What’s Going on With Teens?

[Farm Boy]

No, I'm talking about conversations, games, interactions, driving, walking, biking, everything. Recorded by companies, recorded by stores, recorded by the police, recorded by the school, recorded by your parents recorded by your peers. Judged by all, because that's what people do.

 

[Lexicus]

No, I'm talking about conversations, games, interactions, driving, walking, biking, everything. Recorded by companies, recorded by stores, recorded by the police, recorded by the school, recorded by your parents recorded by your peers. Judged by all, because that's what people do.

I think you're muddling things up here. Security camera footage is commonly deleted if there is no incident to look into; it's simply not an issue with respect to people being "judged."

Social media stuff is where the constant and perpetual judgment comes in but again that is mostly people recording themselves and putting it up for judgment, which is not a non-issue but it's just a bit of a different issue from how you've framed it.

 

[Gorbles]

No, I'm talking about conversations, games, interactions, driving, walking, biking, everything. Recorded by companies, recorded by stores, recorded by the police, recorded by the school, recorded by your parents recorded by your peers. Judged by all, because that's what people do.

Short version: what Lexi said.

Longer version: what I said when I said:

Our digital fingerprints are stored by companies we have no power over, so they can increasingly refine attempts to sell us whatever it is they want to sell us. But that's not a literal recording of something that can be weaponised by your best friend-slash-enemy.

People like to judge. But they'll judge you whether or not something was recorded. That's why I said, this isn't new. Everything used to be "recorded", it just changed along the way. Gossip was "recorded". Still is. Some communities still do old-style gossip, particularly in the sleepier villages you still see here in the UK. Neighbourhood Watch networks, people looking out from behind the curtains. Very Hot Fuzz, if I'm going to allow myself a(nother) pop culture reference.

You are going to get judged. You are always going to get judged. When Edward talked about political correctness, the inference with that catchphrase is the perceived inaccuracy. The storm in a teacup of it. Are you? Are you worried you'll be judged unfairly, or that you're being judged at all? This is an important distinction, because in one case the recording of data is relevant, and in the other, it's not.

 

[Farm Boy]

Social media stuff is where the constant and perpetual judgment comes in but again that is mostly people recording themselves and putting it up for judgment, which is not a non-issue but it's just a bit of a different issue from how you've framed it.

I don't know what you're seeing, I guess. It doesn't matter if it gets deleted later, if the spycam in your house catches you jacking off, you mom has caught you jacking off even if she deletes it or doesn't(hopefully) watch at length. Even if it's mom, and she doesn't say anything and forgives you, a lot of people aren't going to do it, or they'll worry about it. Same going out with friends. Same with social statements that are faux pas online for perpetual judgement, if where, if you want to talk with your friends, the social media is where one must go. Because that's where they are. The kids are paranoid and they've never toed the line so hard. However I'm framing it, that state of mind isn't free. Perpetual social vigilance. And most kids are definitely going to know a social-climbing bully that's better at manipulating past conversations, better at painting a picture, and look --- they have proofs!

You are going to get judged. You are always going to get judged. When Edward talked about political correctness, the inference with that catchphrase is the perceived inaccuracy. The storm in a teacup of it. Are you? Are you worried you'll be judged unfairly, or that you're being judged at all? This is an important distinction, because in one case the recording of data is relevant, and in the other, it's not.

"Righteous" judgements are some of the worst. Make them inescapable and so pervasive that you have to be reminded that they are sort of "...do you think that's air you're breathing now?"

 

[Lexicus]

I don't know what you're seeing, I guess. It doesn't matter if it gets deleted later, if the spycam in your house catches you jacking off, you mom has caught you jacking off even if she records it. Even if it's mom, and she doesn't say anything and forgives you, a lot of people aren't going to do it, or they'll worry about it. Same going out with friends. Same with social statements that are faux pas online for perpetual judgement, if where, if you want to talk with your friends, the social media is where one must go. Because that's where they are. The kids are paranoid and they've never toed the line so hard. However I'm framing it, that state of mind isn't free.

 

[Farm Boy]

So we have the distinction between inaccurate unearned pervasive judgements, and we have accurate pervasive judgements. As they are being applied to developing brains in pubescent children.

