Yesterday I was reading a column in the Washington Post by Kate Woodsome about the mental health of American teenagers, and it was, as usual, startling. American teens seem to be in terrible shape. In particular, Woodsome shared a CDC chart showing that more than half of teen girls experience "persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness." Half! That seems hardly believable.
I traced this back to its source in order to get a longer-term view, and then, instead of looking at raw levels I looked at the change from year to year. Here it is:
For the most part, the numbers go up and down and don't change a great deal—until 2019 and 2021. In the space of just four years, it jumps by a third for both boys and girls.
This is jaw dropping. Nothing changes that much unless there's some kind of serious external change driving it. But what?
It's not social media since everything was fairly stable for the entire century until 2019. (Though maybe the culprit is one specific bit of social media that started up around 2017?)
It's not COVID since it started before the pandemic.
It's not George Floyd, which happened in 2020.
It's not video games.
But what is it? The only thing that comes to mind is mass shootings, which do seem to have gotten considerably worse lately. Another possibility, as it always is, is some kind of statistical malfunction.
Any other ideas? What could have happened around 2018-19 that would have sent American teens literally off the deep end?
POSTSCRIPT: The full CDC report is here. For what it's worth, bullying has been stable lately. Threats of violence and sexual violence were steady. Sexual behavior was unchanged. Drug and alcohol use was mostly either stable or down. The answer probably lies somewhere else.
The dominance of MAGA in American lives? The grifter fraud in the White House?
Yep, this is my theory as well. MAGA and misogyny being prominent, and just how entrenched it is becoming visible.
Yup - the Count of Mostly Crisco is my vote, too. A society built on anger and hatred.
And climate extremism, "We're all going to die," honestly.
https://www.mattball.org/2023/02/costs-and-benefits.html
Really? You think that has any impact on 13 and 14 years olds?
Perhaps they are exposed to it endlessly in their own homes.
I mean, that certainly had a negative impact on my mental and emotional health. But: it's probably wise to not make the mistake of thinking that what upsets us adults is likely what the kids care about.
New teens in 2019 were born in 06-ish. 18 year olds born in 2001
Seems hard to say “we saw this trend in X age group in 2019, what happened in 2019?” when it seems more likely to be a prior effect. In this case maybe generic Internet age stuff?
Like lung cancer rates shooting up when the first 18 year old chainsmokers start hitting age 50. Maybe kids raised with internet access are just maladjusted in comparison
Good point. Drum's question about what happened in 2018-2019 seemed like the right question when I read the article, but you are right that it could be something earlier.
Complete speculation but here goes. When I see these type of results, drastic changes on items that are hard to measure, with no clear external cause, I tend to speculate its a measurement error or change of survey technique.
Clearly, I could be completely wrong in this case. Rather, my life experience colors my response above.
Your life experience aside, reputable organizations that conduct surveys publish their error margins, and methodology and changes thereto. Go to the source; if you find them, you know more about how to interpret the results. If the information isn’t available, you’re free to discount the survey.
KenSchulz - as I mention above I am only speculating.
Rather, for professional reasons (in past, I worked with a lot of survey data, and have a graduate degree with course work relevant to this topic), I know that there are many ways data can be skewed (bias) particularly for items such as perception/how one feels (versus, say more tangible things that one can count). The classic example, people's answers change based on time of day,
For example, a small shift in how or when a survey is distributed could significantly alter your sample and result in response bias: this type of shift, while typically unintended to shape the survey, can meaningfully change results.
BTW - what I am expressing, I believe, would be the likely going in premise of many statistic Professors if presented with this thread.
That's funny. I use statistics in my day job, in fact taught statistics at university for several years; suffice it to say, that is not my premise. In fact, if you were to behave like this in my class your grade would reflect what I thought of 'just speculating' aka 'just asking questions'.
ScentOfViolets - thank you for the response and good thing I got my degree (s) many years ago. lol
This is why the trend is toward greater transparency - making public the raw data and the code used to analyze it; publishing details on sampling, stratification, data cleaning and validation methods ….
Upon reflection, I'd like to modify my previous response: The standard practice in any disciplne for handling anomalous instrument reports (be it a voltmeter, litmus paper or a survey) is to check the instruments.[1] But that's not speculation; that's just standard practice. So to the first approximation, the default assumption until proven otherwise is that you don't teach grandpa to suck eggs, as the saying goes.
