The kids are not okay | Hacker News Reader

The kids are not okay

thezvi.wordpress.com

85 pointsimgabe82 comments

IMO one of the root causes of the issues kids have these days is the fear culture where it's no longer acceptable for parents to let younger kids do things on their own.

When I was in grade school in the early 1990's, all of the grade-school-aged neighborhood kids walked to school, and roamed the streets freely after school and on the weekends. I used to walk to the library, the book store, the hobby shop, the park, the pool, etc.

Now, I can't let my grade-school aged kids out to play or to go into a store without supervision. People literally call the police when they see a 9-year-old alone, and the police say it is unsafe. There are many stories of child protective services getting involved, and even threatening to remove children from homes, just because the parents allowed them go outside unsupervised. It's insane.

There is no way that that doesn't have a big effect on people.

This post goes on a very weird tangent.

If you read any discourse about teenage suicide over at least the past 2 decades (since I started reading the news), it was always focused on the disproportionately high number of boys who died of suicide vs girls. In fact, the disproportionately number of high attempts by girls was rarely even mentioned in most discussions, unless it was in the context of gun regulation because it has been quite clear for a while that more boys died because they tried to commit suicide by guns.

The reason the media is focusing on girls in the context of suicide right now is simply because the recently released CDC numbers show a huge increase in girls attempting suicide in the past, an effect which hasn’t been as large in boys.

For decades the focus has indeed been on the disproportionate number of boys who died of suicide. But the huge jump in girls feeling depressed and having suicidal thoughts is new. Hence, it’s being covered more in the news right now.

The ability of some people to turn everything into us vs them grievances is mind boggling to me.

Agreed. Like the section right after

> The conflation of suicide rates with forced sex here seems at best highly misleading. The sexual frequency number is rather obviously a reflection of two years where people were doing rather a lot of social distancing. With the end of that, essentially anything social is going to go up in frequency, whether it is good, bad or horrifying – only a 27 percent increase seems well within the range one would expect from that. Given all the other trends in the world, it would be very surprising to me if the rates of girls being subjected to forced sex (for any plausible fixed definition of that) were not continuing to decline.

If you look at the data from the cdc [0] there's no dip during quarantine like that paragraph would suggest leading to this sudden surge in comparison. Theres just an increase

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/fact-sheets/healthy-you...

My understanding is that males tend to choose methods of suicide with higher rates of success and therefore actually die in their suicide attempts more often.

I've heard that boys use a more likely to succeed method and that's why there are more male suicides.

Yes... that's exactly what I just said. Am I missing something?

Imo we are focusing on girls because political reasons - people want to ban TikTok and limit social media. It is about politics and nothing else.

I say that, because the debate shows little interest in kids inner lifes, in what kids think, in their actual struggles. Neither for boys nor for girls. It just projects contempt on them, they are all shallow simpletons basically and that is about it.

There is zero interest in trying to teach them or figure out how to talk tonthem either. It is ban or nothing. Which means that is a real goal.

I feel like the issue is political: climate change (and the lack of initiative from leaders regarding it), car-centric infrastructure in the us, the isolation of the global pandemic, and the recent repeal of Roe v. Wade have had an impact on young people, especially girls. So this dismissal of "it's just politics" irks me. Politics is about things that affect literally everyone: infrastructure, schools, social rights... those aren't things to disregard and articles like this don't even bother to examine them.

More girls are feeling hopelessness because of the political landscape in the United States: the reversal of Roe v. Wade has had an enormous impact on the mental health of American women. That being said we can also ask about reporting, I think women are more likely than men to admit feelings of suicidal ideation, but that is just wild speculation on my behalf.

If people actually cared about impact on girls, they would be out there figuring out how to facilitate what girls need. As in, do they need adults to help them organize in person meetups sooner then in puberty? Do they need adults to care more about their self worth and values or whatever, during or before puberty? Do they need something else? But the debate is not even actually about them and shows zero interest in them as humans. I have seen zero actual interest about values those girls have, struggles they themselves think they have. Nothing of that sort, except some projection.

Look at discussion about it on HN - it it between banning them out of tech entirely (and isolating them in the process) or other punishment and between nothing at all. I have yet to see "we talked about what is going on between kids and found out ..." or "we talked about dangers of addiction and this worked this did not".