That's OK, let's break it down. Accurate judgements with proof are "righteous" from the perspective of the judge. They reinforce "correct socialized behavior" and "correct social discourse" with the benefit of growing "correct minded adults." Alright. Worthy goal, right? But this conversation is taking place in context of depression and suicide, at historic rates, in pubescent children. Correct judgements will land on them harder, more internalized, more difficult to shake off, than ones they know are wrong. Building a better society never comes without tossing a few bad apples, so this is just a cost of compliance as things are structured. I think it has a lot of fans. Most people, seeing as it's expanding.

 

[Samson]

what caused that sharp decline?

This paper says it is todo with increased prozac use:

To study the potential association of antidepressant use and suicide at a population level, we analyzed the associations between suicide rates and dispensing of the prototypic SSRI antidepressant fluoxetine in the United States during the period 1960–2002.

The introduction of SSRIs in 1988 has been temporally associated with a substantial reduction in the number of suicides. This effect may have been more apparent in the female population, whom we postulate might have particularly benefited from SSRI treatment. While these types of data cannot lead to conclusions on causality, we suggest here that in the context of untreated depression being the major cause of suicide, antidepressant treatment could have had a contributory role in the reduction of suicide rates in the period 1988–2002.

Spoiler Large Graph :

Figure 1. Age-Adjusted Suicide Rates at the Population Level
(A) Age-adjusted suicide rates (per 100,000) for the total population from 1960 to 2002 and fluoxetine prescribed numbers (in millions) from 1988 to 2002 (B) Age-adjusted suicide rate predictions for the total population. The solid lines trace out the posterior median model predictions and the dashed lines depict the 95% Bayesian credible intervals. The top red line depicts the predicted suicide rates without fluoxetine and the bottom black line represents the actual rates with fluoxetine. (C) This figure demonstrates the linear relationship between suicide rates and fluoxetine prescription numbers.

 

[Quintillus]

That's definitely an interesting correlation with SSRIs that I hadn't thought of. Likely a contributing factor in the decline, which was the first thing that jumped out at me from the first post. I'd heard about the rates increasing lately, but hadn't known how drastically they had decreased in the '90s.

I kind of agree with those who were mentioning that the '90s and 2000's was also generally a good time to be a teen. That was the "end of history" era, the economy was good, it looked like perpetual peace might be a thing, and I agree that conformance pressures were pretty low at that time as well. Being a teenager during that low-suicide time, I can't remember anyone being bullied for their political beliefs. It just wasn't that big of a deal whether you were from a Bush family or a Gore family. In many cases, you wouldn't know and wouldn't care.

The impact of the Internet during its "good" era is difficult to estimate. I have one friend who credits it for avoiding becoming part of this statistic, growing up with a difficult family situation and quite a few years of bullying especially in his early teens. I suspect overall we've given it more credit than it deserves - and as forumgoers we're likely among those who benefitted from it the most - but it did have some good effects. Conversely, the social shaming/conformance pressure of modern social media, I believe, is a significant negative impact. You could chill out with your friends and do silly things and not worry about it back then.

I suppose that amounts to saying I agree with Farm Boy and EnglishEdward on the point of things being recorded. Of course there was gossip and rumors and embarrassing situations in the 80s and 90s and 2000s. But the Internet and cell phone cameras and social media networks drastically amplified the ability of that to spread. Instead of it having to spread person-to-person, or small group to small group, it can now reach the whole school in one social media post, with audio or video evidence in some cases. How is that not more terrifying?

 

[Senethro]

Noones being bagged up and shipped off to Magdalene laundries over their social media posts.

Edit: Reflecting on it, this isn't actually true. Where the right of parents to institutionalize their children is still upheld, I guess they do get sent to "tough love" discipline camps, conversion centres, back to the old country to be married off and all the rest. But the cause isn't social media itself.

 

[Gorbles]

Not only that, it both predates social media, and social media can actually provide avenues for the children to get support when this parental "love" is forced upon them.

 

[Samson]

But social media also amplifies the '"tough love" discipline camps, conversion centres' ideas. It is not new, but a lot more people are being exposed to the business of it because it makes money.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Something definitely happened starting back in 2011.

