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Comment by DougN7 | Hacker News Reader

Growing up, I knew maybe two or three kids that had emotional problems. Now (as an adult with grown kids) I hardly know any families that don’t have such a person. I’m sure part of it is we’re more open, which is great, but I can’t attribute all of it to that. The rising generation is really struggling. My guess is social media, but maybe it’s environmental pollution or something similar. I live in the US for what it’s worth.

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A good book on this is The Coddling of the American Mind. It argues several factors (including social media, safteyism, and the decline in unstructured play time) are responsible for the significant rise in young adult mental health issues that started around 2012. Good read.

In my opinion, it's largely the result of poor economic conditions and rising inequality endemic to a broken system. Young people today are keenly aware that they will have significantly lesser quality of life than the generation that preceded them, while simultaneously having to work much harder to gain a fraction of it. Communism may have fallen over in the Soviet Union, but it looks as if Capitalism is destined to fall much the same way. It is just taking a little longer, and so, the fall will be a little harder too.

The decade after 2012 was an enormously wealthy bull market.

Only for the people who could afford to gamble on the market. That accelerated the growth of inequality, which can be seen today.

I don't know which 'young people' generation you are talking about but I don't think most of them are actively comparing themselves to previous generations. It is very difficult to accurately compare my quality of life vs say my mothers. Most people are just trying to live life and get by as best as they can. If anything, older generations belittle the younger ones with the 'you've got it easy' comments.

Communism never really took off, so it didn't have far to fall. But nothing lasts forever, so surely capitalism and democracy will give way eventually(in some ways it already has).

Communism was/still is (depends on how you feel about China) a system that billions of people lived through. I think there’s been a great amnesia about this in younger people who’ve never met someone who interacted with Really Existing Socialism

It's no accident that American colleges don't have courses dedicated to teaching students what life was like in the Soviet Union. They had money, and they had people living in nice places with cars and people who lived in ghettos and were a decade+ away from automobile ownership if ever. A reality check isn't what you need if you're raising a generation of utopian idealists.

I was born in the USSR and grew up through the restructuring following its fall. We weren't well off, and my whole family(including extended) basically lived in a 2br apartment. I don't remember feeling poor or anything, that was just the life we knew, and I don't really remember seeing people who were 'better off', but I wasn't looking for it at that age. I have recently started asking my mom about what she experienced during her work years, but that process is just starting for me.

Anywho, my reference to communism not taking off is mostly to the utopian idealogy, I understand many people live/d under communism, but it was really just socialism with some caveats.

"Hand the kid an iPad and ignore them for 4 hours" also started around 2012.

A generation before it was just sitting kids in front of the tv…

Yeah, but there are obvious differences. A lot of people watched TV with their families or friends, although this is likely less frequent now with streaming. The amount of interactivity, portability, and solitude that the iPad affords its users with is undoubtedly bad for developing minds, at least in large doses.

TV wasn't personalized and algorithmic and brutally optimizing.

>My guess is social media, but maybe it’s environmental pollution or something similar

There are plenty of other countries that have just as much social media usage as the US but don't have the same widespread emotional dysfunction, so wouldn't that suggest that social media isn't to blame?

> There are plenty of other countries that have just as much social media usage as the US but don't have the same widespread emotional dysfunction

Are you sure? A quick search says otherwise. E.g Effect of social media on youth in [country].

I guess my search term is favouring a conclusion but not sure where / how to find proof of your claim.

Cultural stigma against mental health issues is extremely ubiquitous outside the US

This causes mental health issues to go unaddressed, but, ironically, it also helps in a way, because peer pressure certainly helps reinforce individual discipline to develop techniques to keep it together. Peer pressure is a very powerful motivator.

For example fat shaming is certainly bullying but it's also certainly effective at discouraging overeating

> but it's also certainly effective at discouraging overeating

I think you should back that statement up with a citation.

Anecdotally it did not. Just introduced self-esteem issues and if anything pushed me to emotional eating. I know a few people in the same boat.

> fat shaming is certainly bullying but it's also certainly effective at discouraging overeating

As far as I know, it just traumatizes people and discourages them from eating in front of the people shaming them. Then, as we all do, they relieve the trauma by using their usual coping mechanism - in their case, eating.

It's just like hitting kids. It teaches them to avoid getting hit; they learn nothing about their behavior.

> As far as I know, it just traumatizes people and discourages them from eating in front of the people shaming them. Then, as we all do, they relieve the trauma by using their usual coping mechanism - in their case, eating.

But if you materially get fat you will get fat shamed regardless. So while it doesn't make you stop eating garbage, you will somehow, someway figure out how to keep a decent figure. This can either be exercise or more awful methods like surgery.

> So while it doesn't make you stop eating garbage, you will somehow, someway figure out how to keep a decent figure.

What makes you say that? Lots of people remain overweight, lots of research shows that shaming doesn't have the impact you say.

Also, lots of people can't physically do anything about it.

A lot of Asian countries are shame based on the Shame - Guilt - Fear spectrum of cultures, and have some of the lowest obesity rates. I wouldn't be surprised if these countries have less obese people and more suicides of people who feel they cannot fit in

They have fewer obese people because their diet is healthier than the average US diet.

It’s probably exacerbated here by lack of walkable cities. Public spaces for teens. Etc

We're getting same issues but it takes few years to propagate. I'd say US is ~ 5 years ahead of UK and another 5 years of the rest of europe.

The system does not care for their well being because they are redundant. Drug use was frowned upon during the Cold War because we needed people to win a industrial war against a much bigger enemy. We don't need them anymore, so the system does not care if they end overdosing in an alleyway. It is all connected, culture, social and economical.

damn. this is it. canada just passed a law saying people can get physician assisted suicide (maid) for drug problems.

I'm conflicted about it. On the one hand, I'm angry that society would simply give up and leave people behind. On the other hand, societies have always done that in one rationalized way or another, and at least this way is slightly more honest and compassionate.

Game of thrones had the wall to send unwanted men to. Looks like westeros had more compassion than canada.

It's just a fashion to have issues at the moment. It comes with living a comfortable life. It's actually a blessing in disguise but can get annoying.

Teens literally put their (usually self diagnosed) conditions in their Instagram bios.

That sort of thing used to be only something you’d share with close friends, if that. It was a big deal if someone let you know they had bipolar, depression, etc.

That's because you can self-undiagnose just as easy. People think feelings are disorders.

There's another phenomena that I have observed recently where people _want_ to be seen as "mentally ill".

> My guess is social media

Let's not scapegoat the real problems at play: climate disaster, the rise of authoritative leaders in democracies that use fear as their biggest selling point, crippling debt to merely exist in a healthy manner (in the US), disinformation turning friends and family into anti-vaxx Q-following idiots, capitalism squeezing blood out of every penny... The list goes on.

It's not social media.

Mental diseases are metabolic diseases.

It is the food that destroys our brains and even worse, our women eat shit even during pregnancy, so the brains of newborns already start out with defects.

If we were eating a proper human diet (ie beef and eggs), we would not have these issues on this scale.

Beef and eggs cured my schizophrenia!

Food quality, microplastics, other pollutants, unfiltered chemicals in the water supply, an inevitable outcome of late-stage capitalism, social media.

Take your pick.

Can confirm this is a bullshit theory. Eating beef and eggs did not help my depression years ago. In fact, going vegan has had a positive impact on my mental health.

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