[1] Remember the faster-than-light neutrinos that weren't about ten or so years back? Turned out to be a binning error caused by a loose cable.
Middle, you beat me to that answer by a few minutes; I totally agree with your speculation. Even more specifically, I speculate that the method of measuring, which involves asking the subjects how they feel, is particularly suspect. Over and over, the article uses the term "reported" to describe how the data were acquired. My guess is that "reporting" is a response to questioning, in which case even a small change in the way the questions are asked could result in a big change in the way they are answered.
Surveys regarding simple facts (e.g., who did you vote for) are either accurate or not, but they are very different from surveys about subjective feelings (e.g., were you disappointed in the choice of candidates to vote for). And when you then get to the next level of subjectivity (e.g., how do you feel about elections these days), the results are suspect at best.
One of the big no-no's in this sort of thing is changing the reponse instrument. That's why there's such a high burnout rate for phone survey workers: they have to ask every participant the same questions with exactly the same wording. I've had to can a few employees myself when they refused to stick to the script. A most unpleasant task, as I completely agreed with them that the work was excruciatingly boring. But then again, that's what the money's for.
How does one even go about surveying teenagers these days? Randomly calling phone numbers? Polling students as they leave school?
Enlist the school admins to help you, and have them distribute the survey to the kids in class.
The continuous debasement of China and Russia in US mass media to generate popular opinion for war should cause teens mental health to decline. As subjects to capitalist domination the youth who will be sacrificed to secure the global domination of the American ruling class are impotent to prevent their exploitation.
Spasibo, comrade!
Hmm, maybe if Russia and China would stop invading, and threatening to invade their neighbors, war fears might abate. But thanks for bringing the Fourth International’s viewpoint, so we don’t have to read WSWS.
"As subjects to capitalist domination the youth who will be sacrificed to secure the global domination of the American ruling class are impotent to prevent their exploitation."
Good thing that President-for-Life Xi Jingping and Gangster King of Russia (and world's richest man) Vladi Putin are out there fighting to free America's youth! By, like, bombing apartment buildings and power plants in Ukraine, and putting Uighurs in concentration camps, I guess.
"The continuous debasement of China and Russia in US mass media to generate popular opinion for war should cause teens mental health to decline. As subjects to capitalist domination the youth who will be sacrificed to secure the global domination of the American ruling class are impotent to prevent their exploitation."
That's pretty great, @Goosedat. Just turn it around and I think you've got the essence of your argument exactly correct. Here, I'll do it for you.
"The continuous debasement of NATO and America in Russian mass media to generate popular opinion for war should cause teens mental health to decline. As subjects to imperialist domination the youth who will be sacrificed to secure the global domination of the Russian ruling class are impotent to prevent their exploitation."
Actually, they aren't impotent as long as they are rich enough to leave Russia.
I read Julia Davis at https://www.youtube.com/@russianmediamonitor/videos, and what I consistently see is a reversal, like what I did above, of the situation as described in Russian propaganda for domestic consumption. I'm guessing that, if Russians can't speak clearly about their true situation, they can, at least, project.
Julia Davis is performing a fascinating and valuable service. Much of Russian domestic media she follows has devolved into whiny self-pity. Like, you can’t even invade a few peaceful countries and threaten the world with nuclear annihilation, without people saying bad things about you!
Goosedat actually makes me feel better about things. If that sort of pitifully transparent propaganda is what Russian assets are resorting to nowadays then we are going to be OK.
Russian propaganda these days does rail against Western/US hegemony, but they don’t bad-mouth capitalism or ruling classes anymore - that might remind the Russian-in-the-street that they are ruled by obscenely wealthy plutocrats. I think Goosedat is the last of the Red-diaper babies.
Another top Russian military official fails to stick the landing,
https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-russian-military-official-marina-yankina-dead-after-fall-from-16th-floor
Only human beings can build 16-story structures and then push other human beings out them. What a triumph of evolution!
Trump and the pandemic.
For the youngest demographic, their social media consumption has changed dramatically through the last 5 years, all migrating to Tik Tok Hell. Teens are walking into a feedback loop of Influencers creating superficial standards, cheered on by teens, motivating Influencers into pushing the boundaries of standards, etc.