Common core learning?
One of the social media things got big?
???

Teen girls hit hardest whatever it was/is ya.

I found another data point.

Whatever hit liberal teen girls in 2011 was hitting all teens by 2014.

Number of teens who ‘don’t enjoy life’ has doubled with social media

Nearly half of 8th, 10th and 12th graders agree with phrases like “I can’t do anything right,” “I do not enjoy life” and “My life is not useful”—twice as many as did a decade ago.

nypost.com

Half of all teens have dire mental health now.

 

[Farm Boy]

Life gotten harder? More widows? More orphans? Less food/money? Or are we letting them do something that is stupid for them to be doing? Or are they just always always recorded, always always paranoid?

 

[Kaitzilla]

Life gotten harder? More widows? More orphans? Less food/money? Or are we letting them do something that is stupid for them to be doing? Or are they just always always recorded, always always paranoid?

I read an interesting argument that we are teaching young people to be depressed in recent years.

One treatment for depression (a fundamental problem at the brain hardware/chemical level can't be so easily treated of course) is cognitive behavoir therapy.
It has shown up in the forums before.

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forums.civfanatics.com

[RD] - Don’t Stay with Partners who Don’t Take Responsibility for their Mental Health

I too once played with fire because invariably these individuals were smarter and more interesting than the baseline of groups they were in. A recognition that we group in accordance to our place in social hierarchy.

forums.civfanatics.com

Here is the argument that we are teaching whatever the opposite of CBT would be called:

Why the Mental Health of Liberal Girls Sank First and Fastest

Evidence for Lukianoff’s reverse CBT hypothesis

jonathanhaidt.substack.com

In CBT you learn to recognize when your ruminations and automatic thinking patterns exemplify one or more of about a dozen “cognitive distortions,” such as catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking, fortune telling, or emotional reasoning. Thinking in these ways causes depression, as well as being a symptom of depression. Breaking out of these painful distortions is a cure for depression.

What Greg saw in 2013 were students justifying the suppression of speech and the punishment of dissent using the exact distortions that Greg had learned to free himself from. Students were saying that an unorthodox speaker on campus would cause severe harm to vulnerable students (catastrophizing); they were using their emotions as proof that a text should be removed from a syllabus (emotional reasoning). Greg hypothesized that if colleges supported the use of these cognitive distortions, rather than teaching students skills of critical thinking (which is basically what CBT is), then this could cause students to become depressed. Greg feared that colleges were performing reverse CBT.

I thought the idea was brilliant because I had just begun to see these new ways of thinking among some students at NYU. I volunteered to help Greg write it up, and in August 2015 our essay appeared in The Atlantic with the title: The Coddling of the American Mind. Greg did not like that title; his original suggestion was “Arguing Towards Misery: How Campuses Teach Cognitive Distortions.” He wanted to put the reverse CBT hypothesis in the title.

 

[Narz]

I found another data point.

Whatever hit liberal teen girls in 2011 was hitting all teens by 2014.

Number of teens who ‘don’t enjoy life’ has doubled with social media

Nearly half of 8th, 10th and 12th graders agree with phrases like “I can’t do anything right,” “I do not enjoy life” and “My life is not useful”—twice as many as did a decade ago.

nypost.com

Half of all teens have dire mental health now.

They feel useless because... well, how are they useful? You have to be able to honestly answer this question in life. It's not a matter of self talk or self esteem, you gotta feel that s***.

In olden times it wasn't a question, your parents put you to work on the farm or wherever, now workers are being replaced left and right, everything you want to say or showcase 80 other people are already saying or showcasing on YouTube 100x better than you ever will.

People are clinging to groups and identity but that's not helping. Real identity comes from shared experience but kids experiences are less and less in reality and more and more in their heads.

In the 90s hanging out by the gas stations and skateboarding was pretty boring but at least kids were outdoors, doing something w their bodies, in the flesh w their peers.

The the online thing is a virus, the more who are infected the less interesting stuff actually going down on the streets.

 

[Zardnaar]

They feel useless because... well, how are they useful? You have to be able to honestly answer this question in life. It's not a matter of self talk or self esteem, you gotta feel that s***.