For that matter, it is basically same with boys. They actually kill themselves more often, but the point is raised up only as political talking point one - usually to suck it up to feminists. But if they cant beat up feminists with that or if they cant use it to claim that girls should go back to kitchen, then they dont care.

> More girls are feeling hopelessness because of the political landscape in the United States: the reversal of Roe v. Wade has had an enormous impact on the mental health of American women.

Yes, tho most 15 years old don't think that far. Except actually pregnant ones. And there are some reports of sexual harassments and such going up too. Note how these never factor into the discussion about their mental health.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but what I think you're saying is: for most adults it's not about the wellbeing of young people, but a cliché "think of the children". If that's the case, I'd agree and disagree.

In my personal circle a lot of people around me are interested in young people. They work with troubled kids as social workers and genuinely care about their work; often trying to involve kids they've helped in decision-making processes. This is sometimes halted by higher-ups, who disregard what children, especially "troubled teens" have to say.

Getting direct feedback from young people is truly not done as often as it should be and I would agree that young people are often talked about or talked over. In systems where children are the "clients" like at schools or as part of social programs, it's integral to actually consider their perspectives.

I'm afraid I don't understand your last argument? When I was 15 I did care about decisions politicians made about my body.

In my personal circles, there are interested people. In internet debates over this topic I have seen, there are very little of them. It is just stroking panic using girls as pawns. Just like think of trans children was just an pretention to get support for general attack on trans everything.

Like common. Past HN debates about this topic were full of condescension toward young girls, full of projection onto them and the most often repeated solution was "take away all tech from them with no debate, regardless of what they think and do zero additional effort to help them socialize". This is not about helping anyone. This is about getting laws you want and punishing them.

> When I was 15 I did care about decisions politicians made about my body.

Quite a lot of them see it as distanced and far away from their own lifes.

> More girls are feeling hopelessness because of the political landscape in the United States: the reversal of Roe v. Wade has had an enormous impact on the mental health of American women.

I find it difficult to believe that repealing Roe v. Wade has had a measurable impact on teen girls and suicidal thoughts more so than say social media, which really appears to have amplified the general bullying, peer pressure, and acceptance issues that have plagued teens for decades.

Why do you think Roe v. Wade doesn't have an impact on women and girls? Studies show that it has had a measurable effect, especially in states where women have lost autonomy over their bodies.

The performative pressures brought on by Instagram and co. is a problem and maybe it impact teen girls acutely more, but the young ladies I've talked to and mentored expressed a great deal of angst about their futures because of things like Roe v. Wade.

Well I never said it didn’t or couldn’t have an impact-just that for teen girls depressed enough to consider suicide there are much stronger negative drivers to that depression than political fights around a topic that statistically will likely not directly impact the girl in their lifetime.

Certainly in a specific edge case situation, the inability to have access to abortion for a pregnant girl who wants one could be a strong influencer of despair—perhaps even beyond bullying. But my comment was more directed to what is most likely the cause of the despair and to be blunt, I doubt that to a non-pregnant depressed girl considering suicide, their immediate access to abortion or what is happening politically around Roe v Wade is overriding despair they get from hellhole that is social media.

Pregnant teenage girls are hit the hardest. The subset that is not forced to give birth, afraid that they might be pregnant and their friends are bound to be more depressed.

In person sexual harassments rates also went up during that period. It is not just social media.

I was born in the late 90's and so I grew up with social media existing: first MSN Messenger, then [pre-FB social network popular where I lived], later Facebook, and that's just the networks my classmates used. I had a smartphone in the last three years I was in highschool.

The bit where the author reacts incredulously to cyberbullying not increasing with smartphones is… weird, to me. I am not convinced smartphones made social media more of a thing, they just shifted the mode of consumption. Social media was a thing at least five years before smartphones were.

I think the moral panic about smartphones ruining kids' lives is looking in the wrong places. The internet gave me a safe place to discover myself and escape real-life bullying. If I hadn't had internet access I don't think I'd have been happier.

>The internet gave me a safe place

Maybe the internet stopped being a safe place? Social media is increasingly feeling like a space designed for manipulation.