Vicious cycle of young adults creating a hyper reality moving it further away from reality.
The short clips appeal to their still-pliable limbic system, preventing the maturation of their prefrontal cortex, which creates an addiction that is difficult to walk away from.
Same might be said of those who grew up on Birdsite and Mark's World, except, maybe those older adults are driven by the emptiness of their lives and its lack of meaning.
Alternative explanation:
Greta Thunberg came onto the global stage and burst the climate bubble of young adults who were previously led to believe by their parents and the Capitalist adults that the future was green and bright.
These are middle school and high school kids. I wouldn't call them adults, even young adults. I'm guessing 90% of them don't even know how Greta Thunberg is.
There are nearly a billion views on TikTok with the hashtag #GretaThunberg.
Just saying.
On the one hand... Whether or not they know who Greta Thunberg is, they know what climate change is.
On the other hand, they don't have the 50 years of conscious experience that I have to see climate events where you go "wow, that was different". The SF bay area lightning storm in 2020 and the following martian skies from the fire smoke was a never before seen event for all of us, but would be part of the baseline lived experience for a teen.
Good points.
As a car pool-driving dad, I am to report that kids know Greta Thunberg. They'll correct the pronunciation of her name if you get it wrong.
In elementary school, the hot topic of conversation was usually Pokemon or Minecraft.
Beginning in middle-school (6th grade), the most frequent activity on the way home was listening to John Oliver videos on their phones.
No doubt, different kids have different interests. But that's my son's experience. He and his friends were more politically aware in middle school than many of my friends in college (the Carter years, mostly), who only cared about free beer, getting laid, and scoring tickets for rock concerts.
This might be the gen that finally realizes, at gut level and in their impressionable and dramatic youth, that climate change is gonna feck up their entire world worse and worse for the rest of their lives, and that the adults have been holding out false hopes of stopping it. And extrapolating, maybe that starting a family and expecting permanence and stability and all that good stuff might not be wise or realistic.
Maybe that will happen for them eventually and maybe its creeping into the minds of older teens. But this survey was all teenagers. I doubt middle schoolers are having those thoughts.
You should ask your kids. They are probably tuned in to the vibe of their peers and have feelings of their own on the subject.
I was thinking the same thing, if I were 17 right now instead of 40 years older I’d be pretty pissed off that everyone is just fine and dandy with leaving an unlivable planet for me
I agree -- I think social media is a huge factor here and was exacerbated by Covid and remote learning where basically all their lives moved on line, both social and educational, for the better part of a year. Yes, social media has been around for a while now, but it has indeed evolved significantly over the past 3-5 years -- TikTok, Discord, and probably a bunch of other ones my uncool self has never heard of are different beasts than Twitter or Instagram. My teenager has seen some really bad stuff happen on group chat platforms like Discord where it's easy to swarm someone with harassment and bullying.
Teens literally live their lives virtually now. No one hangs out at the mall. No one goes to the movies. Nobody has drivers licenses anymore. Just chat, Tiktok, chat, Netflix, TikTok, chat....ad infinitum. No wonder they're all despairing.
@jte21, I agree with this.
Couple the discouraging effect of constant social media comparisons with the fact that the world is past Peak Everything, which means there is less for everyone and so everyone is, on average, getting poorer, and the fact that the rich are circling the wagons, and you have a situation where anyone would become depressed.
My first thought as well. Young people (and to a lesser extent, people of any age) need the physical company of peers. Strings of text and screen images won't cut it.
TikTok launched in 2017. Instagram reported about 600 million users in 2016. Snapchat reached 10 billion video views/day.
I'd say surveillance capitalism is bad for teen mental health, but then I'm a high school teacher so OF COURSE I would say that.
"This added 80 million users, mostly in the US, which TikTok then imported to its own platform.
From there, TikTok snowballed into the most popular app in 2019 and 2020. It was downloaded 693 million times in 2019 and 850 million times in 2020." - TikTok Revenue and Usage Statistics (2023) businessofapps.com
Visual social media like Instagram and SnapChat were tough on teens' egos, especially girls'. But TikTok seems to have a particularly insidious and deleterious effect on young people's sense of self-worth.
