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I am a voluntary youth minister at a local low-to-middle class church in Mexico so I have a lot of contact with adolescents (Which is unusual because I'm marrie

I am a voluntary youth minister at a local low-to-middle class church in Mexico so I have a lot of contact with adolescents (Which is unusual because I'm married, almost 40 and have no kids of my own). And what I've seen is that it has become cool or fashonable to be depressed, anxious and to have some mild mental disorder like TOC or ADHD. Kids "brag" about it on social media and sometimes discuss who is more miserable and make fun on people who are "wholesome" or "happy" as being shallow. They constantly make jokes about being worthless and wanting to die and being secretly sad (even when they are broadcasting it on the internet). I'm not saying that they are faking it, and I know their lives look significantly shittier than mine at their age and the future looks bleak for most, but I have a theory that when it becomes viral some people try to act depressed and end up being depressed for real. Like, when I was adolescent I knew a lot of girls with eating disorders (bulimia/anorexia) in my immediate circle (before social media) but I don't think I know anybody with those problems today, because having those issues became uncool, now you have others to pick from. So yes, what I'm trying to say is that I had paralyzing social anxiety before it was cool.

everdrive 7y ago
Thanks for mentioning this. This has been the norm for at least 15-20 years. It wasn't until I was in college (early 2000s) that I realized popular and happy people weren't inherently bad. Where did I get the idea that popular people were malevolent? And where did I get the idea suffering gave me validity? Who knows. What I do know is that this misconception was a big waste of time.
- mooseburger 7y ago
  > Where did I get the idea that popular people were malevolent? They were the primary bullies growing up? That's where I got the idea, at least. And suffering seems like a more authentic emotion than happiness, as there are all sorts of heavy social incentives to constantly project happiness. There's a lot more people out there faking happiness, than there are faking suffering.
- throwaway876123 7y ago
  > Where did I get the idea that popular people were malevolent? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_morality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_morality
  - everdrive 7y ago
    Thanks, I've seen this idea espoused, but didn't realize it had a formal name, or originated with Nietzsche. I'll read further.
    - pwodhouse 7y ago
      It's my older. Aesop published the gable of Sour Grapes.
  - chongli 7y ago
    The general concept is much older than even Nietzsche. I would put it at least as far back as the account of Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic[1], a critique of Socrates' concept of justice: I proclaim that justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger [1] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497-h.htm
- scruple 7y ago
  Some grunge and altrock, no doubt marketed / targeted directly at the youth of the time, pushed those sorts of tropes. The songs aren't bad, perse, in retrospect, but I'm able to view them very differently today than how I felt about them as a youth.
  - cbm-vic-20 7y ago
    Coke even made us our own soft drink! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ok_Soda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ok_Soda
throwaway876123 7y ago
I would go one step further and claim that if you're not in some victim group nowadays, you just don't really "fit in". Be a victim instead and you will get all the virtue signals. It's a devil's bargain, because being at the receiving end of virtue signals is actually pretty worthless, unless maybe you get to be a diversity hire. However, if you foster a victim identity you will underachieve because you will blame everything and everyone but yourself when things go wrong. In the past, males in particular would be told in no unclear terms that pretty much nobody cares to hear about their problems and that they need to sort themselves out as part of becoming adults. Today, they'll be given pills and a consultation with therapists whose education is probably nonsense.
- shados 7y ago
  > you just don't really "fit in" Not only do you not fit in, but you're not allowed to complain about anything/say anything, your problems don't matter, etc. Which is pretty problematic for people who have issues that aren't in the "approved list of things that currently matter".
  - qzxvwt 7y ago
    i recently discovered that this approved list of things that currently matter actually has a name, it’s called the overton window: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
    - shados 7y ago
      Well, today I learnt something too! Thanks!
- celrod 7y ago
  People's beliefs about their responsibility and efficacy do have real impacts on their performance. Research has shown that whether or not someone's will power is limited is largely determined by whether or not they think it is. Basically, if you think will power is a limited resource, people will use that as an excuse to give up. One of my fellow graduate students failed 2 out of 3 classes last semester. He's repeated that will power is finite several times, ignoring me when I mention research suggesting otherwise. It's just too convenient of an excuse for him to say it was beyond his control, he had no choice but to play board games all day instead of studying and doing homework. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797610384745 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09567976103847...
lazyasciiart 7y ago
Eating disorders are slightly more common than they used to be - I think you're suffering from selection bias.
