so I can see what they watch, they know this. With no adult settings. Moreover, there is only one time they are allowed to watch Youtube it's an hour and all 4 of them take turns. This has actually created something I didn't expect, it forces them to find common videos they can all enjoy, or they just won't watch at specific days that the videos are "boring".
If I look at the history and find a problematic video I will set expectations, reminders and sometimes I outright block certain channels. What's interesting is now that they have been doing this for a few years they monitor themselves. I hear them say "we can't watch that, find a different video".
To answer the other part of the question of do they "healthy social lives". They do. I actually thing social media gives you a false sense of socializing. "Look at all the friends / likes I have". Instead, my kids actually talk to other kids or play. My oldest is more into hang out, draw, listen to music kind of thing. Overall, my wife is really social by nature, she has what I call people magic, so my kids have learned to emulate that. We coincidentally moved to a new house this year, within a week they had established multiple friends and befriended the entire neighborhood.
Boredom helps, we all try to avoid it like the plague, but being bored allows you to become more creative. My kids go outside more, it helps that I have 4 because they can play with each other if no one else is around.
I don't want to pretend my kids are perfect, and I am an amazing dad. They have faults, so do I, a lot of them. To me the key is setting clear expectations and explaining the why. The joke in my house is they will probably learn how to drive before they have a cellphone. Honestly that might happen.
The main gist is adult or unknown content is not OK. Video game, creative (draw, paint etc), educational videos are fine.
Of course, I have had to refine these rules as things came up.
No TikTok videos on Youtube (the inappropriate to OK videos ratio is way to hit)
No funny prank videos (because most of them are people being mean to others)
No scarry videos unless it's kid Halloween videos and all the kids are OK with watching it (remember they share one screen and take turns on deciding)
Funny animal videos are fine.
Music videos are fine if we have watched it already with them, if they are not sure add "lyrics" to the end of the song and watch the lyric version or ask us (they just opt for lyrics to avoid having to ask/waiting)
If someone uses naughty words once it can be ignored, if they do it a lot especially if the 6-year-old is watching it's an auto change and the youtuber to be avoided (We allow our kids to curse in their rooms if they wish, but not at each other, in public, school or people that might have a problem with it, like their grandparents)
No videos from random channels about boyfriend/girlfriend drama, unknown origin animations about love stories (ratio of inappropriate language, innuendo, sexism, misogyny, abuse is too high). Again, they can ask if they are not sure.
I think that's pretty much it. Every few days, mainly when I watch a youtube video (probably every 2-3 days) I will look at the history. If I find something borderline I will watch the video briefly, if there is a problem, I will explain what it was, if it turns out it was an OK video I will move on.
If I find problematic youtubers I will block them, this is rare, but it has happened. I also see what the Youtube algo suggests, if I see a suggestion that seems iffy, I will mark it as not interested so my kids won't be drawn to it. As time has progressed their feed has gotten cleaner, and they understand what they can and cannot watch better.
Oh, and another thing I have Youtube Premium to avoid ads, because for some reason Google allows some really weird advertisements for children at times. I basically replaced my Spotify subscription for this, and started listening to Google music.
I think both have a purpose and a place. However it's inherently obvious that things that are only short term satisfaction and the most dangerous, because you keep repeating the cycle.
For example liking memes is a short burst, a second later they are no longer relevant. For others it's shopping. You get a mini-high, but a few moments later that's gone. A lot of people seem to just keep pressing the button, get a droplet of happiness and press the button more time. That becomes a vicious cycle.
Essentially if your actions today are identical to tomorrow and nothing has changed, you are stuck in a loop. I'm not trying to argue that everyone needs to be hyper-productive all the time. What I'm talking about is if all your hobbies are consumption, you might be stuck.
D&D, which I play is different because you are doing it in a social setting. It's more like socializing with an excuse and a purpose, you get to exercise your creativity, imagination, you are actively using your mind. Passing things like watching youtube all day or drinking don't do that.
Social media is a convenient scapegoat. The media hates it with a passion since it completely disrupted their business model. And it allows people to completely ignore the fact that teenagers are increasingly under more and more stress with high stake testing, an increasingly competitive college admission process and increasingly grim prospects for economic mobility and long term environmental sustainability. But let's ignore all that and blame the "evil screens" and social media.
> comparing yourself to others, drama, all have one consistent source, social media and cell phone apps.
In 2018 "obesity prevalence was [...] 21.2% among 12- to 19-year-olds." [0] according to the CDC. That's one out of 5 being obese, not just overweight. And it has more than tripled since the 70's [1]. I have to wonder if it's related. A lot of teenagers are bombarded with images of perfectly healthy bodies that, quite simply, won't match what they see in the mirror.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity_child_15_16/obe...
Our oldest Teen would be happy, respectful involved in the family. Be allowed back on social media within a few days. She was rude, disrespectful depressed, and just sat in bed all day. We would take it away within a couple of days she was back to her old happy self.
Repeat this for several years. The entire time she insisted, I did not affect her.
As an adult now she stays off of it, and strongly discourages her sisters from using social media and regrets being on it.
Obviously life is much "easier" today from the perspective of material conditions, but why assume that this is a "good" thing?
Or maybe I'm just a delusional Teddy K fanboy who's sick of typing on a computer all day, day after day, year after year.
But on the topic of people being better off I would also disagree strongly: the wealthy were the wealthy, and still poorer today in everyway that matters. The King of France might've notionally had an army, but all his money in the world couldn't buy the inspiration, creativity or organizational skill which made indoor plumbing possible.
I have yet to see a national map of every area where the water isn't safe to drink, but I'd recommend checking cities in your area often and checking any place you plan on visiting because it rarely gets a lot of attention. I expect things to get even worse once we get federally enforced standards and rules for PFAS contamination.
Here are some recent examples:
https://www.25newsnow.com/2022/11/21/boil-order-large-portio...
https://calmatters.org/newsletters/whatmatters/2022/07/calif...
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/water-boil-order-issued-...
https://www.newsweek.com/florida-city-issues-boil-water-warn...