Was waiting to see this. Yes, my bet is that this is entirely a TikTok effect. TikTok curates its content to an extent that no other platform does because it controls what shows up on your default "for you" scroll. If you get a few videos about depression and leave a comment about them and follow the person posting them, suddenly 50% of the "random" videos you get assigned will be about depression. There are entire subcultures that exist on TikTok that encourage people to self-diagnose themselves with both mental and physical illnesses. For example, there are thousands of accounts of people introducing their multiple personalities as their friends, complete with a special subculture lingo (alter, host, system, etc). This despite questions about whether multiple personality disorder is even real or not. There are subcultures for cutting, for anxiety, for depression. Doctors have seen a sharp rise in what some of them call "TikTok Diseases" where TikTok consumers have diagnosed themselves with rare mental or physical conditions based on the urgings of some subcommunity or another. The most popular ones are chronic, incurable illnesses like Ehlers-Danlos, POTS, and MCAS that inevitably lead to depression and anxiety for young people who don't have them but get convinced they do.
For those interested, you can find the reddit r/medicine which is for medical professionals, and there are many threads there about patients who come in depressed and anxious because they have diagnosed themselves via TikTok.
I have three nieces ranging from 12 to 19, and all of them scroll TikTok for several hours every day.
From a recent Harvard Article:
"The first known examples of social media-induced sociogenic illness were recognized in the last year or two, a time coinciding with the pandemic. Neurologists began seeing increasing numbers of patients, especially teenage girls, with unusual, involuntary movements and vocalizations reminiscent of Tourette syndrome. After ruling out other explanations, the tics in these teenagers seemed related to many hours spent watching TikTok videos of people who report having Tourette syndrome and other movement disorders. Posted by social media influencers, these videos have billions of page views on TikTok; similar videos are available on YouTube and other sites."
TikTok is just that much of an escalation of social media.
My pure speculation is the lack of hope for the future with climate change, no hope of being able to afford the things previous generations took for granted, and horrible old farts ruling that do not care for anything other than getting reelected. Things like the evisceration of Roe v. Wade, the endless attacks on individual rights, and the ongoing deaths of hundreds of thousands due to drugs don't help. Frankly, the future for many teens looks pretty grim.
Of course it is hugely depressing that more than 50% of young adults have to live with their parents. What could be worse for a teen to look forward to?
@Zephyr, the pie is bigger now than ever, but it's not being divided properly.
When I was 25 years old, in 1978, I bought a house which is now worth $450k on wages from a factory job. My smarter and harder-working son can't do that today, and I was wondering, Why can't he? Compared to 1978, present worker productivity is through the roof.
In 1978, I wasn't directly competing for work with one billion underpaid Chinese workers.
Trade wars are class wars. https://www.amazon.com/Trade-Wars-Are-Class-International/dp/0300244177
You really think middle school and high school kids are thinking about these things?
As a parent and college professor, my take is that kids experienced a social, political, cultural toxic stew in the 10s. The realities they faced include school shootings, climate change, lack of affordable access to college & 'the good life', and institutions with no desire to address those issues in any meaningful way. MAGA was gas on that fire. Kids aren't dumb, they see their future prospects as bleak. It's understandable that a significant number internalize that despair.
Combine that mass psychological reaction with some probable methodological issues and there you go.
Kids are more aware of "issues" now than ever before, even if they don't have the depth to understand the issues in detail. Headlines versus the body of topic.
The one things don't have, no matter how smart they are is perspective. Specifically as it relates to events over time. For many young people racial injustice is perceived as persistent and unchanging. While anyone over 50 knows there has been a huge change in racial injustice, even if there's more to go. So one group can view it as a hopeless struggle, while another less so because they have seen change just by living long enough.
I bet it is going to be youtube/google/facebook algorithms that are feeding kids doomsday loops--Pick your topic, if they searched for it 1x they are now being bombarded by this shit. My teenager recently complained about his youtube feed and we worked with him to undo the algorithm's doom loop. Lots of kitten videos. If you have an online kid, you have to teach them that people are earning big $ by scaring the crap out of you.
Good points! I must have been imputed as a radically different demographic, because when I go to youtube.com, I get mostly stuff that I like: Baraban cats, 3 minutes of aviation, the Lincoln Project, George RR Martin, Screen Rants "trailers", SNL and the like. (Too much information, right?)
