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Comment by ethbr0 | Hacker News Reader

I'd frame that as insufficient resiliency, which is a trainable skill.

In order to be successful in life, you have to be able to tolerate failure, because statistically speaking everyone fails... a lot.

Modern culture for young people isn't building sufficient resiliency.

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Could be, and maybe that is also the reason for the emerging mental health crisis. Or it's the other way round. Nevertheless, if one asks: What was different say 50 to 75 years ago? Was it the smaller social reference group (you couldn't compare to the worlds elite in every single aspect of your life)? Was it the way of live laid out more clearly (you could get somewhere with a corporate job, own a house, etc.)? Or is there a more fundamental reason mental health is declining and thus more and more people are NEET?

Spending your childhood soaking your brain in dopamine as you are drip fed risk free game achievements is unlikely to build as much resilience as pre-internet childhood.

Probably repeating those people "you're a failure" doesn't help much building that resiliency. And current society does mostly (only?) that.

I'd classify it slightly differently -- in pursuit of equality, we've narrowed or eliminated opportunities for true small successes in childhood.

Where true small successes require the potential of real failure.

In the 90s, I remember constantly failing in small ways: organized sports, quizzes and tests, gym class.

It wasn't pleasant, but because the opportunities were smaller, I feel I learned how to live with failure.

And critically, live with it: not ignore/reject it. "I objectively failed at this thing. That sucked. But I'm not going to let it keep me from trying the next thing" sort of stuff.

As a consequence of eliminating those chances, major opportunities are often the only opportunities, and encountering a first failure there is extremely traumatic.

How did we eliminate the opportunity for failure?

By lessening its prevalence. Participation-based awards. Eliminating contest sports in school gym. Non-100 point grading. Fewer tests. Games that are impossible/difficult to lose.

I'm not saying historical methods didn't need adjustment.

But I am saying that if we're observing bad outcomes downstream, we should look upstream and see if the systems we've put in place are supporting the outcomes we want to see.

I don't think this is it. The world is full of competition, despite attempts to sanitize it. Infact, it seems like people are more aware of the competition due to global social media. If we're looking at this from a learned helplessness perspective, I would guess that modern society is an impossibly competitive environment that crushes children more easily, not that they are weaker.

I think this is a very good point, and a failure for education and 'para-education'.

We got lost along the way.

Here's where culture might play a role. Failing in Japan might not be as socially accepted as failing in the US (where it's even somewhat celebrated).

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