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/michigan/articles/20...
https://people.com/human-interest/boil-water-notice-lifted-i...
https://cdphe.colorado.gov/press-release/town-of-superior-is...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/21/lead-contami...
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/environment/ct-illinois-...
https://www.mynbc5.com/article/new-hampshire-town-forced-to-...
There is something to your comment of life being easier(and not necessarily being a good thing). Fruits and vegetables often grow the best harvests when they are challenged(wind, rain, etc...) and I think this is also reflective of the human condition. I'm not saying go to war tomorrow so you can experience hardship, but there are ways to make life more challenging so that when true challenges arise, one can be a little stronger. I think we are losing some of this grit today.
It would be helpful to be specific about what challenging behavior encourages grit or not. e.g. Going to the DMV does not improve my patience or make me a better person. To your point: What should we make challenging? Or better yet, how can we scale challenges to encourage grit?
Humans have limited energy and time resources to expend on being alive. We divert the energy spent on challenging things that don't matter to high-profile items, not necessarily better problems.
Conversely, what about the damages of going through too much challenge that you don't have the ability to meet? Does it always turn out OK after you've failed beyond belief? Is the ability to overcome challenges (beyond your basic day to day) even matter? SOME people might be able to improve the world by becoming resilient to challenge but MOST people will not affect the world in any way meaningfully in the long-term (even if they are a part of a team that does).
Grit is developed in part by hearing that little voice in your head that says “I don’t feel like doing this” and then going out and doing that thing. I wouldn’t necessarily expect others to lay out a curriculum for you to develop these types of things. It could be going for a mile run or helping a coworker on a Friday afternoon, it doesn’t have to be going on a 25 mile run every other day.
While improving the world could be an end result, the main driver is probably just to have a more manageable existence for oneself.
Lastly, it doesn’t always turn out okay, and knowing how to deal with that needs to be part of the toolbox.
Now I hate the word grit haha
Wander a graveyard from the 1800s and see how many very young children are listed on the headstones below their parents. How do we account for "a bunch of your kids are likely to die" in this metric?
It's easy to look with rose-hued glasses at the past and imagine an idylic pastoral lifestyle. The reality was quite a bit more complicated.
But that's not the question. The question is do those things make for greater human thriving and fulfillment? Increasing things that people find pleasurable does not necessarily have this effect. As a simple and extreme example, consider heroin.
I read a lot of old stuff, with a focus on anything I can find from regular people. I used to think like you do. I'm much less convinced nowadays that we've really made people's lives better in a meaningful, non-material way, excepting a very few examples that GP already alluded to (e.g., reduction in infant mortality, which accounts for virtually the entire life expectancy increase since 1850.)
The scientists and engineers that work insane hours at SpaceX are probably looking for something like that.
But in the past, for most people, life was merely a struggle to survive, that they lost sooner rather than later.
It's really hard to say what's "better" in any sort of objective and quantifiable way; but it seems to me that by making the basics of life very easy we've sort of lost something along the way.
After all, playing a game that's so easy that it doesn't provide any challenge isn't much fun either, right?
No, it doesn't, this is just one of those banal transcendental platitudes that gets repeated enough to where it sounds like it's some sort of objective truth. Like the one about how "life only has meaning because it is short and ephemeral". By that logic an aborted fetus has had the richest life of all.
Life's meaning is ultimately in the eyes of the beholder. We all derive meaning differently, there is no universal solvent.
There is a very good reason why people want to go from poor countries to rich and not the other way around. Poverty is not fun.
Stuff like the internet is what I would call a mixed bag. I think we really underestimate how incredible it is to be able to look up how to do anything, fix anything, learn anything pretty much in a few clicks. Yet the para-social stuff is the new cigarettes. Pro-Ana and Incel communities being rather extreme examples of this where men and women are getting severely depressed over 5 pounds or a few millimeters of chin where they proceed to talk eachother into starving to death or getting limb lengthening surgery and well if they’re doing it you have to do it too if you want to keep up…
Post agriculture I suppose it is pretty easy to argue that times were tougher in the past (medieval serfs got more days off and did way less work than we do today, but I'll concede that I'd rather my kids be alive and put in 40 hr/week).
Pre agriculture, which is the majority of human history? That's where things get interesting. People in hunter gatherer tribes lived long lives (assuming they survived childhood), didn't suffer from most of the things we need modern medicine and sanitation for (because those things are a result of agriculture itself), and "worked" about 30 hours per week if we use modern hunter gatherers like the !kung as proxies, and their "work" was doing things we do for relaxation these days like hunting, gathering, and foraging.
Unfortunately, there's no going back, so you better make sure you've got yourself a good keyboard.
Happiness has been going up worldwide but it has been dropping in the US since 2010. Which might be a part of this post.
There is Human Development Index (HDI) that is used to compare countries. It is based on life expectancy, education, and income. By those measures, there has been a huge increase in the last two centuries. And a big increase in many countries in last 50 years. But that more covers physical not emotional needs.
Maybe it was more boring, not sure, but at least all the stupid stuff I did at the time wasn't documented on the internet. I don't know how I'd handle that.
Averages are what make comparisons hard - there is a lot of variation within the averages. Truckers in the U.S., for example, were way better off in 1970 than they are today (in relative terms). But an average factory worker in China was way worse off.
Even this much is not clear. The economist Robert Gordon has argued, to my mind pretty persuasively, that medicine (i.e. doctors, hospitals, routine checkups) has received undue credit for improvements in health between 1870-1970 that are actually attributable to improved sanitation, diet, vaccination, etc.
> Analysis of the mid-Victorian period in the U.K. reveals that life expectancy at age 5 was as good or better than exists today, and the incidence of degenerative disease was 10% of ours.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/
Medical advances for adults since 1870 have mostly done little besides hold the line on keeping us alive through the effects of increased pollution, worse diets, and lower physical activity.
This is really, really disturbing when you think about how much of GDP is dedicated to health care.