And I now know that they've got me, personally, pegged, because once I "visited" youtube before logging in to Gmail, and the selections they brought up were radically different, and were, in fact, a bunch of crap (can I type that here?). I should try coming into youtube cold more often and see if I can categorize "the default experience."
It is currently fashionable among teens to have mental health problems. They don't ask whether they have a mental health problem, but which one. Several weeks of health class at the middle school is devoted to mental health. The message, for better or worse, is that teens should be happy, and that they must tell someone when they are sad. As a result, many teens show up to emergency departments with normal developmental mood swings, expecting medicine or therapy. Then, having no available treatment options, often stay in the emergency department for days at a time.
I was going to reply with a somewhat similar comment. Basically it is just more "ok" or "normal" to express these types of feelings than it used to be.
Certainly, there's some jumping on the bandwagon for attention and some that exploit the recent attention to mental health problems for personal gain (I see it in the classroom too often). However, those cases don't negate the real increase in mental health issues experienced by Gen Z.
I disagree. Being a teen sucks and it always has. The think that's changed is that people are allowed to talk about it now and it's viewed less as a weakness or something that makes you a freak.
One can hope that as mental health becomes something everyone can discuss without fear, that we have fewer people breaking down and taking out their issues on others. Less school shootings, more counseling sessions.
Worth noting that there's a sizeable gender difference. From 2011-2011, males went from 21% to 29% whereas females went from 36 to 57%.
So 8 percentage points and 38% increase for males vs 21 percentage point and 58% increase for females.
Also, not surprisingly, there's a HUGE difference between those who identify as heterosexual (35%) and those who identity as LGBT (69%).
Re: "35% hetero and LGBTQ++++ 69%". I always suspected the old "opposites attract" cliche was questionable, at best.
I'd recommend listening to this podcast from 2019. Yeah, I know it's from Cracked's late podcast but to hear people very much connected to that generation wrestling with that question as it was building might give you a better insight:
https://www.cracked.com/podcast/the-end-of-the-world-mentality-and-why-thatE28099s-ridiculous
About the cause of this: Like for inflation the must be a delay between the cause and the statistics that measure its consequence--which in turn will develop with its own delay. You can't rule out COVID because it "happened earlier" and at the same time make the argument you make on inflation. COVID is definitely on the list of possible
candidates.
Personally I don't quite see why COVID is assumed by everybody to be the culprit. Another epidemic--mass shootings--got very much worse in the same period and many of those are in schools. It is true that the probability for any individual student to be killed is extremely small*. But the probability for a child to go through a mass shooting incident is quite substantial by now. There are articles about students who experienced two mass shootings in their (still short) lives.
* Active shooter drills in schools would tend to make the psychological consequences even worse.
Kevin argues that inputs to inflation have a delayed effect. But here COVID wouldn't be a delayed effect. For your claim to be true children in 2018 and 2019 would have had to be "pre-effected" by COVID. That makes no sense.
Well, no one wants to blame the internet / social media because then what would we do about that?
Still, this is curious.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/13/health/tiktok-tics-gender-tourettes.html
"But in retrospect, Aidan realized that the group glamorized mental illness, sometimes flaunting psychiatric diagnoses. It was like a weird fetishization of sadness,” said Aidan, now 18."
"On TikTok, they found scores of teens who were sharing their experiences with all kinds of health issues, including multiple personality disorder and Tourette’s. Aidan was especially moved by videos of Billie Eilish, the young pop star who in 2018 revealed she had Tourette’s, that were edited together to show her tics. Aidan felt an intoxicating connection to these strangers whose suffering was plain to see."
And hey - maybe it's time to blame parents who have kids they don't bother to raise. Single parents, chaotic blended families, drug and alcohol abuse by adults in the home... take your pick of adult dysfunctions and graft it on to vulnerable kids to make a psychiatric disaster. From the same article...
"Their behavior had some upsides, often allowing them to get more attention from distracted parents or to avoid the social and academic stresses of school."
"...one-third reported past traumatic experiences"
"Nobody wants to blame social media"? You haven't read any of the responses, have you?
