However, teenagers had a terrible, rotten time during WWII - bombs on cites, constant threat of military service, parents and elder brothers killed in war, one's country being invaded, etc. yet on the whole most never suffered these mental health issues. The difference is striking
Somehow, they had stamina and resilience that today's teenagers don't have. Many of today's problems I believe go back to over-protection and mollycoddling of kids when they are very young. In the War years a kid was an independent agent by the time he or she was six.
The modern world is brilliant at creating a constant sense of insecurity. That is often artificial but feels real. Your place is society and in the group is always insecure and shifting. Maybe kids are mollycoddled, but you have to wonder why people are driven to do that. Why do the richest most stable countries feels so insecure?
This is the question I keep asking myself. There seems to any number of answers but I'm not sure we've any definitive ones as yet. If we had then we ought to be able to do something about it. Perhaps the uncertainty of not knowing is the cause.
The “happiest” societies - the Nordics - are rated that way because they start out with low expectations.
Happiness is a measure of the delta between expectation and reality. When that delta is negative, mental health crises ensue.
Are you referring to only USA/Canada?
I don't feel so much sense of hopelesness or insecurity in Germany.
I could offer reasons as to why but they'd only be educated guesses. It's a big problem so some definitive data would be very helpful/useful.
> However, teenagers had a terrible, rotten time during WWII - bombs on cites, constant threat of military service, parents and elder brothers killed in war, one's country being invaded, etc. yet on the whole most never suffered these mental health issues. The difference is striking
> Somehow, they had stamina and resilience that today's teenagers don't have. Many of today's problems I believe go back to over-protection and mollycoddling of kids when they are very young. In the War years a kid was an independent agent by the time he or she was six.
There is a small problem. A survivor bias. You are only counting people that survived WW2. There were plenty of people that didn't survived, that didn't have stamina to do it, that were mentally ill(by itself was a reason for forced euthanasia). People that couldn't deal with the situation, couldn't do anything and just died, one way or another. And yes people committed suicides during WW2. Now we have something called suicide by cops. Just think how much easier it was when you were explicitly hunted.vOr people that outright killed themselves. In the end you only count bullet holes on planes that did return, not ones that failed to do so.
Let me say just this: when I was growing up in the 1950s and '60s what I said above wasn't quite 'dead' yet as my childhood was pretty much similar to that—and it was often damn hard times back then (moreover, from where I came from it was so for many of the kids my age, I was no exception). Several weeks ago I gave an account of my own childhood on the HN story Old Enough: the Japanese TV show that abandons toddlers on public transport and there's no doubt that by age six I was an independent agent— that is, walking miles to school across busy roads by myself at that age and so on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30951723#30953588. We had to be more resilient just to survive—and we were.
The fact is I'm old enough to have witnessed these changes firsthand. Leaving aside the reasons (which, no doubt, will be argued about for years to come), there is no doubt that mental health issues among the young have increased substantially in recent decades.
Edit: Incidentally, during my teenage years I cannot ever recall any mention of childhood or teenage suicide. No doubt it happened, but even the concept thereof would have been anathema to us kids back then.
My grandmas two sisters died before they even reached 16, but I don't know if it was before or after war. Some respiratory system infection. It what just happened to people. Especially if you were poor and lived in rural area.
>Let me say just this: when I was growing up in the 1950s and '60s what I said above wasn't quite 'dead' yet as my childhood was pretty much similar to that—and it was often damn hard times back then (moreover, from where I came from it was so for many of the kids my age, I was no exception). Several weeks ago I gave an account of my own childhood on the HN story Old Enough: the Japanese TV show that abandons toddlers on public transport and there's no doubt that by age six I was an independent agent— that is, walking miles to school across busy roads by myself at that age and so on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30951723#30953588. We had to be more resilient just to survive—and we were.
When I was in pre-school I had to go by myself to it, but it was a rural area. Forests, farmlands and so. But my friends from city, have similar experience(but with less forests and farmlands, but with more cars, streets and public transport). No one was taking kids to school by car, because parents had to go to work early while kids had to start school at 8am. We survived it. But I was, afraid of shadows kind of child. Sometimes on my way I had panic attacks, but I was alone and either I could go back home(not an option) or continue on my way to school. So I went to school every day.