I recommend Laslett's "The World We Have Lost" (or its second edition, "The World We Have Lost Further Explored"), for a glimpse of life a mere 200 years ago. You'll need to pay close attention and read between the lines, though.
At the same time, death to many of us has become little more than an abstract concept, something relegated mostly to the very old. With less suffering and death, we have less to ground us in an inescapable urgency about life, or a sense of immediate and pressing purpose. I'm convinced if it weren't for penicillin and vaccines, people would generally take life more seriously; there'd also be a lot more religious feeling, fervor, and searching.
"But about 57 percent of girls and 69 percent of gay, lesbian or bisexual teenagers reported feeling sadness every day for at least two weeks during the previous year."
At least two weeks of sadness per year? That's a very low threshold.
The long term teen suicide trend is up, since the early 2000s.[2] The last two years don't show a huge variation from the trend.
[2] https://www.healthline.com/health-news/teen-suicide-rate-spi...
CDC report on overall population. [1] Provisional data from CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics indicate that both the number and the rate of suicides in the United States increased 4 percent from 2020 to 2021, after two consecutive years of decline in 2019 and 2020. The rate of suicides per 100,000 increased from 13.5 in 2020 to 14.0 in 2021, which is still lower than the modern peak of 14.2 in 2018.
CDC report on teenage girls. [2] indicated that young females had both higher and increasing rates of ED visits for suicide attempts compared with males (8). However, the findings from this study suggest more severe distress among young females than has been identified in previous reports during the pandemic
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7024e1.htm
[1]
Of note: 18% of teen girls said they had experienced some form of sexual violence in the past year, compared to only 5% of teen boys.
The rate of teen girls who have experienced sexual violence has increased by 20% since 2017, when the CDC first started tracking the measure, per ABC News. "The percentage of male students who experienced sexual violence by anyone did not change," the report stated. Nearly 15% of teen girls said they had ever been forced to have sex, a 27% jump from 2019 and the first increase since the CDC began tracking the metric, per the Washington Post.
4% of teen boys said they had ever been forced to have sex, with no increase reported.
Likely because the ability to do so had gone down (can't go somewhere, parents are home), not because they're any less depressed.
People just developed new ways to kill themselves.
>"Drug overdose deaths have risen fivefold over the past 2 decades. In 2021, 106,699 deaths occurred, resulting in an age-adjusted rate of 32.4 per 100,000 standard population. From 2020 through 2021, the rate for males increased from 39.5 to 45.1, and the rate for females increased from 17.1 to 19.6. In both 2020 and 2021, adults aged 35–44 had the highest rate among people aged 15 and over. Between 2020 and 2021, the largest percentage increase in rates occurred among those aged 65 and over (28%). In both 2020 and 2021, rates were highest for non-Hispanic AIAN people; however, the greatest percentage increase in rates from 2020 to 2021 occurred for non-Hispanic NHOPI people.
The rates of drug overdose deaths involving different types of opioids and stimulants also increased from 2020 to 2021. Increases in rates occurred for drug overdose deaths involving psychostimulants with abuse potential (from 7.5 to 10.0), synthetic opioids other than methadone (17.8 to 21.8), and cocaine (6.0 to 7.3). Rates were similar for drug overdose deaths involving natural and semisynthetic opioids, as well as deaths involving methadone. Of the drugs examined, only drug overdose deaths involving heroin had a lower rate in 2021 than in 2020 (2.8 and 4.1, respectively).
As a parent, it seems strange to me to blame this situation on the pandemic when it's been, for all purposes, over in most parts of the country for more than a year. My kids have been back in school, sports, and being IRL with their friends for going on two years now.
The inability of mental health professionals to clearly separate temporary factors like pandemic isolation from the pervasive root causes that remain unaddressed is pretty frustrating. The science, if you can even call it that, is distressingly thin here and it makes me angry.
Ed: apparently the study uses data from 2021
All of the data was there. It's been there the whole time.
For example, if we talk about racial issues in this country, we don’t usually focus on the capitalist music industry using gangsta rap to export role models spewing misogynistic lyrics to Black kids many of whom identify with them, we don’t talk much about the breakdown in the nuclear family, the rise of divorces or out-of-wedlock births. (People used to — see the Moynihan report for instance.) We hardly talk about welfare traps or minimum wage laws (Milton Friedman used to etc.) We don’t talk about academic performance of Black kids being affected by stuff like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acting_white
Whenever Bill Cosby or Stephen A Smith or Deloris Tucker someone like that goes on a rant, they are shouted down.
That is why it is far safer to attribute it all to slavery 150 years ago, and Jim Crow laws, even though the previous generations who had marriage and school uniforms and higher church attendance etc. are horrified at what many in the current generations have been doing, and the lyrics in Drill music or Gangsta Rap etc. People are starting to wake up — I have been in a clubhouse room with 2000 people about whether a lot of rap is leading to violence, and almost everyone on stage was Black and most were saying absolutely. Some people said it creates jobs in the music industry, others pointed out how many jobs are destroyed overall because the kids can’t pass an interview. And so on. It was really nice to see but only possible because Black people got together to honestly discuss what has been going on. Now we need to turn it into action, in our own lives, with our own kids, and what they are exposed to. Most parents work so much or are divorced and the kids are raised by the street or by the government!
[1]: https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/nieuws/2022/22/mentale-gezondheid-j...
And anyway, one does not need to be a paragon of virtue in every fact of their life to denounce current trends. Many people who were very loud turned out to do shady things in the background. Are we supposed to look to BLM leaders for advice, for example? NAACP has a far longer track record and their leaders seem to have acted with more integrity over the decades: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/black-lives-matter-activ...
Smith is a windbag who riles up viewers about controversial trivia. He is less obnoxious than most such, since his topics typically relate to sports rather than politics, but nothing he has said outside the realm of sports (and fairly little he has said within it) would indicate a habit of deep thought. Tucker passed away 17 years ago, and in the preceding decade seems primarily to have been a one-note instrument. Cosby's infamy perhaps doesn't disqualify him as a source of advice, but it makes one wonder. What common thread weaves through these three seemingly different exemplars you've chosen?