I always taught my kids that the internet is like choosing a bar, or club. Some are great, there are thieves around, some of the customers are 'a bit rough', some will become your friends or only acquaintances, someone always wants your money, people will lie to you. Bars and clubs aren't inherently unsafe, but you just gotta be careful.

That's a big part of TikTok, isn't it - it seems designed to make kids feel miserable and to have mental illnesses.

(Not at all destabilizing society, of course. Because of all the positive things it offers. /s)

60 Minutes piece on Douyin (domestic users) versus TikTok (foreign users):

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0j0xzuh-6rY

tl;dw: Chinese users get more wholesome content, particularly children, along with usage limits.

Yes; I can see that it's not something that's shared here on HN, or at least a controversial opinion to have - however I see it as a great toxic instrument of evil.

Examples are so plentiful, take for instance all these cyber-bullying pieces where men might be called out at gyms for having eyes and actually just taking in their surroundings - and females of peak physique in near naked appearance would be nearly impossible to ignore. In slow motion, everyone's a creep who needs their face shamed right? That's just one example. There's a dungeon of extremely negative content that especially kids should not be subject to.

So the cynic in me can't help but see this sowing of discontent as something that could read from the Art of War. And that's before considering the security implications that the app has.

I should have said “safer”. It was never “safe”, but neither is the offline world.

Smartphones increased usage of social media because you can use it everywhere, all the time. When it was tied to a PC at home, there was a natural limit.

Yes, that's true, if you're addicted they make it harder to escape it. But it's a difference of degree mostly.

Sure, but differences of degrees are important. That's the gap between taking opiates for post-surgical pain and being addicted to opiates.

> Young people in liberal peer group social circles – which is most young people, especially given the internet – were increasingly socially punished for not expressing the view that a lot of extremely depressing things were happening.

Blaming the awareness instead of the actual depressing thing.

The short-form video algorithms like TikTok, IG Stories, YouTube stories etc., seem to be masterfully tuned to figure out what you're insecure about and then harass you with content that reinforces that message.

It would have been poisonous to my adolescent brain.

Yale university has a free course on coursera called "The Science of Well-being" The aim is to help teenagers feel better and build healthier habits. It's a very popular course, and you should share it with any teen you know.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being-for...

I do not understand the introduction to this post. "Could the kids be depressed because we keep telling them (rightfully) that humanity is fucked and has no future and that they'll experience societal collapse in their lifetime due to entirely preventable causes? Heck no! It's the phones."

I'll need something more convincing than a "heck no" and a South Park meme.

No, it is the phones. Every generation all through the 20th century has had its existential crises and they've all been alright. Until now, where it's the phones.

Most generations haven't grown up with the constant message of "all scientists agree that we are completely and utterly fucked" hanging over them, with constant messaging from the UN that we're blowing last point of no return after point of no return.

I'm not trying to minimise the Cold War, it must've been terrifying. But it was always, "we'll be completely fucked if the war turns hot".

But hey, maybe there's great studies which prove that the impending doom doesn't negatively impact people's emotional state. That would be nice. I'm just saying the article needs something more than a South Park reference to back that up.

> I'll need something more convincing than a "heck no" and a South Park meme.

Well, good for you, the post is real long! (I did find some good observations towards the middle, and appreciated the look at various other theories and statistics)

I'm not arguing against the point that phones and social media is part of the problem. I'm arguing against the idea that climate doomerism has no or a negligible effect.

I’m so cynical I think society probably needs to collapse for humans not yo completely ruin the planet.

The planet will be fine. It's the humans who are fucked.

I notice in this article a pattern where the author makes some really detailed statistical analysis of a trend, including rebuttal to some theories that aren't backed up by the statistics in a useful, well-presented way --

And then immediately launches on a tangent based on a self proclaimed theory with no backup...

But one of the major points he makes is that the economy isn't actually that notably worse, because we all have a roof or something? This point strikes me as very out of touch. There are a significant number of people who are in significantly more precarious economic situations. The gap is widening due to rising housing, healthcare, education, etc costs. He does mention this but somehow manages to also dismiss it...