This hasn't been mentioned elsewhere but I recently listened to an NPR piece about the dramatic rise in youth mental health issues. The guest talked about how of all the factors it was early puberty that seemed to have the most significance.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201908/why-more-kids-are-starting-puberty-earlier-ever
The reasons for early puberty are diet (availability of food) and environmental chemicals. This seems to effect girls more than boys which would support the observation in the greater change in mental health for girls.
In the same way that lead poisoning resulted in rising crime and risky behavior perhaps now a new environmental pollutant is leading to a mental health crisis.
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2016/03/puberty
Hmmm ... I like this one! Breakfast of Champions, anyone?
Another environmental pollutant originates from all those high-flying balloons which sprinkle some kind of chemical which makes kids feel sad or want to change genders. This is a little-known-fact that I heard on a right-wing radio station.
You only learn the “truth” if you do the research.
1) Trump
2) Climate change
3) COVID
4) mass shootings
I don't think Trump had any factor in it. These are middle school and high school kids. Maybe some of the older HS kids were in tune to politics and current events but we can assume approximately half of them supported Trump.
With climate change, again, I don't think many of these kids are tuned in to the issue for it to be much of an impact. Maybe for some the older ones.
Covid could definitely be an issue, depending on where you live. (Meaning both geographically and the type of home you live in.) Here in FL schools were only shut down for a few months (after spring break in 2020) and during that time it was like a vacation for our kids and our friends' kids. Great weather, playing outside, etc. But if you were in an area where there was no school, business were closed, kids sports were cancelled, and you were cooped up in a little apartment, I could see how it would be miserable and lead to depression.
I don’t think Trump was THE factor, but I think he might be a factor. As you say, most kids aren’t tuned in to politics. But whether their parents supported Trump or not there may have been some important changes in family life based on him. Perhaps a rift between their parents. The sudden disappearance of cousin Jimmy because of a Trump based family rift. Friends who can no longer be friends because their parents hate each other. School bullies using Trump as a cudgel. Stuff like that could factor in, I think.
As the father of one teenager and one soon-to-be teenager, I have two gut feelings on this:
1) It's all related to social media. They spend so much time on it and everything they and they're friends and anyone they know are doing is basically being published for all to see. If a kid sees some of their friends are doing something together and they weren't invited they get upset. The social hierarchies are on full display for everyone to see.
2) The numbers are exaggerated. There's no way half of all teens have "persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness". Again this is just my gut feeling and based on my observations. I think some of these teens may translate their feelings into persistent sadness and hopelessness but, in reality, they're likely less sever and more short term. Not that some teens are truly depressed, but I find it hard to believe its half of them.
This could easily be a tipping point phenomenon. Not that other commenters are wrong to point at several factors, but none of those factors really has that big spike to it. But mental health is definitely a thing with thresholds and transitions from one mode of functioning to another mode. There are tipping points.
In some sense, the non-linearity of human behavior is one of the big things that make it so difficult to study.
There could well be multiple factors. I suggested environmental pollution and early puberty as one factor but this could be amplified in a non-linear manner by social media and the generational existential climate crisis.
It could be that they are surrounded by multiple existential crises that are not being addressed by their elders and that they have absolutely no control over. I know they are stressing me out big time.
Like what, for instance? I don't know too many 13 and 14 year olds that are that tuned in to current events. Mine are more worried about lacrosse practice, homework, and socializing with their friends. Maybe some older teens are politically tuned in but I doubt nearly enough of them are to account for this spike in numbers.
"multiple existential crises that are not being addressed by their elders"
Yeah, but those existential crises didn't spring into being in 2019.
If you look at the actual numbers, not the changes, you'd get a lot more insight. People are terrible integrating change. Losing 10%, then gaining 10% is not the same as breaking even.
What you see is boys staying the same or even doing a bit better until the 2019 survey and girls doing well, though not as well as boys, until the 2013 survey and then getting progressively worse. That's before Trump and before TikTok. Was it Obama getting re-elected? Was it Facebook hitting one billion users?
I've seen what social media has done to a generation of teenage girls, so I'm not surprised that so many of them are in terrible shape. If the social media FOMO doesn't get them, it's the lack of sleep. The power of social media as an insomnia inducing aid is understated.