In olden times it wasn't a question, your parents put you to work on the farm or wherever, now workers are being replaced left and right, everything you want to say or showcase 80 other people are already saying or showcasing on YouTube 100x better than you ever will.

People are clinging to groups and identity but that's not helping. Real identity comes from shared experience but kids experiences are less and less in reality and more and more in their heads.

In the 90s hanging out by the gas stations and skateboarding was pretty boring but at least kids were outdoors, doing something w their bodies, in the flesh w their peers.

The the online thing is a virus, the more who are infected the less interesting stuff actually going down on the streets.

Kinda my theory as well.

We still do the great outdoors thing but the kids seem to spend all day on tablets.

Younger cousin easily distracted by phone can't seem to focus on much (she's 22).

9 year old nephew xant cycle, tie his shoelaces etc. Me here's your BMX schools 5km that way (age 10).

Generally had stuff to do all the time either work or make your own fun.

 

[Moriarte]

Real identity comes from shared experience but kids experiences are less and less in reality and more and more in their heads.

The interior of a head is also reality? People interacting through a digital medium doesn’t make conversation less real in my mind. Confined experiences, where physical plays smaller part, but real.

Younger cousin easily distracted by phone can't seem to focus on much (she's 22).

9 year old nephew xant cycle, tie his shoelaces etc.

11 yo nephew plays a lot of minecraft, roblox. Also spends 6 hours a week on soccer pitch, attends online chess school. Looks alright. Perhaps a notch sharper than I was at his age. Both mentally and physically.

 

[Narz]

The interior of a head is also reality? People interacting through a digital medium doesn’t make conversation less real in my mind.

It has its advantages but even tho we "talk" I don't really know you like I know someone irl, I don't know your mannerisms or what makes you laugh.

To be technical it all takes place in ones own head regardless but online you have less information.

I had an online friend , I "knew" him for 15 years (alot of his beliefs and ideas) but when I didn't really know him and within a couple days of us hanging out he did something inappropriate and that was the end

 

[Valka D'Ur]

make your own fun

This is something I had to learn at an early age.

I had no siblings, neither of the neighbors had kids, and the closest kids were the ones in the trailer court waaay at the other end of a long service road. That was definitely outside the boundaries of where I was allowed to go.

Therefore, I spent a lot of time with books - looking at the pictures before I could read, and reading them after I was taught to read. My mother soon learned that if she wanted me to be quiet, handing me a book would do it.

Or I'd make up stories using my toys - stuffed toys, dolls, farm animals... all sorts of little soap operas played themselves out inside my head.

One of my dad's girlfriends once said she was glad I could entertain myself, since she didn't have much of anything around that would interest a kid my age. The books they gave me to read were Chariots of the Gods and Gods From Outer Space... It took a cultural anthropology course and Carl Sagan's Cosmos to get me deprogrammed from that crap.

Thank goodness my grandmother eventually taught me to play cards and crokinole. She and I had more actual play time than my parents and I did. Though I do have vague memories of playing Snakes and Ladders with my mother, and a few kids' card games.

I still have the crokinole/chess/checker board (that thing is considered antique now).

The interior of a head is also reality? People interacting through a digital medium doesn’t make conversation less real in my mind. Confined experiences, where physical plays smaller part, but real.

Agreed.

Some people playact online, presenting a persona that's not real, and everything they say about themselves may be completely made up. But some people can't keep everything straight, so inconsistencies and contradictions happen.

I've been forthright about the things I've said about myself and my family. I haven't told everything, but what I have said is the truth as I remember/perceive it.

 

[Theov]

Kinda my theory as well.

We still do the great outdoors thing but the kids seem to spend all day on tablets.

Younger cousin easily distracted by phone can't seem to focus on much (she's 22).

9 year old nephew xant cycle, tie his shoelaces etc. Me here's your BMX schools 5km that way (age 10).

Generally had stuff to do all the time either work or make your own fun.

That's lazy parenting.
There are kids who stare at their phones for hours a day and then the parents wonder why they can't pay attention in class.

All their interest in learning something new is gone because they get all their dopamine from their phones.