One. They lived through one major recession, and here it wasn't really major, and is not something they lived through recently. They were younger than 6 when it started. I've lived through two. The 80s weren't a happy time, and there are no signs that that had such an impact on teen mental health. If it did, it would be proof that the impact of a major recession is temporary.
> prospect of a mountain of debt right after graduation
Situation wrt to teen mental health is similar in Europe, but there's a much smaller graduation debt.
Don't try to downplay the role of internet, mobile devices and social media. Here's a thought for your correlationism:
> Teens are aware that they are going to inherit a pretty terrible world, and are powerless to do anything about it.
Perhaps it's social media that makes that they are either too aware of it or simply mention it more often.
We have other issues here, though (speaking for the situation in Germany). I’m quite some time out of my teens at 36, but for many years now I’ve been told that all that tax (technically not a tax) I pay for my pension will not result in me getting any meaningful pension.
For people who are currently teenagers it probably sounds like this: "Once you get a job, which won’t afford you a house, you’ll pay a decent chunk of your salary so the people who managed to destroy the environment and don’t care about you have a better end of life. You’ll not see anything of this money ever again."
And that is without including all the messaging during the pandemic that young people (more towards people in their early 20ies, but still) are at fault for nearly everything.
edit: I should mention that I’m still not discounting social media, I couldn’t, as I know next to nothing about it.
People in this thread need to stop projecting their problems and worldviews as universal social issues.
We already had social media at the time (mostly facebook) and yes, I won't deny that there was already something anxious about feeling pressured to always show yourself/self yourself to other. When I look at Instagram today, I feel like it got even worse.
But, as someone still under their 30's, I think we shouldn't also deny what the original commenter said. In the case of Europe (and in my case France), we have seen the come back of extreme conservatism in politics, the slow decay of our public services, the inability for politician to make important decision for the environment, the idea that we will never retire/have a pension (which is not necessarily true but is definitely a strong belief), the imbalance in wealth creeping higher and higher every year, home ownership becoming harder and harder ... Whereas the generation of my parent (those from the 60's-70's) had, in general, a more positive/peaceful outlook on the future, I find that my generation and those younger that me tend to be more skeptical, if not negative.
I really think that the current mental health issues are a combination of multiple factors and that social media is just one (but maybe a big one) of those factor.
This is happening, based on my own experience. I am 22, I have a safe job with an above average salary but I still cannot find an apartment with my partner. I can’t imagine affording my own place with the current prices, especially not at the age my parents were able to. And all of that concerns are completely ignoring the current price hikes which make everything even worse.
For as long as I can remember teachers and my parents told me that the pension system won’t be able to support my generation. Everybody my age who can afford to does not expect any substantial pension payments and tries to support the own future by own investments (which is pretty hard when you pay +400€/mo into the mandatory public pension)
The situation is even worse for people with lower incomes.
This is not projection. Admittedly, this is my experience. But I know many many people who had similar experiences when they first entered the workforce.
> “People in this thread need to stop projecting their problems and worldviews as universal social issues.”
But you are doing just the same thing by dismissing peoples perspectives and opinions as irrelevant….
- they must pay 20-30% of their income, over their entire life, for other people's pension,
- they do not get a pension themself,
- the people whose pension they must pay have screwed them on multiple "quality of life" issues
Same for most of my peers.
they should be. Perhaps not worry or be anxious about it, but definitely should know about the financial implications of having to retire one day, and how they could fund that retirement. May be even work on how one might fund an early retirement, etc.
Not thinking about long term financial planning is a failing of the education system (or parents, as it falls onto them when the state fails on policy grounds).
A lot of them will be doing that, yes. They're teenagers until their 20th birthday, and a lot of people start to work between 16 and 20. In Germany, all of them will be paying a lot of their paycheck for the current pensioners.
It's called a generational contract here, and it boils down to current workers paying the current pensions - so when theyre ready for theirs, it will be the responsibility of that workforce to shoulder that burden.
This will fail within the next 20-30 years, realistically speaking and arguably already failed, as current pensioners are often extremely poor.
The parent comment was spot on with their comment wrt Germany, which was the context they explicitly set
I was actually just talking with a teacher friend about this very thing (he lives in Germany btw). He was essentially expressing his surprise that the high-school students (well Gymnasium technically), were at the age of ~17-19 already planning their whole live in terms of career, money etc.. That is definitely very different to how it was back when I was a teenager, where one essentially started studying what one was interested in, with career paths being somewhat secondary.
So in short, anecdotal evidence is that yes teenagers are already thinking about their pensions now.
> People in this thread need to stop projecting their problems and worldviews as universal social issues.
