What’s Going on With Teens?

[Moriarte]

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.

Considering the amount of bullfeathers I personally wrote on this site over last 10 years, I think you know more about real me than you credit yourself for. It's just one facet missing - physical interaction - like a handshake, mannerisms. What if we were two engineers, separated by an ocean irl, collaborating in one of those VR sims, tweaking inside the newest Toyota engine together? This could be as good as two irl engineers collaborating in a room. Probably even more entertaining than irl. The tech is somewhat lagging behind our desires for more fulfilling collaborations, but it'll get there. I don't see ourselves on terminal path of degradation, in short. Just short-term inconveniences of transitory nature.

 

[Zardnaar]

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.

Parents are often tired though both work. My mother didn't. Kids are also kind of conditioned to internet and gaming as well at school. They may not have xyz their friends will.

Families are also smaller often no siblings, no church/scouts or other shared group activities. Less physical activities (healthy body healthy mind).

TV/net has also conditioned fear into parents so kids get wrapped in cottonwool and I've seen grandparents do it as well "things are different now".

Fear of kid going to toilet ot getting kidnapped etc.

I'm wondering if daycare is a factor. Better than no patent but better than a parent idk.

 

[Narz]

Considering the amount of bullfeathers I personally wrote on this site over last 10 years, I think you know more about real me than you credit yourself for. It's just one facet missing - physical interaction - like a handshake, mannerisms. What if we were two engineers, separated by an ocean irl, collaborating in one of those VR sims, tweaking inside the newest Toyota engine together? This could be as good as two irl engineers collaborating in a room. Probably even more entertaining than irl. The tech is somewhat lagging behind our desires for more fulfilling collaborations, but it'll get there. I don't see ourselves on terminal path of degradation, in short. Just short-term inconveniences of transitory nature.

Yeah but just talking isn't the same as "being together". When I was in the States for six weeks and my lady and I were apart we got along great, never argued. Once I got back dealing w 2 kids and money and her family and chores and parenting differences etc etc we started having spats again.

Online I can talk, I can listen at my leisure and then do something else. It's total control. Connecting irl you have to engage and be engaging in real time, you have to make sacrifices and cooperate and do favors you might not feel like.

Online you can get to know each other philosophically but you don't really know someone til you have to go thru situations w them

Teens are more sensitive than adults so it makes sense they'd take refuge in the internet where the social risks are less but low risk often equals low reward

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah but just talking isn't the same as "being together". When I was in the States for six weeks and my lady and I were apart we got along great, never argued. Once I got back dealing w 2 kids and money and her family and chores and parenting differences etc etc we started having spats again.

Online I can talk, I can listen at my leisure and then do something else. It's total control. Connecting irl you have to engage and be engaging in real time, you have to make sacrifices and cooperate and do favors you might not feel like.

Online you can get to know each other philosophically but you don't really know someone til you have to go thru situations w them

Teens are more sensitive than adults so it makes sense they'd take refuge in the internet where the social risks are less but low risk often equals low reward

I think the internet a big reason. It's something older generations didn't gave to worry about.

Docile media is cancer. Humiliation at school wasn't video and potentially splashed all over the net.

You coukd screw up without the threat of complete public humiliation that potentially can be around for years.

The old punch in the face (head slammed into wall whatever) I would prefer that vs being filmed.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/suicide-rates.htm Seems sucide rate in USA have gone up a bit compared to the past, a lot of other countries have seen a significant decline, like Sweden used to be higher than USA by a huge margin in 1960 but had quite a bit lower rate in 2020. It don't say anything about age groups however but I guess an increase for USA may indicate that something pretty bad is going on, especially given other countries seems to trending down.

 

[Bestbank Tiger]

The 1990s are easy to explain. Much more hopeful time. Cold War was over and War on Terror hasn't started. Good economy with hope for the future. No surveillance state. Internet in its early stages, few cell phones, interaction was face to face.

 

[Joij21]

https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/suicide-rates.htm Seems sucide rate in USA have gone up a bit compared to the past, a lot of other countries have seen a significant decline, like Sweden used to be higher than USA by a huge margin in 1960 but had quite a bit lower rate in 2020. It don't say anything about age groups however but I guess an increase for USA may indicate that something pretty bad is going on, especially given other countries seems to trending down.

Political climate, inability to get a house, and a constant paranoid feeling that one's skills will quickly be made obsolete by AI, and will forever be homeless taken advantage of and deemed subhuman.

There I perhaps got a bit more straight to the point, instead of all these 45+ Gen-X like "WHATS GOING ON!?"

 

[Gorbles]

The amount of "the kids are online and therefore not going outside" in this thread is hilariously out of touch. They do both. They've always done both. Before the Internet it was TV, before the TV it was radio, before radio it was books.