I prefer to think in terms of ethics rather than morality, and in terms of timeless values rather than current events. I struggle with this, but I feel I have benefited from the works of Walter Kaufmann, Kierkegaard, and other existentialist and existentialist-adjacent thinkers. If you seek moral advice and can't find it in your bible or at church, perhaps you might appreciate e.g. Jason Whitlock? I do, but in a different way than most of his other fans, I suspect.
Cosby spent YEARS playing "America's dad" for the Black family, as did James Avery, Reginald VelJohnson and others. They provided a wholesome role model to look up to, of a married family man, who provides for his kids and teaches them manners and morals, as opposed to "role models" poppin bottles and bangin models that the rap industry provides. Misogynistic lyrics, racial slurs, materialistic lifestyles, sometimes even glorifying violence. What good does it do? If outsiders can't criticize it because it is "authentic Black expression", then it falls to Black voices to do so. And they do, increasingly.
To try to combat moral / cultural degradation and restore family values takes both economic and cultural reform.
This used to be the subject of Black sit coms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5D2RvIQwQE
And even CNN anchor Don Lemon used to OPENLY say stuff like this: https://www.cnn.com/videos/bestoftv/2013/07/27/nr-lemon-no-t...
So Steven A Smith said the same: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb4pEN3s7B8
Deloris Tucker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr6gb1w72xA
I mean, I think you're tilting at windmills here when you're going after everyone's moral character who has said similar things. I could give you a lot more examples, but they haven't and don't make a dent in the capitalist machine. It has adapted.
The reason it's on topic is because it's just a special case of what that machine sells to everyone regardless of consequences. Instagram and TikTok "influencers" have contributed massively to anxiety and depression of teenage girls, but also promote dressing and acting in ways their parents and grandparents never could.
Miley Cyrus was the "voice of a generation", a "good girl" promoted by "wholesome" Disney, then she had a coming-out with the record industry, where her biggest new talent was sticking her tongue out while naked and gripping a chain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My2FRPA3Gf8
Sex sells and nudity grabs headlines on billboards: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2157969/Rihann...
It tells women to "lean in" and work 10 hours a day instead of telling both men and women to "lean out" and spend time with their family.
Sometimes it even becomes a parody of itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8
Again, there doesn't need to be a conspiracy behind it (as Kanye believes) it's just what the market (and "the algorithm") selects for.
Look at your news, it's all become click-bait that makes ADULTS (whose brains are fully developed) into frothing-at-the-mouth rabid haters of the left, or the right, or whoever. It also radicalizes citizens into supporting destructive wars.
Look at your social media. It has made you distracted at dinner, addicted like a pavlov's dog to notifications, using your phone 10 hours a day of screen time. If it can do that to adults, imagine what it can do to kids.
This society overall tries to medicate people and put bandaids on real problems, like when both parents work 10 hour days, stick their kids in public schools and their parents into nursing homes, and everyone is medicated because everyone is depressed or not served well by the system.
As C. Wright Mills wrote in The Power Elite, "To accept either view -- of all history as conspiracy or all history as drift -- is to relax the effort to understand the facts of power and the ways of the powerful." The precise form of our situation is not inevitable. Just as algorithms are written by people, so are laws and extortion notes. The tools that oppress us may be refashioned into others that free us. We must keep in mind that tools are nothing in themselves; they take on significance when used.
I do agree "that machine sells to everyone". Perhaps it makes sense to compare the situation of teen girls to that of black families like you suggest, since there is a sizable overlap between these groups. Rather than despairing of all the awful media, however, would it be better to focus on better media? The Cosby Show was produced in the 1980s, but surely there are good things happening now? Not necessarily shows on television, which is itself the sort of machine we're discussing. I've heard good things about "Black Twitter"...
Conservatism seems reasonable in the face of the issues you identify, but it's not, especially if you're following Milton Friedman on the minimum wage as you indicate above. The real minimum wage right now is barely half of the inflation-adjusted $12 it was in 1968. Had it kept pace with productivity as well as inflation, it would have been $22 by now. [0] Our enemies don't care about ideology. They happily wore the skins of Republicans before they wore the skins of Democrats, and it will be no trouble for them to switch again.
The lockdown did harm teen girls, even if we can't prove it to the scientific satisfaction of thread parent. That's not even the really bad part. What they have done once, they can and will do again. When it is normal for children to plug into a device instead of going to public school, it will be easy for some asshole billionaires to arrange that the children will just plug into their "education" apps and all the money we used to waste on teachers instead can just go to collateral for some asshole billionaire personal lines of credit. After they've done away with teachers, the McKinsey consultants will start examining whether the children really need parents. After all, they don't need a home if they're plugged into their devices...
But seriously, give Whitlock a listen, especially one of the episodes featuring Royce White. They are both better than Steven "A" Smith, in every respect.
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/21/politics/minimum-wage-inflati...
By the way, I think for myself -- even though I cited Friedman, I disagree with him in various ways, after looking at the data. I am not a fiscal conservative, but I am a social conservative. I think corporations have co-opted liberal movements like women's lib, and freedom of speech, and conflated them with corporate agendas, e.g. turning feminism into "Lean In" climbing the corporate ladder for women. Freedom of speech actually suffers under capitalism, because the one who pays the piper calls the tune. Those with million of "followers" have social capital, and we should be more concerned about how they got "platformed" than whether they would be "deplatformed". Their profit motive and incentive structure leads them to corrupt society with their controversial, incorrect, corrosive rhetoric which is passed off as "entertainment" the minute it's criticized (Alex Jones' Sandy Hook bullshit comes to mind, as does FOX election conspiracies, which falls apart the minute they are sued). It corrupts society at large. That's why I started https://rational.app
In fact, I think that safety nets and UBI and 30-hour overtime laws will help men and women opt out of the rat race, and spend more time with their kids. The increased health, IQ points and better morals / education of the children will actually provide greater monetary returns for society (even though for me they are ends in themselves). For example, the moratorium on evictions may have enabled a richer society than one where millions of people are housing-insecure.