While this is correct, we should also not project our memory of what it was to be a teenager > 10 years ago, onto todays teenagers.
German here. Yes we absolutely fucking did, especially as our parents pushed us from early on to obtain as much education as we could because unlike even in the 80s, manual labor would not be enough to sustain a family or to have a comfortable retirement.
It's a rather big jump from being concerned about one's future (and the society's future) to having mental issues just from that. It's also not very constructive to perpetuate the idea that being careless about the future right way to live one's teenage years.
Young people are definitely extremely aware that they sacrificed a lot over the last two years to protect the elderly and now the elderly are not being asked to contribute back.
This is before you consider climate change, about which young people are generally much more informed and concerned.
Boomers don’t care because it won’t affect them. I know that sounds hyperbolic but I genuinely think it’s true. Those who are aware of the problems focus on helping their immediate descendants.
It was bad enough when I was in high school when all we had was Facebook, because we were comparing the whole of ourselves to our peers in their best light. It is so much worse now.
The one difference I will point out though, is that with social media it becomes a lot more attainable to become like that. There's complete randoms that became celebrities through social media - and they don't even need to be conventionally attractive like the celebrities of old.
If you want to claim that social media is very similar to TV/magazine, then you should provide some reasons for this.
The difference you point out actually adds to the mental health issues. Because it is not at all "a lot more attainable to become" a celeb on SM than on TV. If this claim was true, then the percentage of celebs would be higher today than it was then; i.e. 0.1% of the population vs 0.01%. That is not the case. There is only one Kardishan family.
But because it seems easier, then it is also easier to blame yourself for not achieving it.
It is: TV was never meant to make you believe it's real or that someone's life is actually like that. "Reality" TV was always deliberately focused on drama.
You're overlooking the demographic targeting, and how that seeks to place content before the user's eyes that generates the "most engagement". That mechanism right there makes social media SIGNIFICANTLY different.
But Europe has far lower professional salaries than the US.
Also economic conditions definitely have a big impact, I could finally buy a small flat after years of renting and it's such a great change to be able to make changes in your own home and buy your own things.
My father did that at 23, not 30.
University tuition is wildly variable and not directly proportional to income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuition_payments
(Housing costs are also wildly variable, but I don’t know where to get enough data to tell if that’s proportional to incomes or not).
But Americans really don't appreciate how lucky they are. An American CS college grad can earn more than almost all senior/staff engineers anywhere in the EU e.g. ~$150k.
I don’t think the EU and the US are very different. Then again, Texas isn’t exiting. (No disrespect, just pointing out the difference.) But divisions in the EU are very familiar to Americans and understandable for the exact same reason.
Asking a Californian to understand and relate to the issues of a Missourian deeply, and vice versa, is a little unfair to both and we’d all be so much happier if we were simply fine with that. People are different. The idea of the United States has been forcing it in a lot of unwilling minds for a long time, I think, and the consequential bitterness that really has no reason whatsoever to exist is unfortunate.
That said, if you can work remotely, you can move south or east and live a lot cheaper. It just has to be your thing to move to a new country.
We don't have to pay ludicrous amounts for healthcare though, and rents are also way way WAY lower here than in the US - even London, Berlin and Munich are nowhere near US levels.
Rents are a bit better, but compared to developer salaries it's much more expensive than the US. It's also extremely hard to find places to rent, and landlords are very picky about who they will let to.
Are we sure about that? The fun thing with a lot of childhood trauma can take years to surface, let alone figure out. I personally wonder whether it has contributed to our race towards a kleptocratic society.
I can say that personally, while I was born in the early 80s, the recession had an impact on my family. Essentially, my parents chose to focus their efforts on making sure we could get as many college grants/scholarships as possible. An insanely intense focus on education and being able to sustain oneself. Didn't quite work out how they hoped.
In that case, the recession can't be the cause for the spike in mental health issues.
Exhibit A people: we have impeding total collapse of the ecosystem, and they blame 'too many phones'. Have you spoken to a teenager lately? All my younger colleagues are convinced they are the ones that will have to deal with the mess, and they are probably right
Just to pick a recent-ish story at random: https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/nickel-deforestation
Here's a question for me to understand where you're coming from and you to examine your assumptions. How does "too aware" get defined? Who defines it? I am an 80s kid(though grew up in India) and seen some issues myself, but can't claim I am worse off for knowing what I did. And to be clear, I didn't have internet till the start of the millenium and relied on books, radio and newspapers and I still was more about the state of the world i was to inherit than my parents.
It doesn't seem that difficult to get a proxy for awareness; perhaps "more aware" had been a better choice of words. But however it's measured, it's not unreasonable to assume that social media can promote awareness, and that thus the effect of social issues on mental health can still be mediated by social media.