>The fact is I'm old enough to have witnessed these changes firsthand. Leaving aside the reasons (which, no doubt, will be argued about for years to come), there is no doubt that mental health issues among the young have increased substantially in recent decades.
>Edit: Incidentally, during my teenage years I cannot ever recall any mention of childhood or teenage suicide. No doubt it happened, but even the concept thereof would have been anathema to us kids back then.
If you weren't part of family or right circle of friends you just didn't learn about stuff like that. There were negative consequences of other people knowing if someone committed suicide, was mentally ill, was gay. My grandfather committed suicide, but I only learned about it in my thirties and someone accidentally mentioned it. I was part of family and still didn't know about it. Back then Catholic church had problems with burying suicide victims on consecrated cemetery.
What I'm also afraid of, is possibility that with all the chemicals that finds its way into drinking water, we might poison ourselfs and our children literally out of our minds. I should learn more it, but I'm afraid it might be too late to do anything about it.
Now you have social media giving a constant reminder that you're not good enough and that you need to achieve more.
Conversely I do agree that there is a bit of a "learned helplessness" that I've noticed is a bit more prevalent in the younger generations, and I can't work out if that's a symptom or a cause.
It's why I keep coming back to developing resilience in kids at an early age. Challenge them early on and they'll cope better later. As I keep repeating at every opportunity, I cannot overstate the extent to which this has changed for the worse since I was a kid.
Nowadays, what's anyone got to look forward to? Earlier today my favorite record label announced they were getting purchased by a bigger label, and a few months ago, my favorite way to purchase music got bought by a massive conglomerate that supports concentration camps in China. I am going to die without having seen upward economic mobility (in many ways being significantly poorer than my working-class parent). I avoided going to university since I didn't reasonably have a way to afford it, and was denied advancement in classes despite having test scores that indicated I could have performed well above where I was when I was in schooling.
If that's enough to bother me, a person who doesn't use any of these social platforms, what do you think it would do to a child of schooling age? They have nothing to look forward to. Their futures suck. Things kind of just suck. We have surrendered all control of society to a handful of parasitic corporations. People may not be dying of polio, but there's no longer hope to balance out the suffering. There's nothing to look forward to. You're going to die in the same spot as who came before you, if not worse.
I think we blame the social media too much and don't blame the fact that society is just miserable these days for any person not born into wealth.
Right, I remember that period well (see my comment below).
Yes, war sucks. Famine sucks. All of that sucks and can make people just as hopeless. The premise is the same as the one now: people don't feel in power of their own future, incapable of getting what they want. A large crowd will immediately retaliate "but your demands are too high!" Really, most people's desires would've been considered pretty normal a few decades ago. Their parents and grandparents had an active role instilling those desires into them.
Here's a mental exercise for people. Imagine the following guarantees: A partner who won't leave you as long as you keep your stuff together and will actively support you (and expects the same in return, obviously). A home where you could raise a kid, maybe two, each with a separate, small bed room, a separate kitchen and a living + dining room combo. An average career (average salary, nothing too glorious). Life up to 75 and a retirement by age 60. You can fill in the specifics however you want. Most people in their 20s would be just fine having such a life.
The above used to be pretty easily attainable as long as you put in some effort before. Now, the above feels unattainable to a large degree of young adults. Even the ones who did exactly what their parents told them to, are noticeably ahead of their peers in terms of academics and career, and still struggle to get what their parents were able to at the bottom of the ladder, let alone what their gen X / boomer equivalent had. Teenagers are learning these things through both the news and the internet, and want none of it.
I agree with what you're saying, I just wonder why kids of my generation had more resilience. It's not as if we weren't under constant stress for we were so.
I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis as if it were yesterday and wondering if I'd even exist the next day let alone be going to school. I also remember the constant threats of nuclear war. Week after week, month after month, our letterbox would get stuffed with pamphlets forecasting nuclear armageddon, they were usually printed in black and red with images of nuclear bombs exploding on the front.
There was a time in the early to mid 1960s when there seemed to be no future. If that weren't enough, by the time we were 15 or 16 or so we started to worry about the draft and the Vietnam War—that's before we had even left school. It's damn horrible when one's marble pops up in the draft, I can attest to that.