It's a very visible problem in the USA - homeless, tent cities, and a definite rise in people living in their vehicles.

Housing affordability is a key issue (and here in Australia as well). Related is a sense that the situation is not improving. I imagine that would be seriously disheartening for people aged 15-25 and thinking about their prospects.

> Then, actually, yes. Spoiler alert, I’m going to blame the phones and social media.

We've deprived kids of the future, and we've removed most places where kids can be kids.

Edit: the latter part is especially true in the US. I think Europe is a much better place for kids and teens.

Let's blame phones and social media.

> I notice that this graph is suggesting something happened around 2011 that impacted everyone, and disproportionally impacted only liberal girls.

The author uses this point to (IMO) bash liberal views as forcing kids to act depressed. A lot of the article was subtly tainted with the authors personal politics, and I think this is one of the times they distracted themselves with their own views.

> Another aspect of liberal politics is the focus on various forms of identity, including demands for how kids must react to things and then potentially severe punishment if caught reacting the ‘wrong’ way...

I was a high schooler in 2011. Thats basically when phones started to get common (in my rich, liberal, suburb at least). I do think it's more likely that the introduction of 24/7 social media that is in-person during the school day would have a worse and immediate affect for girls. This assumes that liberal girl is actually upper middle class and suburban or urban (who would have a family that provided them a phone in high school).

I think the author made a lot of good recognitions elsewhere, but this line of logic just read like political bias.

Homes are prisons thanks to car dependent design.

Car dependent design predates homes being prisons.

The case of Lenore Skenazy aka "America's Worst Mom" shows that it's the mindset that's the problem.

I don't have the link, but there's a study showing that Americans are split on whether 12-year-olds should be supervised when playing in a park.

> Car dependent design predates homes being prisons

Part of the home-as-prison is from fear of being outside/out of reach. That has existed in large pockets of our society for a very long time. Cars have not improved that reality for many people and have actually made it worse in many ways. eg: Predators now have as much range as they can drive in a day... or rich predators have as much range as they can fly in a day.

The future was perhaps even bleaker 40 years ago. You had to be a grownup at the age of 18. Now, what is the difference with 40 years ago?

I’m not saying the logical conclusion is phones and socials, but it isn’t a feeling of doom just by itself.

The feeling of doom is a real thing though.

This reminds of this "This American Life" piece [0] focused on people who just couldn't distance themselves from the world going the way it is, the fight for the climate eating their whole lives and impacting their family and social life. That's an extreme, and the reason why it ends in a podcast, but I'd imagine a lot of people sharing part of the same path.

Decades ago the main threat in the "west" was if nations went to nuclear war, with the hope that nothing drastically changes. Accessorily, not going to war for oil was also on the table. So basically, we'd be fine if we kept the status quo.

Right now the main concern would be wether we can drastically change our societies, which is just so much more of an ununtainable goal than the status quo.

People who are poised to be anxious about the future are just so much more fucked in the current climate that decades or centuries before, IMHO.

[0] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/748/transcript

> Decades ago the main threat in the "west" was if nations went to nuclear war

Yeah, that was unpleasant.

> not going to war for oil was also on the table.

The oil crisis was just over, and the effects were still there.

> Right now the main concern would be wether we can drastically change our societies

As was the concern 150 years and 40 years ago. The report from the Club of Rome was the OG IPCC.

> As was the concern 150 years and 40 years ago. The report from the Club of Rome was the OG IPCC.

The difference is on the public ingesting the information I think.

The previous generation was raised in a climat of growth, and the notion of producing/consuming too much just doesn't resonate with most. A few decades ago, reports on pollutions were also met with a kind of "technology will fix that" attitude, as technology effectively fixed a lot of the existential problems they've seen in their life

The current generation looking at IPCC doesn't have that background. They had the societal and environmental issues thrown at them from the start, whith adults showing a very clear "our kids can deal with it" attitude.

Reports of future climate issues resonate a lot differently to the current generation IHMO.

We’re more aware of how fucked the world is and how little we’re doing to fix it.

You've got no way to compare them.

What do you even mean? Just because you’re not looking doesn’t mean the information isn’t there.

How was future bleaker in 1983? It was basically a beginning of long economic growth.

