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Comment by TheOtherHobbes | Hacker News Reader

I think social media - which is not so much about media but about performative competition - is just part of the problem.

Reality for kids seems so much more competitive and ruthless in every way. And there are so few resources available to them to help them deal with it.

At the same time opportunities are shrinking and pressure to perform is increasing. It's not enough to be adequate, you have to be outstanding in looks, talent, ability, work ethic, party ethic, lifestyle, income, and education.

But you can't be. Because you're not competing with a small group of relative peers, you're competing with the entire online world.

At the same time there's incoming doom in the form of climate change, Covid mismanagement, outrageous and crippling economic inequality, various wars, and now the threat of AI.

It would be strange if kids weren't getting depressed under these circumstances.

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> you're competing with the entire online world.

It's actually even worse than that: you're competing separately in each field, in parallel. But you only see the others in the context of that which they are good at, which is why you see them in that space in the first place.

You get used to it though. It is the same with development. You put much work into something and are proud of the result and then some 12 year old, that grew up in the swamp and was risen by wolves, comes around and has a faster and more elegant solution.

I believe a large amount of the negative effects is that people take themselves too seriously. Every quote on social media is put on the scale and becoming a pariah is basically random. The haunting is mostly done by people with a lack of self-worth and confidence themselves.

But some values also changed for the worse in my opinion. Confidence is valued much more than humility and seen as leadership material. I don't believe it prudent to encourage people that actually do look for strong figures out of fear.

when my kids were born i was amazed how competitive getting into a good pre-school was. Then i was amazed how competitive getting in to a good elementary school was and now middle school. One year out and we're already discussing strategy for getting in to a good high school.

When I was a kid you went to whatever school was in your neighborhood. On the other hand, when i was a kid my parents had no idea what a good school event meant.

This has been the status quo in Asia for probably at least half a century

It would be interesting to plot the Asian percentage in the OP's area vs the time when OP became aware of this competition. Remember: import enough X and you will become X.

It's not about reality for kids, it's for everyone. It's not enough to be a good teacher any more, parents expect you to be on Veritasium level of engagement in every single moment. If services from locksmith is used, LockPickingLawyer is expected all around the world. Every doctor is compared to Dr Varshavski and anything less is not good enough. And the list goes on ...

Veritasium has an entire team and releases 1-3 videos a month. Perhaps the lesson in this is that more should be invested in making education more engaging.

Dr Varshavski can project charisma but i don’t know how well that translates in one on one interactions as his patient. He also doesn’t really seem to be at the top of his field in knowledge and skill, maybe in bedside manners.

Ngl I think that's basically it. There's insane competition at basically all swathes of life to become elite at a young age, look at how far elite college acceptance rates have dropped. This has created generations of depressive workaholics and burnouts. It's a lot worse in Asian countries where these cultural forces are stronger.

" and now the threat of AI."

Probably the icing on the cake for me, looking like no job prospect and potential for serious consequences ranging from mass scale disinformation to extinction.

We need to get our priorities straight as a species.

Modern capitalism, basically.

Using the word _capitalism_ here might be too much of an umbrella term. We cannot describe everything that is wrong with the world as capitalism.

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