Well, it also has been a tough decade - global financial crisis, wars and flood of refugees, political turmoil partially as a result of these, worries about climate change. Social media certainly amplifies these news and makes it hard to ever unplug, but we could also use better news. As for progressive teens, well their ideology is getting some serious pushback worldwide, so that's one reason to get depressed. Another is that their ideology is degenerating into self hatred and catastrophizing. To be fair Florida is going in much the same direction about different things these days, so I expect conservative teens to get depressed as well.
Pretty much every decade could be called tough. Post-WW II in the US we had:
- 1950s: Civil Rights, Korean war, dawn of the Cold War
- 1960s: Vietnam war, more Cold War
- 1970s: stagflation (high unemployment + high inflation), Watergate, even more Cold War
- 1980s: more stagflation, worries about AIDS, environment (ozone layer, acid rain), urban decay and crack epidemic, rise of Japan, Greed is Good
- 1990s: amongst the more optimistic decades in the US, but there was still lingering AIDS anxiety, dim employment prospects for the over-educated coming off age ("Generation X"), domestic terrorism bracketed by Waco and Columbine High. Abroad there were the Rwanda and Yugoslavia wars.
- 2000s: 9-11, war in Iraq and Afghanistan, financial crisis
And there's probably tons more anxiety inducing events in each decade that I forgot.
This is true, times are always hard for those living in them. Life is hard, after all.
Which lends credence to Haidt's suggestion that smartphones/widespread Internet is a primary factor. People tend to associate that with social media, which I would think is certainly part of it, but simply just being exposed to ideas can inculcate sympathetic ideas in people.
All your friends are depressed? Hey, life is hard for me too, and I'm kinda sad, maybe I'm depressed too. It sounds trite, but people en masse do work that way.
Social contagions were around before the Internet, but the Internet is an excellent medium for social contagions to grow quickly and spread widely.
Before there were good times and bad times. The 40s saw the worst destruction imaginable, practically apocalyptic, while the 50s were all sunshine and automobiles (depending on who you ask of course). Now we live in a world of constant low level turmoil, never disrupting the flow of information and goods, but seemingly irresolvable too.