Nobody knew it. We might be on the brink of a fantastic future right now.

But, there was an economic crisis, there was a cold war, and there were serious worries about the environment and sustainability (Club of Rome's report). "No future" was the motto.

So, my point is: a feeling of doom isn't the difference that could explain the change in attitude/perception. Phones and social media are very viable candidates, though, given the repeatedly shown effect on mental health.

Everyone back then thought nuclear holocaust could happen any day.

Of course, that's true right now too, but for a long period between 1991 and recent years, the idea of nuclear armageddon seemed like a bad memory from the Cold War.

Does anyone have any information about how this looks in other countries? Is this an American issue or worldwide?

Suicide in Australia: 1907 - present

https://www.aihw.gov.au/suicide-self-harm-monitoring/data/de...

Male rate consistantly ~ > 4x female rate (particularly so pre WWII) - save for WWII years.

Youth suicide in Australia: 2001 - present (ungendered)

https://www.aihw.gov.au/suicide-self-harm-monitoring/data/po...

Ages 18-24 are peak ages for suicide, ~ 2x rate @15-17

Indigenous suicide in Australia: 2001 - present

https://www.aihw.gov.au/suicide-self-harm-monitoring/data/po...

approx 1.5-2.5x non-indigenous.

There's more to be gleaned from the actual full M&M tables, these are just the web tables available re: suicide.

NOTE WELL!! In AU, UK, USofA etc reporting customs have changed with respect to cause of death and suicide over the years, some dips and peaks may be more related to the culture of reporting rather than rates of actual suicide.

Anecdotally, Switzerland's kids are doing ok, but I haven't checked the public health stats.

One thing that helps is having a stable future ready for them to inherit. They can see the investments our generation is making for them (windmills, car chargers, trains), they have guaranteed education and apprenticeship to bring them into adulthood and independence, and they have a social safety net ready to catch them (I suspect they don't really understand the value of that though).

My point is, it is easy to say "you've got a bright future" and get them to believe it when the entire society is actually organized around making it actually true.

The article claims this is a common problem in the developed countries, not just in the USA.

It varies tremendously by country and within subpopulations.

The title immediately had me hearing The Kids Aren't Alright - by The Offspring.

The lyrics mostly fit too.

https://genius.com/The-offspring-the-kids-arent-alright-lyri...

I think it might be earlier than that

https://youtu.be/afam2nIae4o

(The offspring song, as well as many others, references this)

It’s intentional for sure

One nice thing about Twitter is forcing people to tighten up their writing.

With a 4K limit soon expanding to 10K, that is increasingly not the case, at least for the people that pay for Blue.

Yeah, just like TikTok forcing people to tighten up their videos?

Good thing Elon is giving us 10k character tweets soon. I'm sure that will make Twitter worth $44 billion.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1632524972588695553

Strong and stable culture makes people happier. You can predict and trust what others are likely to do in a crisis. You can get along with your parents or your kids better. You can take comfort in doing the right thing even if things are not going well. It's not all rosy, lack of flexibility can also lead one to follow dictators, regard dissenters as less than human and forego opportunities. But there is got to be a balance and flat rejection that anything from the past is good and worth preserving is not it.

What is the point of this article? I made it two thirds of the way through before I realized it was all references and no content. Does this person just blog about tweets? I've never been so confused when reading an article this long. How are there so many words and no actual statements?

I'm sure daily disaster/apocalyptic news don't help.

Except daily disaster news has existed for decades. At least since the first gulf war, and probably hit its peak post 9/11. This was a time where most news broadcasts led with a freaking color coded terror alert, as if it was the weather.

And yet the 2000s, which saw 9/11 as well as the biggest financial crisis since WW2, didn’t see the rapid increase in suicidal thoughts in teens, especially girls, that we saw in the past decade.

Science supports this. There is an observable decline of suicides during wars. https://academic.oup.com/book/24371/chapter-abstract/1872592...

Some of the most common phrases occuring in communication by men have committed suicide are "useless" and "worthless". I think you can go quite a bit further and say that not only is disaster not the reason for the bad mental situation but potentially the opposite, there isn't enough of it.