 

[Narz]

The amount of "the kids are online and therefore not going outside" in this thread is hilariously out of touch. They do both. They've always done both. Before the Internet it was TV, before the TV it was radio, before radio it was books.

It's not out of touch it's based on my experience.

My daughter is less independent at almost 15 than I was at age 8. Of course alot of that is her mom's fault but kids just aren't outside playing like they were 30 years ago.

I have noticed in UK it does seem significantly better than the states and I've heard places like the Netherlands are better still

And you're clearly unserious with your comparisons, radio is not comparable to internet. No one dies after spending 70 hours straight without sleep at a radio cafe. There are no rehab centers for radio addiction.

Reading books and scrolling TikTok are basically opposites in terms of developing attention.

 

[Narz]

Political climate, inability to get a house, and a constant paranoid feeling that one's skills will quickly be made obsolete by AI, and will forever be homeless taken advantage of and deemed subhuman.

There I perhaps got a bit more straight to the point, instead of all these 45+ Gen-X like "WHATS GOING ON!?"

And advertisement was manipulating people of course but it wasn't a sophisticated individually tailored algorithmic dystopia designed w the aim the of hijacking people's emotions to keep them passively glued to the screens and accessible 24/7. And it will certainly become much more sophisticated still over the coming years. But some people think books are just as bad

 

[Gorbles]

It's not out of touch it's based on my experience.

The plural of anecdote is not data.

And besides, "independence" is more than just having access to a screen. I was talking about folks grumbling about the youth and their digital screens - I wasn't talking about how "independent" they are.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

The amount of "the kids are online and therefore not going outside" in this thread is hilariously out of touch. They do both. They've always done both. Before the Internet it was TV, before the TV it was radio, before radio it was books.

In the 1954 book "Seduction of the Innocent", where the author tries to blame all of society's problems on comic books, claimed that comic books were to blame for an increase in asthma in children because children were staying indoors reading comic books instead of going outside.

 

[Kaitzilla]

In the 1954 book "Seduction of the Innocent", where the author tries to blame all of society's problems on comic books, claimed that comic books were to blame for an increase in asthma in children because children were staing indoors reading comic books instead of going outside.

Amish kids have half the asthma of regular kids and they live in the past.

Growing up on an Amish farm protects children against asthma

By probing the differences between two farming communities, researchers find that house dust can affect immune development.

www.uchicagomedicine.org

The other striking difference is what Ober calls a "whopping disparity in asthma." About 5 percent of Amish schoolchildren aged 6 to 14 have asthma. This is about half of the U.S. average (10.3%) for children aged 5 to 14, and one-fourth of the prevalence (21.3%) among Hutterite children.

 

[Bestbank Tiger]

I'd guess rural air quality is better than urban air quality, since the comparison is to the national average.

 

[Plains-Cow]

I'd guess rural air quality is better than urban air quality, since the comparison is to the national average.

You'd be surprised. Industrial farming with combines frequently hurts air quality during harvest seasons, especially if harvesting grains.

 

[Narz]

The plural of anecdote is not data.

Technically everyone's experiences combined is sociological data.

I suppose you have some data to bring to the discussion about how screens, social media and smartphones are good for mental health?

 

[Gorbles]

I suppose you have some data to bring to the discussion about how screens, social media and smartphones are good for mental health?

I'm not in the habit of discussing strawmen, no.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

I didn’t necro this thread the other day but we now have 2022 suicide data, and to give more questions than answers; it dropped sharply for minors. It’s still very high though. I’m sharing graphs for all age groups too to show the decline in minors is not something all age groups had.

 

[Samson]

Amish kids have half the asthma of regular kids and they live in the past.

Growing up on an Amish farm protects children against asthma

By probing the differences between two farming communities, researchers find that house dust can affect immune development.

www.uchicagomedicine.org

My guess that is more likely to be microbiome or immune than internet use. This study just came out and could be relevant.

Hunter-gatherer lifestyle fosters thriving gut microbiome

A team of researchers has sequenced gut microbiomes from Hadza people — members of a hunter-gatherer society in northern Tanzania — and compared them with those from people in Nepal and California1. The study has found not only that the Hadza tend to have more gut microorganisms than people in the other groups, but that a Western lifestyle seems to diminish the diversity of gut populations.

The Hadza had an average of 730 species of gut microbe per person. The average Californian gut microbiome contained just 277 species, and the Nepali microbiomes fell in between. People with a farming-based lifestyle had an average of 436 microbe species, whereas those who live by foraging had an average of 317.

The team also found species in the Hadza microbiomes that were not present in the Californian samples, such as the corkscrew-shaped bacterium Treponema succinifaciens. Only some of the Nepali microbiomes contained this microbe, suggesting that the bacterium is dying out as societies become more industrialized.

 

[Birdjaguar]

When looking at those graphs posted by Good enough, pay attention to the X axis scale. They are not all the same.