The study in question debates young teens, ages 11-13 and 13-15, well before college.
In my experience as a parent of young teens, while they're sensitive to climate issues and of course "suffered" [1] during the pandemic, they aren't politicized, don't care about house prices, and don't know what "inflation" even means.
What they do know is what TikTok is, and what it means to be excluded from a Whatsapp group, and to spend hours each day wondering how they should reply to a perceived slight on some Discord channel.
I successfully forbid FB, Instagram, Snapchat (I don't use them myself, at all) but can't really outlaw Whatsapp because all communications go through it.
It's an uphill battle but as a parent I'm extremely resentful to FAANG to put us all through this.
[1] I put this in quotes because my kids quite liked the lockdown; they didn't have to go to school and could play in the yard all day. (Of course their experience would have been different if we lived in a city with no yard.)
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Edit: Many angry replies; it seems my original post failed to make its point clearly. Let's try again.
I was replying to a comment that said, in essence, that environmental factors (the economy, politics, climate change) were probably more to blame than social media as an explanation for teens' mental health.
As a parent of young teens, I disagree on that specific argument. I think social media is much more to blame than anything else, for harming teens' mental health.
But in no way do I dismiss the existence of said environmental factors, or their effects on the well-being of people, in actual terms as well as in consequences on our anxiety levels.
I was 14 when I had to loan my parents some money, and was acutely aware that I would not be able to afford college.
I read the news every day and was smart enough to realize that things were not going so great (according to the news).
To say that kids are blissfully unaware of the world they are born into is just wrong. Social media makes it even more apparent.
This awareness helped me make the right decisions for myself (deciding to not go to college, for example), but I am fortunately mostly optimistic. The weight of the world crushed some of my peers.
When I was a kid, I barely knew what was going on in my friend's lives. Today they are all on Discord, etc, and they talk. A lot.
They absolutely know what's going on in the world. It weighs on them.
Many kids in my high school had to make tough decisions around college – weighing the universities they could get into against the costs of said universities
The classmates who decided to do pre-med in-state versus out of state to get better tuition because a full doctor’s education is expensive
The few who got into Ivy leagues but ultimately decided against it because they got some financial aid, but not enough
The ones who graduated college and decided to get into consulting not because it was their passion, but because it paid well.
Even harder is when these kids’ parents are not well equipped to help make these tough decisions, because they never had to make them themselves.
You can suspend it for quite a while, but at some point reality kinda sets in and you’re faced with tough decisions.
That's just not true, though. I'm over 40: My first formal 'current events' portion of a social studies class happened when I was 12, IIRC. The first gulf war was the current topic.
Middle schoolers would be told now that they need to think about going to college, how doing well in high school is their only hope of a scholarship, and so on.
They know about political extremism: They just might not use those words. They might know someone that is queer and see the hate they get. Heck, they might be spewing the same hate as their parents.
They likely know about inflation even if they don't know what it is. Poverty - or even a tight budget - affects you as a child especially in the pre-teen and younger teen years. Parents stress over money, after all, and some of their peers might have struggled with homelessness, depending on where you live.
At 15, I had started to care about politics. I mean, I knew they were a thing since elementary (and the mock elections they held), but I saw how it affected me.
And of course they know about the fun things.
You probably didn't successfully forbit FB and Instagram if their friends don't use it: This is more common with younger folks than their parents. Plus, if they are out playing in the yard (Which I quit doing during middle school and there was no internet) they might be too young to care right now.
Our view of that was from the news, as well. The events in Ukraine are much more real-time and on social media. They see stories of children separated from their parents, of parents murdered, or all of them being killed in bombings.
These atrocities have always happened in war but now they are barely filtered and easily accessible.
"If it can happen to those children, it can happen to me."
Around 11 million children in the US live in poverty. A great number more children are poor to very poor (just over poverty might not be poverty, but it makes your life pretty bad). It probably isn't so bad in a country with a robust safety net (still poor, but not getting the full effects of poverty)
I don't know about wealth inequality being the specific worry, but knowing things are getting more expensive definitely has an effect on children. Suddenly, the parent is stressed and the uncertainty gets passed on. Though, I honestly am wondering if I've missed something because while I see things about money and inflation mentioned, I haven't actually seen folks mention wealth inequality.
Especially because many of their parents (if they’re fortunate enough to have both) probably lost their jobs.
And than we trivialize how dangerous it is for their well being being bombarded by stories of personal success over nothing (being a popular tik toker is 99.99% luck) and let them do it anyway, because having to actually talk to them, have a meaningful relation with them or simply entertain them is hard and takes a lot of time and effort. so we let the screen rise them.
I would argue that Youngsters are also more vulnerable, raw and new to the cruelties and realities of the world as they slowly get older. The only difference I see is that they become a mental bomb of mental health issues on a wide range of a spectrum.
I do not believe a kid who sees their family lose everything during a recession comes out 100% okay. Especially when you factor in how the recession affects the metal health of parents and in turn children if the parents do no deal with it in a Healthy way.
Besides, living in an economy that moves from recession to recession has an impact on the mental health of their parents, especially in economies with little or non-existent safety nets (see UK and US), and I’d be very surprised if that didn’t have repercussions on their kids’ mental health.