(https://nccd.cdc.gov/Youthonline/App/Results.aspx?TT=L&OUT=1&SID=HS&QID=H25&LID=XX&YID=YY&LID2=&YID2=&COL=S&ROW1=N&ROW2=N&HT=QQ&LCT=LL&FS=S1&FR=R1&FG=G1&FA=A1&FI=I1&FP=P1&FSL=S1&FRL=R1&FGL=G1&FAL=A1&FIL=I1&FPL=P1&PV=&TST=False&C1=&C2=&QP=G&DP=1&VA=CI&CS=Y&SYID=1999&EYID=2019&SC=DEFAULT&SO=ASC)
I've seen people blame wokeness for this (learning to identify yourself as a victim vs. an agent and/or living in fear of saying the wrong thing and getting cancelled). Probably this is people who already hate wokeness wanting to blame all our problems on it, however the timing does check out. The woke movement started with MeToo at the end of 2017.
Likewise, I've seen several people on here blame Trump. Probably this is people who already hated Trump wanting to blame all our problems on him.
Guilty as charged.
More on what I said above about environmental alarmists:
https://www.npr.org/2021/09/14/1037023551/climate-change-children-young-adults-anxious-worried-study
And my take on one in particular (series):
https://www.mattball.org/search?q=Wallace-Wells
It's a confluence of factors probably, but I don't think you can overstate the complete and unavoidable dominance in our daily lives of Donald Trump as our fucking leader. The belligerent, ignorant asswipe of a man was not just an annoying celebrity. He was our president. It's pretty damn hard trying coming to grips with that as an older guy. Imagine coming of age and discovering everything you'd learned in school about progress and the greatness of our country had led to the present day and the election of this guy. What a joke.
The problems we faced during the Obama years were not significantly different during the Trump years. Mass shootings, climate change, social injustice. (The exception: Covid.) When you have faith that you're led by someone who's smart, capable, and trying to do the right thing, you're less likely to feel despair. If that leader is instead both stupid and evil, dedicated to making the problems worse, it's nearly impossible not to become more cynical and depressed.
Teens have always had channels to communicate. Social media is accelerated word-of-mouth, and it's allowed kids to be in touch more easily, which has some positive effects. One negative, though, is kids may be less inclined to get together in person as often as in the past.
Like +25!
The constant grinding of all of the above conjectures. It's called entropy.
When I was a teenager, all anyone talked about on Thursday and Friday was who was having a big party that weekend. Not that *I* was going to go/be invited to any of those parties, but it's what the cool kids talked about. My teen recently told me that he was hanging out with some friends the other day in meatspace and they started talking about getting together at this one person's house whose parents were gone and raiding the liquor cabinet. My son raised the point they should probably check their prescriptions first. Everyone pulls out their bottles of prozac and sertraline and goes "oh shit!"
Party cancelled. Everyone was on antidepressants or other medicines that couldn't be combined with alcohol.
When I was 17, if I had found myself in that situation I would have just stopped taking the meds for a few days. If kids today really won't even consider that then the generational difference between them and us is far more profound than I ever before thought.
Why should any of these kids feel happy, about anything. Just look at what we have done to this planet and what is being left for them. Nada, zero, chaos, horrid things, on and on. If I weren't older than dirt, I'd be mighty pissed off.
I’m surprised that no one seems to have mentioned Jonathan Haidt.
He’s been writing on this topic for maybe a decade. His book, The Coddling of the American Mind, came out 7-8 years ago.
There was recently a big article about his ideas on kids and mental health in the WSJ.
And he wrote an article for Persuasion two weeks ago called “The Teen Mental Illness Epidemic Began Around 2012.”
He’s been sounding the alarm for quite some time that we have what seems to be a potentially distraught generation reaching adulthood who simply may not be mentally/emotionally equipped to eventually take over our society.
Does that sound like someone barking about the kids these days? Yeah, he addresses that complaint at length as well …
a wider timeframe on teen suicides certainly seems to complicate this story, but I don't really think it disproves this current trend. I feel like "internet" is roughly the answer for what's going on, in many different ways, both between social media, but also the undermining of a certain bit of monoculture that is helpful for identity formation.
teen suicides:
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/MkSzihDb-KcqjuVWGX71HMKKMpI=/0x0:1080x1080/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:1080x1080):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/18303766/US_teen_suicide.jpg
Now it's not that bad. Oh, wait,
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230216-climate-ice-sheets-sea-level-the-news-is-not-good