I think that UBI and gift economies (like science, open source and wikipedia) are far healthier than "private ownership" of social capital like audiences, (Twitter followers), distribution (news stations, etc.) or infrastructure. Gift economies become possible when people have their maslow's needs met and the anxiety is gone, so they can freely associate with projects they like, instead of being mercenaries 40-60 hours a week to survive. In these gift economies, there are so many small contributions that peer review is instituted (in science, open source, wikipedia, etc.) which actually increases the quality of what is published far better than competition, because most audience members are not informed enough (and will soon be bamboozled by AI bots and fake articles on a scale heretofore unseen, in the current capitalist system).
That's why I believe in building decentralized solutions, like solar panels, mesh networks, open source social networks, and smart contracts. I want a world where people are healthier, safer, and more moral. Sadly, the corporations and governments collude to keep the individuals distracted and at each other's throats (glance at https://magarshak.com/blog)
There is a lot said on both sides (eg several women sued Cosby for calling them liars in 2014). It seems the biggest actual clear admission of sexual assault was from a leaked deposition where he described how he would give Quaaludes in the 60s and 70s to women he met in clubs and subsequently slept with. I looked up the drug on Wikipedia:
Methaqualone became increasingly popular as a recreational drug and club drug in the late 1960s and 1970s, known variously as "ludes" or "disco biscuits"[citation needed] due to its widespread use during the popularity of disco in the 1970s, or "sopers" (also "soaps") in the United States and Canada, and "mandrakes" and "mandies" in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The substance was sold both as a free base and as a salt (hydrochloride). This use means the drug is controlled in most countries, and is so under Schedule II of the United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances.
So if this drug was “in widespread recreational use” in that period, I would imagine this was a widespread systemic problem, and not just limited to Cosby.
So once again, we as a society are distracted and made to think one specific guy is the problem, where actually the entire liberal society got permeated with this kind of stuff, fueled by the exact sort of profit seeking industry I am talking about: drug sales, in this case, rather than rap songs. I am not saying for the government to get involved and carry on a violent and useless drug war on the supply. I am talking about demand-side education like the “just say no to Drugs” by Nancy Reagan, but more importantly — individual attention and relationships with kids, teenagers and young adults, by their parents, teachers, coaches, clergy, whoever. Don’t let the kids slip through the cracks and become loners / outcasts. That is how they turn to these drugs and then this gets cynically exported by CAPITALIST MEDIA to all the others. I am not being hyperbolic, look:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/
Even today, how many times do we investigate allegations of rape on campus, and enact yes means yes and affirmative opt in policies, while doing precious little about the upstream culture of ALCOHOL FUELED PARTIES on campus? These teenagers are below legal drinking age — but besides that, the very idea that college is like an expensive year cruise for partying and experimentation, and coming of age, is behind many of the activities. The “girls gone wild” and “spring break” videos exploit this at the extremes, but we KNOW about the parties even today, yet we focus downstream only, and catch isolated cases.
Hookup culture and casual dating has replaced “going steady”, engagement and marriage. Out of wedlock births have skyrocketed. Divorce rates and opiates and antidepressants have skyrocketed. You can listen to any person, doesn’t have to be Cosby. But what Cosby has admitted to was widespread in society (drug use, alcohol etc) so shouldn’t we as a society look at the widespread problem, instead of patting ourselves on the back that we removed “all the rapists” from the pool?
It is like the gun debate … there are lots of guns in the country, most of the time the people shot and the people doing the shooting are drunk, but we as a society are hung up on individual cases after the fact or “a good guy with a gun an stop a bad guy with a gun”. We don’t connect the dots. The NHS was ordered to STOP doing research into guns and alcohol as an epidemiological or health issue.
> In sum, it’s reasonable to start with skepticism of my claim (with Jean Twenge) that there is an epidemic of mental illness that began around 2012, and that is related in large part to the transition to phone-based childhoods, with a special emphasis on social media. It makes sense to embrace as a null hypothesis the skeptics’ view that there is nothing to see here, just another moral panic, and the kids are fine. I am in full agreement that the burden of proof falls on me.
The DSM-5 had several changes in diagnosis that could explain the sharp rise in his graphs. That we simply got a view of how bad our society’s mental health is, rather than it increasing at a dramatically higher rate than pre-2012.
Diagnosis around women’s mental health has also become much better in recent years. The amount of gaslighting around disorders and “hysteria” in women historically is troubling and completely unethical.
I find Gabor Mate’s work much more enlightening in understanding why mental health is such an issue in the modern world. I highly recommend his books if you are curious.
Gabor’s definition of addiction is that it is a coping mechanism to seek relief from pain, often with negative consequences. Therefore social media does not explain the pain. It’s an effect not a cause, despite how it can contribute to feelings of loneliness and inadequacy.
Instead it is worth understanding how our youth are raised, and the trauma their parents carry onto them despite their best intentions and effort.
Offering one's self up to social media can allow you to mechanistically escape pain, but it also does damage at the same time.
The more you offer yourself up to social media, you are giving away a chunk of your mental health to be liked and adored by instagram.
How could anyone own their mental health, when you can dump your hopes and dreams into the void anytime you want, to offer yourself up in hopes of relief.
Gabor only tells a quarter of the story.
No.
> The survey did not ask students about reasons for their feelings of sadness or thoughts of harming themselves.
Persistent sadness and hopelessness is not the kind of thing that you'll get a useful answer for when you directly ask why they feel that way.
That said, the article mentions several factors that are contributing to the increase in sadness and violence among teenage girls in the United States. Some of the root causes mentioned in the article include traumatic experiences, including sexual violence; interpersonal stress from school, peers and home; a rise in violent behavior, particularly targeting girls; and stigma and violence toward LGBTQ+ teenagers
https://health.usnews.com/health-care/patient-advice/article...
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/girls-women-and-well...