>economies with little or non-existent safety nets (see UK and US)
However, as a resident of the UK, I have to ask - how does it have a non-existent safety net?
Jobseeker’s Allowance is one forth of the average rent in London and I’m not sure you are entitled to it if you have any savings.
If you lose your private insurance you’d have to rely on the NHS, which is not as bad as what happens in the US, but it’s not in the same league of the French, German or even the Italian healthcare systems.
> Those whose parents lost their jobs?
If you acknowledge that, you should also acknowledge that heir only window to the outside World was a screen where some a*hole from Dubai whose only purpose was selling themselves and the things they were dressing to their "followers" for money, was saying all day that "we're gonna be fine" and then we didn't, "we are gonna come out better" and then we didn't and they interiorized the idea that they will never make it, because they missed the train, they are only teenagers but social networks taught them that you go big or go home at the age of 13.
No matter how much support they get from families, their validation nowadays comes from social networks, their peers and who their peers follow or what trend is popular ATM.
Compare that to my father born in 1941, in fascist Italy, his father lost in the Russian campaign, his house occupied by nazi, met his father at the age of 6 and lost him soon after for an undiagnosed infection, lived through 3 World pandemics, in 1957 during the Asian flu lost his sister aged 18, started working at the age of 6, lived through political turmoil of the 60s (my father was a socialist), terrorism of the 70s, oil crisis in 1973, heroin epidemic of the 80s, AIDS pandemic (he worked in an hospital), war on former Yugoslavia in the 90s, two Gulf wars etc. etc.
What saved him?
He could only look at himself and his own life, if it somewhat improved he could notice, if it somewhat got worse, he could hope things could change for the better, as they did so many times before.
Imagine putting him in front of IG and what could have happened.
> He could only look at himself and his own life, if it somewhat improved he could notice, if it somewhat got worse, he could hope things could change for the better, as they did so many times before.
Yes, but not only that. He also saw that he was better off than his parents and that throughout the years his life improved significantly, while a 30-year-old today is worse off than their parents and, rightly or not, feels that life is getting worse every year.
My salary quadrupled in the last 6 years, I managed to buy a flat and I can afford to pay for my child’s education, but to achieve all of this I have to be way better than my average colleague, way luckier and to work in one of the highest paying industries. All of this to achieve what a brute working in a post office in the 80s would have taken for granted (buy a house, send your kid to school and nursery, save some money, buy a car). This leaves me in a constant state of mild anxiety (what if I stop being good at my job? What if I become sick and I can’t provide for my family? What will be of my child in such a toxic environment?) and the only social network I use is Twitter, where I only follow reputable newspapers (practically I use it as an RSS feed). I understand that my views may be influenced by living in the UK, which is a more anxiogenic society than the rest of Europe.
I am sorry but the idea that 'bad old days had great mental health is a meme.
Do we have any evidence? Was anyone even counting who is depressed and who isn't? What about other mental issues and traumas? They didnt exactly have loads of psycologists avaliable.
Those things are heavily affecting teenagers mental health even if they don't give a flying about them. Poverty, uncertainty, and anxiety in the family home have serious and lasting, even generational consequences.
The "I'm alright Jack"-ness of that statement is making me actually angry. You think forbidding the social media of 20yo's from your teenagers is making a difference? You put "suffered" in quotes? Gross.
>I successfully forbid FB, Instagram, Snapchat..
If exclusion is what you believe is causing them to be unhappy then forcing them to be excluded seems like an almost sadistic (though likely just misguided) response. I definitely hated when my parents did things like that.
As they have zero access to FB, Instagram and Snapchat they can't be fired from those.
Except from the very privileged, I'm pretty sure they are at least exposed to adults discussing those subjects, or at least from medias. If the volume of concerning subject is large, they will internalize it and build up some anxiety, and that will impact mental health.
But many factors and to pin them upon a singular aspect is hard, also geographic and more so financial backgrounds play a factor that needs to be eliminated to see a more common root cause.
But hey, social media since Elon brought twitter a seen a resurgance in news about it, so more and more social media focus aspects will pop up and been a lot of ongoing debate and concerns on rollover for a while now as is.
As an anicdote how things have changed, a friend in his mid 40's was at some event and found some marbels so was playing a game with another friend for nostagia and some teens came up asking why you throwing stones about - as they had never seen marbles, let alone played it. Yet for decades and decades prior, everybody would instantly recognise marbles. Times change, not saying people who grow up playing marbles less prone to mental health. You find everybody has some aspect and there own coping ways.
Perhaps it may well be a case that we are looking into things like mental health more in a more detailed way and then looking at patterns of our times. After all, earthquakes have increased but equally the sensors in play to measure them have also increased so you have to balance out the more you see and compare to seeing less with less in the past very varefully as easy to see patterns that may not be there and come to conclusions.
After all, TikTok has been around less than any teenager era, let alone generatioins to get a clear picture.
But then, isn't social media for many mental health issues across generations, with it's echo chamber avenues and bombardment of all you care or dislike, it can be a dangerous rabbit hole for an angry or angst mind of any age.
But your approach to block it, safest and smartest way, like keys to the house - you need to have trust built before you let them loose and until then, block. Worse case they will educate themselves in how to get around the block.
