I'm not sure you can blame problems such as climate change, economic issues -- every generation had its own existential crisis: WW2, Korea, Vietnam, numerous recessions and until 1990, recent generations lived under the specter of the atom bomb.
I think it's social media, that's what's really changed: Every single teenager is now comparing themselves against every other kid in the world instead of just their local peers (and maybe a few grainy MTV stars over 525 scan lines). And of course the "popular" ones they're comparing to are the most successful, most good-looking, most privileged i.e. the most "perfect" ones (because that's how they got to be the most popular). It's a terrible yardstick for anyone to measure themselves against, let along impressionable young minds.
I think social media - which is not so much about media but about performative competition - is just part of the problem.
Reality for kids seems so much more competitive and ruthless in every way. And there are so few resources available to them to help them deal with it.
At the same time opportunities are shrinking and pressure to perform is increasing. It's not enough to be adequate, you have to be outstanding in looks, talent, ability, work ethic, party ethic, lifestyle, income, and education.
But you can't be. Because you're not competing with a small group of relative peers, you're competing with the entire online world.
At the same time there's incoming doom in the form of climate change, Covid mismanagement, outrageous and crippling economic inequality, various wars, and now the threat of AI.
It would be strange if kids weren't getting depressed under these circumstances.
It's actually even worse than that: you're competing separately in each field, in parallel. But you only see the others in the context of that which they are good at, which is why you see them in that space in the first place.
You get used to it though. It is the same with development. You put much work into something and are proud of the result and then some 12 year old, that grew up in the swamp and was risen by wolves, comes around and has a faster and more elegant solution.
I believe a large amount of the negative effects is that people take themselves too seriously. Every quote on social media is put on the scale and becoming a pariah is basically random. The haunting is mostly done by people with a lack of self-worth and confidence themselves.
But some values also changed for the worse in my opinion. Confidence is valued much more than humility and seen as leadership material. I don't believe it prudent to encourage people that actually do look for strong figures out of fear.
when my kids were born i was amazed how competitive getting into a good pre-school was. Then i was amazed how competitive getting in to a good elementary school was and now middle school. One year out and we're already discussing strategy for getting in to a good high school.
When I was a kid you went to whatever school was in your neighborhood. On the other hand, when i was a kid my parents had no idea what a good school event meant.
It would be interesting to plot the Asian percentage in the OP's area vs the time when OP became aware of this competition. Remember: import enough X and you will become X.
It's not about reality for kids, it's for everyone. It's not enough to be a good teacher any more, parents expect you to be on Veritasium level of engagement in every single moment. If services from locksmith is used, LockPickingLawyer is expected all around the world. Every doctor is compared to Dr Varshavski and anything less is not good enough. And the list goes on ...
Veritasium has an entire team and releases 1-3 videos a month. Perhaps the lesson in this is that more should be invested in making education more engaging.
Dr Varshavski can project charisma but i don’t know how well that translates in one on one interactions as his patient. He also doesn’t really seem to be at the top of his field in knowledge and skill, maybe in bedside manners.
Ngl I think that's basically it. There's insane competition at basically all swathes of life to become elite at a young age, look at how far elite college acceptance rates have dropped. This has created generations of depressive workaholics and burnouts. It's a lot worse in Asian countries where these cultural forces are stronger.
Probably the icing on the cake for me, looking like no job prospect and potential for serious consequences ranging from mass scale disinformation to extinction.
We need to get our priorities straight as a species.
20 years ago, when you finished your school day, week, or semester, you could go home, on vacation, etc., and not have any contact with your schoolmates unless you wanted to. Nowadays, you see them and they can interact with you or talk about you 24/7 on social networks. There's no escaping your bully by hiding at home anymore, as you can be publicly bullied on social platforms all the time. This is likely a terrible experience for many young people. Additionally, the constant feeling of inadequacy due to having fewer likes, comments, or friends on your profile compared to the popular kids can be quite disheartening.
Totally agree. Social media built on top of collecting Likes and Followers, causes brain damage not just in kids but in adults too. That architecture has to be dismantled.
But parent comment abv has a point teaching is a big factor here. And teaching in the current environment has become much more complex.
There is endless over stimulation and distraction which ruins environments where learning is possible. And secondly information has exploding. Kids can easily get overwhelmed just looking at a Wikipedia article. Teachers have a very hard job keeping things on track.
"I'm not sure you can blame problems such as climate change, economic issues -- every generation had its own existential crisis: WW2, Korea, Vietnam, numerous recessions and until 1990, recent generations lived under the specter of the atom bomb."
All of those issues felt less existential (or at least had very clear points of no return that we managed to avoid going over the brink on), and climate change for many, maybe quite reasonably so, feels like we will be the proverbial boiling frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
It feels different because of the complexity and scale is no longer definable or predicated on a clear discrete set of objects (e.g. Nuclear powers, key banking systems, a hot war with defined participants) but is by global definition....everything.
It's abstract yet ever present (e.g. all the recent climate weirdness, and the disasters that have followed, both in terms of pure environmental impacts as well as economic and overall regional stability as byproducts thereof) and that becomes much more difficult to "manage"
this 100x. And in the young brain, every single person looks amazing because that's how everyone is posturing constantly. Image filters can even literally make someone better looking. It's basically an arms race to 0 on who can posture the best.
> Every single teenager is now comparing themselves against every other kid in the world instead of just their local peers
This is so out of touch. You might as well be using the "It's the video games!" excuse of yore.
Teenagers and those in their 20s see what their parents were able to do. They hear what their parents bought their house for, they know about their pensions, they see that their parents could afford raising a child into their teens, they find out that college was actually affordable. They know that's now all out of reach.
Some even see their parents struggling, and know it's going to be much much worse for them.
Huge productivity growth doesn't seem to have translated into commensurate wage growth. Meanwhile housing, higher education, and health care are increasingly unaffordable, as you note, and credentialism makes higher education a requirement for more jobs.
I think you're on target about the discouraging aspects of being visibly worse off than your parents' generation, and I think that millennials have that problem as well.
The situation is likely to get worse as AI-fueled productivity increases are unlikely to improve wages either.
I had recurring nightmares about a malfunctioning nuclear warhead that slowed abnormally and spiraled in a flat spin leaving a smoke/vapor trail as it neared its ultimate detonation height.
The movie Red Dawn was the ultimate manifestation of 80's red hysteria and triumphal American exceptionalism.
~625 scanlines (PAL)? We only had ~480 scan lines with NTSC.
My parents had a roof-mounted VHF/UHF antenna that could be electrically rotated with a dial. Looking something like this
I agree that social media is a huge factor, but I suspect other generations dealing with the crises you mentioned had high rates of mental illness as well, but it wasn't tracked, or wasn't tracked the same way, or there were different but equally serious manifestations of it than self-harm and suicide.
I think it's social media, that's what's really changed: Every single teenager is now comparing themselves against every other kid in the world instead of just their local peers (and maybe a few grainy MTV stars over 525 scan lines). And of course the "popular" ones they're comparing to are the most successful, most good-looking, most privileged i.e. the most "perfect" ones (because that's how they got to be the most popular). It's a terrible yardstick for anyone to measure themselves against, let along impressionable young minds.