2. Stop allowing people below age 18 un-regulated access to the Internet.
3. Stop prescribing amphetamines to children.
4. Stop letting single mothers raise children.
5. Stop raising low-income kids with high-income kids.
6. Stop making recognition a social priority (thymotic impulse).
7. Make the world smaller.
8. Stop letting your kids have unrealistic dreams.
I don't agree with most of these tenants.
Frankly, I don't think most of the above is possible, but if you want kids to be happier you need to stop exposing them to the chaotic, violent, and frankly depressing adult world before they fully develop their neocortex.
They're being forced to maladaptively virtualize neocortical function before the maturation of their physiological neocortex. The world seems a lot worse before your brain has developed enough to cope/deal with reality.
This is the truth, or at least part of it.
After going through your list, I wonder if you include yourself in the depressing adult world you describe. Or reflect on how your own world views might be an issue too.
I don't think my list would be exactly the same as the GP's list, but the point I think is that kids are less shielded from the full bore of life right now and are worse off for it.
> but the point I think is that kids are less shielded from the full bore of life right now
I feel like that's putting a comment which includes shockers like "Stop raising low-income kids with high-income kids" in a much more positive light than it deserves, but we all have different perspectives on this stuff. I do agree with what you are saying, but not with it being a possible interpretation of the ideas GP is putting out there ;-)
I really doubt that a single mother is the cause of depression.
> 5. Stop raising low-income kids with high-income kids.
Why?
People should be used to seeing economic differences, its a reality that shouldn't be sugarcoated for teenagers.
Luckily we’ve already got this covered. Schools are getting more and more segregated every year and it seems to be working great /s
https://news.yahoo.com/schools-more-segregated-30-years-1218...
I'm intrigued/horrified, but curious, so I must ask: how might this proposal be implemented?
Amazing how ideas that are explicitly fascist can seep into otherwise thoughtful discourse.
The only way that can happen is either by forcing mothers to marry or to take their children away and make them available for compulsory adoption.
>5. Stop raising low-income kids with high-income kids.
This is straight up segregation by "economic class". Essentially reinventing serfdom.
>7. Make the world smaller.
The only way this can be implemented is through massive censorship and travel restrictions.
>8. Stop letting your kids have unrealistic dreams.
The arbiter of "unrealistic" can also decide what is "realistic" and choose it according to their own ideology.
Ultimately all of these things are about forcing down a particular world view down the throat of people with no regard fo their autonomy and feelings, instead they are being demanded to stop thinking and do nothing but obey.
You can blame technology to a degree, but even then technology probably just serves to amplify existing negative trends. Kids today are far more likely than in the past to move around and have divorced parents. They’re less likely to live in inter-generational households. They’re less likely to have a job or go to church or interact with society at large in meaningful ways.
Meanwhile what fills that vacuum of civil society is other children, through age-segregated schooling and, these days, social media. That strikes me as a huge problem, because children are antisocial semi-humans without fully developed brains. Having children spend most of their time around other children, without strong socializing forces, is a perverse arrangement.
I've been so thankful that at my high school there was a great open lunch, & quite a few areas where different school grades mixed together. I got access to a diverse range of smart & creative folk.
It is also cruel to do the opposite, perhaps more cruel.
Honestly, I think "reinvention" is overvalued/oversold in contemporary culture, and I'd reckon most kids (and adults) would be better served by maintaining their existing friendships and social patterns instead of forcing a change for change's sake.
This is just an additional two grades surrounded by the same kids and teachers.
Luckily for me, my highschool has no sixth-form. Therefore I went to a dedicated sixth-form college. A large college of 2000 students over two year groups.
I really enjoyed this time. I shedded all associations except for my closest friends and made new friend circles. It refined my character. And when I started university, the whole process was much easier.
Globally everybody is getting less than what media (and social media) peomised them, but we have to live long enough to understand the destruction it causes in our own lives.
Local therapy offerings are a joke with most of my local options being religious driven programs/therapists. Insurance coverage of mental health issues even on my work based insurance is non-existent. I don't see this problem going away any time soon.
If anything maybe these statistics are so alarming is because we as a society didn’t categorize abuse as abuse until recently. Consider that raping one’s wife was legal until recently. Beating children was considered normal until a generation or so ago. Trying to force gay people to convert to straight was the medically condoned treatment. All sorts of abhorrent behaviors were normalized and people simply denied the harm it was causing.
I actually woke up to that one just recently. Turns out in WA lack of verbal consent from your wife could leave one with up to 5 years in prison if your relationship goes haywire and the wife turns vengeful for whatever reasons (which is not uncommon). Getting to know that - have fun having sex if you are even slightly insecure about your relationship.
From reading that law even obtaining a written advance consent from your own wife before each intercourse won't guarantee you won't land in prison because any consent is revocable at any moment by exhibiting vague elusive behavior. And even if there's no evidence apart from the partner's word, just the chance of getting on trial does not sound fun at all.
That's not to mention that any consent is null while under alcohol influence. So better not to have sex when your partner is drunk (regardless if you're drunk too) even if you've been married for many years.
I suppose the question is should we call any painful learning experience 'a trauma'?
“Kids are now vulnerable to cyberbullying and critical comments, like ‘I hate you’, ‘Nobody likes you,’” he said. “It’s like harpoons to their heart every time.”
I make my living due to technology, but if there was a big switch to throw that would turn off television/internet I'd do it without hesitation. I think the long term benefits would outweigh the short term chaos.
I've had similar thoughts, in similar terms. Put that switch in front of me and I'd toggle it with glee in my heart and a smile on my face.
A couple decades ago I was so optimistic about this stuff. In the big picture, it's done little but disappoint, since then. Same as many a great, grand idea—ruined by contact with economics and human "games".
Of course we are all suffering from mental illness and poor physical health and this that and the other thing all the time. All we do is stress out about what others think about ourselves and sit around lethargic. We didn't spend millions of years of mutation and selection to be the most optimal couch potato. We spent it to be a master forager of the environment, setting out on foot by morning for resources when the weather and light is good, and spending the day and evening in engineering or creative pursuits. I'm convinced even language had a role to play in changing our behavior dramatically in this way, since often what we do in life is limited to what we are able to communicate with words or thoughts in our language with its finite set of descriptors.