Or rather, they see how historically threats were dealt with: lead was banned, CFCs were banned, sulphur in fuel was banned - in short, environmental threats were met with decisive action.
And then they see how scientists have warned for decades now about climate change and they can clearly see that nothing happens except a lot of useless bla-bla.
Children, even as young as ten, are not dumb. They can see and understand what is going on, and to recognize inaction and corruption in politics is not rocket science.
- impose a maximum limit on size, weight and fuel consumption of cars, ban SUVs and pickup trucks (and no, a tax won't work because the rich will simply buy their "freedom"). Exceptions only upon proof of need (e.g. commercial or farming usage).
- ban all inner-country flights of less than 2 hours duration (this one is not that applicable to the US but more towards Europe)
- improve passenger high speed rail networks in accessibility, affordability and speed
- improve (or, in some places, create) usable public transport systems to reduce the need for cars
- entirely ban naval cruise ships unless fueled by renewable fuel
- construct immense amounts of solar and wind electricity generation, invest into storage mechanisms and power-to-gas
- impose bans or limitations on concrete for construction (8% of global CO2 emissions result out of the manufacturing of concrete!)
- ban "fast fashion", impose durability requirements on clothing
- force all manufacturers to provide spare parts, 3D designs and tooling needed for repairs, no matter what kind of thing
- impose per-capita meat consumption quotas. Yes, this is communism-style, but we cannot sustainably continue with mass animal farming at the scale we are at.
Putting humanity in the environment could be banned. But we're seeing a trend in the other direction.
For some it will be liberation and an incredible tool to leverage but for many it will be just a waste of their life and even, for some, the end of their lives. I left Facebook years ago and recently left Twitter for higher quality sources.
But ... your "One." is distasteful ...
The GFC caused a decade of austerity and quiet unseen cuts in support and public service. If we agree there should, in fact, be some form of safety net, they had had many holes cut in that net in the last 15 years.
Where I am, I was one of the last who had their Uni tuition paid for, I had a relatively fun time growing up, my wife and I bought a property when they had gone through multiple incredible price increases, we have just paid off a mortgage, no matter what happens next short of a world war, we'll be ok. I cannot imagine how we would have done that in today's enviroment ... look beyond this forum and your own experience.
I feel absolutely gutted for the continuous squeeze the generation that followed me have endured. And, considering the outlook, the next recession seems on its way just to compound things at a time when exogenous inflation is all the rage.
It's a mess.
So, please hold both factors in mind. Social media is the cesspit that has amplified just an incredible economics and political mess of the last 15 years.
The first thing that was said is that Social media definitely amplifies it. I don’t think that’s a dismissal.. you don’t have to be on social media, you just have to hear or read or watch the news.
If seems like one continuous recession since 2008 - at least here in the UK, and I suspect also in many places. Nearly a decade and a half of austerity and failure: what does that do to their hopes for the future? My children (both teenagers) ask me "has it always been like this?" I was a child/teen in the seventies and I remember thinking the same thing.
Add to that the perma-war, the climate crisis, massive and pervasive social inequality, housing and employment precarity, Trump/Putin, Brexit...
> Perhaps it's social media that makes that they are either too aware of it or simply mention it more often.
Teenagers know what's coming down the road. They just, broadly, haven't developed the adult habits of denial and avoidance yet. We need to listen to them, not tell them that they are "too aware".
Then I wouldn't really say it's social media failure.
If he experienced any of these relatively common life activities (and many more out there I'm sure) they are more difficult economically than they were 60 years ago.
Obviously it's a matter of degrees and I'm sure he wouldn't trade places with his counterpart in Yemen...but to argue that life hasn't changed for him in 60 years as an American seems a bit wrong.
These days tons of those small towns are dying. People don't care to live out there anymore. Factories keeping towns alive closed in the late 90's. Coal mines closed. Rail yards are quiet since the factories aren't receiving and shipping and the coal mines aren't moving coal. Other than some fast food chains, its almost hard to find infrastructure built since the late 80s. States like KY and WV are largely these small dying towns, not mostly big cities.
I'm not arguing that overall life in the US has gone down in 60 years or that we should be starting up the coal mines. I'm just trying to suggest Kentucky probably wasn't the best place to pick to suggest life not getting worse; for tons of people in Appalachia life has gotten worse over the last 60 years. Note, this isn't even a small town vs. big city argument, there are plenty of small towns out there that have had their own booms and due to the US tendency to sprawl our cities out places that used to be small backwater towns are now shiny new mini-cities attached to giant sprawling city regions.