Mental health issues and suicide rates around the world are persistently high in affluent and safe societies. South Korea ranks fourth highest, Syria 7th lowest. the USA, Germany, Finland, Sweden rank way above countries in the MENA region.

Totally, but this is about what news and media teens are accessing and looking at constantly. In the 2000s, was that really a thing? Even so, reading the paper, watching news on TV, reading website on your desktop or laptop… these don’t follow you into your other activities. And you don’t do that for four hours a day as a teenager. I bet most teens would flip the channel if they sat down and the news was on.

But you can’t just flip the channel like that any more. Now, you’re consuming media feeds which are algorithmically designed to keep them engaged for hours on end, which in turn means feeding them rage-inducing topics.

It doesn’t seem like the negative media itself is the problem, but the fact that phones and social media make it a prevalent part of daily life.

Yes but I think internet population [1] changed all this.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/209117/us-internet-penet...

Make it hide auto-delete or at least hide from everyone else by default after a while, viewable only by friends, illegal to consider in any school disciplinary action or admissions process or job interview.

I guess he's talking specifically about children's posts here, but I definitely want to know if a kid is threatening to shoot up a school or engaging in online bullying.

I also want to know if a potential hire is a Neo-Nazi or a Qtard.

First of all, TLDR.

I'll give my opinion though. It's not that social media apps are the ones hurting us, they are merely exposing us to the nasty nature of humans. Closing your eyes and not using social media doesn't mean the flow of likes and comments will stop. And likewise shutting down social media doesn't mean we will forget what we had before. The cat is out of the bag, humans will now chase to be the top 1% at everything, money, attractiveness, power, etc. Even without their phones they still have permanently changed their worldview.

I don't see a solution other than perhaps shut down the internet completely. And invest in better mental health coping strategies

The post does touch on that. The big counterpoint is that while yes the world is terrible in many ways, your objective lived quality of life depends on what you observe and how you think about it. If you’re more constantly exposed to negativity (and it’s hard to get away from it), you’ll feel more negatively as well.

So your quality of life and happiness can objectively be improved even while the world itself potentially gets worse.

> The cat is out of the bag, humans will now chase to be the top 1% at everything, money, attractiveness, power, etc.

Why? And what does this have to do with social media and “the nasty nature of humans”?

That's what social media encourages. It glamourizes certain lifestyles not among celebrities, but among your own friends.

I'm not sure how to put it but it's a lot easier to be a mean/nasty person online. Or it's just easier to hide that fact in real life.

It's sad to read about "liberal children" and "conservative children". It's like Reformation era Catholics vs Huguenots lol? With either beliefs usually being irrational and imprinted in childhood, even electional politics is increasingly not about convincing liberals to the conservative side or vice versa, but about bringing in more "right" and pushing out more "wrong" voters, redistricting to skew results in "your" favour, or even bringing about conditions that are likely to increase birth rate of "right" electorate or death rate of "wrong" ones (a lot of Covid vaccination messaging done by Biden administration seemed to be tailored to stimulate liberals to vaccinate and conservatives, to avoid vaccination, apparently in hope that they will die and thus not vote in the midterms). Is this really the world we are heading to? SAD, as Trump would say.

Because it couldn't possibly be more complex and attributable to other causes like, oh I don't know, kicking fathers out of their children's lives (with statistics from the US Census openly stating most all custodial parents are mothers and proportions are statistically unchanged over the years)?

"In the spring of 2002, an estimated 13.4 million parents had custody of 21.5 million children under 21 years of age whose other parent lived somewhere else. About 5 of every 6 custodial parents were mothers (84.4 percent) and 1 in 6 were fathers (15.6 percent), proportions statistically unchanged since 1994 (Table A)." [1]

"Custodial parents have become more likely to be fathers over the past 24 years, increasing from 16.0 percent in 1994 to 20.1 percent in 2018...

The number of custodial parents has varied somewhat over the past 24 years, including the proportion of fathers who are custodial parents. In 1994, about 1 of every 6 custodial parents were fathers (16.0 percent). By 2018, that proportion reached 1 in 5 (20.1 percent) (Appendix Table 2)." [2]

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20211212183149/https://www.censu...

[2] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

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