Anger is an irritation of diverting from expectations.
Indeed, the past 30 years has seen a consistent expansion of rights and autonomy and relaxation of social rules, and happiness has been declining pretty consistently the whole time: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/22/americans...
It's also the case that happiness among women has been declining since 1970: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w14969/w149.....
One supposes it's easier to be happy as a conservative woman in 2022 given that identifying as such likely means you're sanguine about Roe --- which is a point even the IFS article makes.
Also, it's not an isolated finding. The finding that conservatives are happier is consistently replicated (and long before 2022).
Unlike the sibling comment here, I'm not trying to disqualify the underlying survey, just to point out that it's framing in the article you cited is heavily motivated; countervailing results or analysis presumably would not be allowed to run on the IFS website.
IFS is "heavily motivated" compared to who exactly? Would New America or whoever NPR and the NYT turn to for analysis ever run with a similar story? The notion that increased autonomy and reduced social restriction is an unalloyed good is almost axiomatic among the folks who run every mainstream intellectual institution that isn't expressly conservative. It's the closest a lot of these folks have to a religion. They're highly motivated not to publish contrary evidence.
For what it's worth, most of my conservative friends would strongly disagree with you about the importance of individual autonomy!
It uses data from a survey commissioned by the Mormon church and does not account for any confounding factors.
Yougov is a surveys for hire company.
So, yeah, it’s a survey run by the Mormon church.
But, more importantly, the conclusions drawn from it by IFS are simply not academically rigorous.
If you are a woman in a country that is increasingly oppressing women, it seems it goes without saying that the women most at peace with that state of affairs are the women supportive of that oppression. I'm sure this is as true of the USA as it is of Iran.
[edit to add] One can be conservative in a liberal environment, but to be liberal in a conservative place such as Iran has dire consequences. The only people being imposed on are the ones not free to live to their choosing, so there is no equivalent to forcing upon a conservative in the way conservative laws force upon non-conservatives (that I am aware of)
In reality, most people don't know what choices will make them happy. How could they? And even if they did, they wouldn't know how to get from Point A to Point B, or have the willpower and discipline to stick to it. They need society to develop generational knowledge about those things, socialize children and young people to understand that learning, and socially reinforce good choices. And frankly liberals know that because in other respects, they support societal intervention to protect people from bad choices and help them make good ones. They just have this huge blind spot. The act like the young adult who needs society to protect them from predatory lenders doesn’t need protection from people who might exploit them in other ways. Or that the person who needs education and social pressure when it comes to sugary soft drinks doesn’t need it when it comes to far more impactful decisions about how to live.
And that's before we get to externalities. That's another concept liberals understand but pretend has no application to social norms and behaviors. As if divorce or drug use only affect the individual and not people around them.
Also, conservative women being happy is not surprising. This is because happiness breeds conservatism. Why? Because you're happy, and you want to keep that status quo. If you were unhappy, you'd want to change things to what you're happy with. People may overlook this, because they typically use the terms conservative and liberal as historical egos, rather than their root meanings.
Additionally, lots of things have been happening in the last 30 years. The erosion of reproductive rights has been a slow process happening since right after Roe. Income inequality has been rising. Etc.
If you look at another proxy for privilege, education, the trend runs in the opposite direction. Only 31% of women with only a high school education say feminism has helped them, versus 55% of those with a college education: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/07/07/a-centu...
The alternative read of the data, which I suspect is more accurate, is that increased rights and autonomy disproportionately benefits high status women (e.g. pursuing interesting careers, etc). Lower status women, meanwhile, disproportionately suffer the burdens (decreased pressure for men to make commitments and support families).
Pew surveys are much more sophisticated and do differentiate between some of those finer points that you mentioned.
https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/yrbs/yrbs_data_summary...
Click "Download Report." This specific article is about Page 59 to 61 (both PDF pages and embedded page numbers) for "Feelings of Sadness or Hopelessness" and pages 63 to 66 for "Seriously Considered Attempting Suicide."
TL;DR: Between 2011 and 2021 -- "Feelings of Sadness or Hopelessness" has increased for males 8%, and 21% for females. The "Seriously Considered Attempting Suicide" has increased 1% for males and 11% for females. "Make a suicide plan" has increased 1% for males, and 9% for females.
PS - The CDC uses the terms "males" and "females" in the linked report, which is what I am reproducing here rather than altering the language which could add confusion or inaccuracy.
Wow. Is this out of the study, females, or LGBTQ?
“We need to talk about what’s happening with teenage boys that might be leading them to perpetrate sexual violence.”
Are they all teen boys, or could it be that there older predators at play here?
Edit: why disagree without any response? These are legitimate questions. Are we not curious hackers here?
Because in the full paragraph, it's very clear what was intended:
> The findings, based on surveys given to teenagers across the country, also showed high levels of violence, depression and suicidal thoughts among lesbian, gay and bisexual youth. More than one in five of these students reported attempting suicide in the year before the survey, the agency found.
On the other hand:
> > “We need to talk about what’s happening with teenage boys that might be leading them to perpetrate sexual violence.”
> Are they all teen boys, or could it be that there older predators at play here?
I actually think that's a valid question that's left unaddressed by the article, especially given that as I usually see the data presented, threats of this kind of thing, for kids and adolescents, overwhelmingly comes from relatives or trusted adults—if that's becoming less-true even as rates rise, that's a pretty big deal. Buuuuut I can see why readers would just DV your whole post, given the two things you chose to call out and that one of them is already answered by the article, such that it looks like you're trying to cherry-pick with a bit of an edgy slant.
As kids increasingly interact via social media, being funny, intelligent, or creative is less important than looking good in pictures. I can't imagine how shitty this is for teenagers. We used to lament the "unattainable beauty standards" of magazines and on TV, but this seems even more harmful.
