How to Understand the Well-Being Gap Between Liberals and Conservatives | Hacker News Reader

How to Understand the Well-Being Gap Between Liberals and Conservatives

americanaffairsjournal.org

8 pointsAmbolia11 comments

The “social science” basis for this article is a study on the political leanings of teens.

I’m not a sociologist, but I find it difficult to believe that anything useful could come from such a study.

Teens, regardless of their intelligence and sophistication, don’t have sufficient life experience to express a reliable political ideology.

Teens imitate the politics of their friends, parents and other people they look up to.

And, their brains are still growing and maturing. It’s a very formative time of life.

The "social science" basis of the first paragraph of the article is indeed based on that study on teens but there are more paragraphs. Articles usually have more than one of these.

That's a fine justification for ignoring something if you don't want to think about the implications too much.

Also their economic status is determined largely by their parents who may or may not have similar political leanings.

> Teens imitate the politics of their friends, parents and other people they look up to.

Great point and something to really keep in mind with this stuff.

But when it comes to usefulness of the study, I disagree. It indicates something is off but like you point out, the problem isn't likely with the teenagers. Something else going on around them is worth digging into and figuring out why there is an imbalance.

I think that is correct about teens but the article seems to be using them as a (sensitive) barometer of their family/friends for the reasons you say, it references “family education etc. I think this article was referenced in a roll up here for further reading: https://www.slowboring.com/p/why-are-young-liberals-so-depre...

Looks like all the highlighted questions are of the form "Has a doctor or healthcare provider told you X?" and "Has a doctor or healthcare provider diagnosed you with Y?" They seem to be controlling for the usual Education, Age, Gender, Income, and Race. Are they controlling for who tends to use / trust the medical establishment? There are religious sects who discourage going to the doctor, groups who deny the existence of mental illnesses like ADHD and depression, and growing general distrust of the medical establishment (all heavily weighted on one side of the political spectrum).

I would say my liberal friends often allow their kids more screen time (and a much more diverse/adult range of content ratings) than my conservative friends.

So I'll blame this study on media consumption along with the other studies posted here about that topic every month.

Social media, binging shows, news media, video games, etc...

The first three activities lead to depression and anxiety. The fourth, interestingly enough, has properties that can reduce depression, though they have to be the right kind of games, played the right way.

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35265833

Also, urban lifestyle tends to skew heavily liberal so I wonder how much this reflects urban vs rural lifestyles.

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