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Comment by kuschku | Hacker News Reader

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If children/teens weren't exposed to so much online doom-mongering, they would be finding things to live for rather than fearing the future.

Even if the world is a bit shit, there's still plenty of opportunities for love, family, friendship, art, music, sport, and plenty more. Maybe even working towards solving one of the big problems we face, whether that's through science/tech or politics/economics?

It's exactly this "we didn't start the fire" mentality that caused the situation we're in.

If you want the world to change, you need to do that. You can't just wait for it to happen.

The Internet, through social media and clickbait news, encourages people to get ever-angrier and ever-more-radical until they attempt to 'change things' by smashing and burning, or justifying violence against political 'enemies'.

I don't know what the answers to the world's big problems are, but I'm pretty sure that smashing, burning, and pushing for violent revolution, insurrection, or civil war is not the answer.

Most of the world's problems aren't solvable by everyday people. Better to focus one's attention on oneself, work, family and community, where a difference might be made.

(Obviously it's also great if a person can donate to charity or something of that nature. But obsessively following world events will make you miserable and solve nothing.)

Perhaps if they were narrowly focused on religion? It seems to work for the Amish and other intensely devout groups.

I've always been an atheist, but I'm starting to wonder whether the decline of religion has done more harm than good. We've certainly lost some of the basic human decency that was once passed on via religion. The concept of forgiveness seems to be one glaring example, and the rise of selfish consumerism and online narcissism.

Maybe we need something to replace religion, without the dogma, oppression, and conflict. Something other than the online tribalism and activism seems to be filling that void for many...

Not disagreeing with your statements, but the key question in the research is why did depression spike in children worldwide _after 2012_.

At various points in my lifetime there have been reasons to be sad about the world - but what changed in 2012 that predominantly appears to affect teenage girls, and has been observed in several countries globally?

I'm saying that social media didn't cause the fears, but that social media ended the millenia of social pressure to just accept everything the way it is.

Cities once did the same, by increasing the population density you could hang out with people that had the same thoughts you did. But many countries successfully ended that through suburbanisation, isolating people once again.

Sounds like you could make an argument that cities make people depressed as well then.

I wonder if population density is a driving force for depression, both online and offline.

I'd buy that. I find cities miserable.

oooh thats an interesting thought, I really like that.

As a personal anecdote, I moved from rural New Mexico to a highly populated New England county and my baseline anxiety level noticeably increased.

Maybe the Mayans were right all along?

In all serious, 2012-2013 coincides with 1/3 and 1/2 of the American population's owning a smartphone. Maybe that has something to do with it?

You are describing a commonly shared sentiment of today. This spike started nearly a decade ago, long before our current economic situation materialized.

To your point, who largely gets to decide which news stories get aggregated and which don't? Who has an outsized influence in shaping people's realities? By many metrics, times are tough, but by many other metrics, we are living in prosperous times as well.

> long before our current economic situation materialized

2008 was 15 years ago

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