I dunno how you do this though, as even just admitting something like: "I am handicapped in the looks department" is pretty depressing. At the same time it seems messed up that someone who is attractive doesn't just get preferential treatment in their daily interactions, but can now monetize their looks easily via social media (or onlyfans lol).
It is most potent because this happens at almost every human interaction from trivial (getting help at a store from the staff) to important (selecting a husband or a wife).
It is most prevalent because this happens across all races, religions and sexes without any inhibition. Other than the old adage, "don't judge book by its cover." people judge others based on looks all the time and feel justified in doing so. There's not even a word like racism, sexism, anti-X or X-phobia for discrimination against less attractive people.
It is least acknowledged because as you mentioned, there's no one who would like to join the "ugly" identity group. There's no commonly shared root like race, religion, sex, or ethnicity. And identifying oneself as "ugly" probably hurts the person more than it can help.
It is unfortunate that there's no foreseeable solution to this wide spread problem at all, other than voluntary empathy from the society in general. But at the same time, that may be the most important antidote to any discrimination we face rather than top-down rule of law change.
It’s prevalent and potent, but it is extremely widely acknowledged. The degree to which it is seen as problematic is more variable ("discrimination", in and of itself, is simply having a factor influence a decision, and is not universally viewed as problematic.)
> There’s not even a word like racism, sexism, anti-X or X-phobia for discrimination against less attractive people.
Yes, there is, and the word is “lookism”. [0]
> It is least acknowledged because as you mentioned, there’s no one who would like to join the “ugly” identity group.
“Ugly” isn’t an identity group. Discrimination can happen on literally any basis (every basis on which a decision is made is “discrimination”), not only by identity groups.
[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lookism#:~:text=o....
It might be even more insidious because there's a strong justification that stupid people are stupid because of their own volition. However, in reality, there's element of intelligence that's purely genetic and there's nothing a person can do.
The reason I bring it up is because I think there is an important distinction between a illogical bias and a simple preference.
People are very preoccupied with weeding out bad biases, and often mistake preferences for them. Things are only complicated more when egalitarian ideas get mixed in.
There's nothing inherently wrong about wanting a beautiful life partner or to watch an attractive Entertainer. Those are legitimate preferences. The only problem is when individuals place that as a higher priority than something else that they actually want more.
It is also very common, but also very frequently is discrimination that goes to the core of the overt purpose of the decision being made. As discrimination is simply having any factor play into a decision, the usual problem is with (1) decisions whose motivation is to cause harm to a group, or (2) decisions in which factors like membership in a group are weighed that are not germane to the overt non-malicious purpose, which cause an (unwarranted by the purpose) adverse impact on the group.
Conversely (and as you hinted at), "I'm only liked for my looks," illustrates the double-bind at play. Yes, it's difficult to shift societal norms but I encourage folks to ask themselves, "Which other norms shifted in the last hundred years?" and how that was accomplished.
There are comedic social media creators that look plain but build a style and crowd as a result.
Twice the rate of self-reported, when asked persistent sadness, as boys' also self-reported rate, then.
Hell, the article even kinda covers this, noting that boys' depression may not be experienced as persistent sadness. And that's before we consider biases in tendency to report such things to begin with, which may (to put it lightly) differ between the sexes.
(Nb. it may well in-fact be true that girls are experiencing depression at double the rate of boys—but a survey's not enough to determine that)
On another topic:
> On a handful of topics, the survey results suggested teenagers were doing better than in previous years. They reported lower rates of illicit drug use and bullying at school, for example. And teenagers are having less sex, with fewer sexual partners, than in previous years.
I mean... the jokes write themselves. "No wonder they're all sad!"
> Nearly three in five teenage girls felt persistent sadness in 2021, double the rate of boys
Here's one about male problems I remember reading and could quickly find because the title was memorable: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/08/andrew-ya...
And another with the same title: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/opinion/boys-violence-sho...
I can remember a handful of articles about boys struggling over the years but like your Yang example they have been on the opinion page and tainted with the whiff of "men's rights" grievances.
What specific points seem lopsided here?
https://www.brookings.edu/2022/04/21/mapping-gun-violence-a-...
Edit: Also, gun violence isn't rampant in the US? Compared to what? Certainly rampant compared to any peer society.
https://www.insider.com/number-of-mass-shootingsin-america-t...
There is no gun violence in the US. There is violent crime. There is murder. They are different things.
It's pretty clear we have a gun problem and for a long time.
> "The Youth Risk Behavior Survey was given to 17,000 adolescents at high schools across the United States in the fall of 2021. The survey is conducted every two years, and the rates of mental health problems have gone up with every report since 2011, Dr. Ethier said."
Is this really enough data to come to any solid conclusions? What's the seasonal spread, for example, do you get big differences if you run the survey in June or July? What's the socioeconomic spread on the data? Are there major differences in reporting between boys and girls? Can this be accepted as a real trend with any confidence? I just don't know about this stuff anymore.
I feel the same way but at this point it isn't suffering for me. I open nyt and see something pharma/mental health/etc related and assume it's someone advocating some lifestyle that benefits the pharma industry
I mean, this is sort of our economic system: manipulating people into being more profitable. It makes zero sense to me why some people decide to selectively trust based off of whatever is trending in political discourse. Most strangers who want to reach you want to sell you something. Maybe some people have trouble accepting that we live in an actual dystopia? Idk
Edit, relevant article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/13/mental-...
I've been getting to see through my niece how much the 2 years hurt her social development. She's just a kindergartner. so she can probably still recover, but I imagine it's much harder for kids who missed out on their early teens and learning to cope with problems without being in a comfortable place/without a parent one door away.
I doubt it. The problem with this approach is that in general you won't have the answers you want/need. So in the end you'll leave with more questions than answers, and that is not a great feeling.
And even if you did had all the answers, most people don't have the time to fully understand them.
Besides that, I don't think that 'medical health news' have anything special. This should apply to all subjects.
Tech companies with market caps that dwarf the largest pharma companies would like you to think "no."
IIRC, these mental health trend-lines started to rapidly get worse at almost exactly the same time that smartphones and social media started to take off.