- anbop 7y ago
  Is this based on physician diagnosis or some objective metric like fraction of teens with BMI < X?
  - lazyasciiart 7y ago
    The fraction of teens with BMI < x is not a measure of how many teens have eating disorders. To pick the simplest possible confounding factor - teens dying of cancer would be false positives.
- armandososa 7y ago
  I most likely am. I had many friends/relatives in my youth with bulimia and anorexia but depression and anxiety were not even in our vocabulary. I'm no expert and I'm just saying what I see, like when talking to a group of friends, except that my group of friends is HN and likes to yell at me for being real dumb.
  - lazyasciiart 7y ago
    You're not just saying what you see. You are sharing elaborate theories that are demonstrating an inaccurate and unsympathetic perspective of teenagers with mental illness.
aylmao 7y ago
> And what I've seen is that it has become cool or fashionable to be depressed, anxious and to have some mild mental disorder I think this has always been the case. Isn't this what being emo, metal, punk, etc. was about in the early 2000s, 90s and 80s? Calling for attention is common at that age, and with so many and so intense feelings as one feels during teenage years, I have always assumed this is common. > Kids "brag" about it on social media and sometimes discuss who is more miserable and make fun on people who are "wholesome" or "happy" as being shallow. This sounds like punk subculture. And really a lot of other sub and counter-cultures. IMO this is also healthy. In the context of college I know people who went to schools where, they told me, the overarching social dynamic was "showing a put-together facade". They said this was very stressing. Not only would you struggle, but on top of that you'd have to hide it. I went to a college where the overarching social dynamic was to complain and talk about how miserable we were, how much work we had, how stressed we all were, etc. It is very refreshing to not have to pretend you've got everything under control and to know that other people are struggling in the same way you are. On that note, IMO it's worth having a look at wether it is in the other side of the coin that this problem resides— those "wholesome" kids. Especially in some areas of the US, kids are under immense amounts of pressure. Many times the people you'd less think are at risk of committing suicide are the ones who do [1]. It makes sense. If the middle-class keeps disappearing, this becomes an all-or-nothing game. Getting into a good college to study a lucrative career can sound like a ticket to a drastically better life. In the US you hear the word "success" a lot. If everyone around you is a high achiever in one monoculture, not fitting into that monoculture or not achieving the same things your community has can make you feel alone and inadequate. Here are some quotes from that article I linked [1]: > A goofy basketball player with short brown hair and a pixie face, Cam, as he was known to friends, was the last kid anyone would have suspected of being troubled. His classmates describe him as having been happy, nonchalant, and popular, and that’s exactly how he appears in the homecoming photos posted on so many Facebook pages before his death: a handsome, grinning kid, standing smack in the center of his clique. “If you told me that someone in my friend group would commit suicide, he would be my straight-up last guess,” says Lisa Hao. > “There’s no middle point for success. There’s no ‘I’m here and I’m happy with where I am.’ It’s always ‘I need to be up there,’” she says. The kids paint a picture of a sort of academic coliseum, where students look down their noses at peers in a lower math “lane,” guard their grade point averages like state secrets, brag about 2 a.m. cramming sessions, and consider a B a disaster. > “Because we live in this extraordinary place that really has some singular qualities,” says Ken Dauber, a Palo Alto father and a member of the school board, “we think somehow that our kids are also singular and extraordinary. But they are just kids.” [1]: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Why-are-Palo-Alto-s-kids-killing-themselves-6270854.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Why-are-Palo-Alto-s-k...
cc81 7y ago
Last year I listened to an interesting program on Swedish public radio about this topic. There was a researcher there who said something similar; that Swedish youth today are more likely to answer that they are depressed even though if you looked the actual questions they were not saying that they were less happy than previous age groups that had answered similar but did not see themselves as depressed. There was an expectation that they should be depressed because there are so many stories about kids these days being depressed. It could be a self fulfilling prophecy for some and if you add internet where a lot of people tend to make their diagnosis their whole life. My guess is that if you are feeling depressed it can be very comforting to talk with other people in the same state but I'm not sure how healthy it is in the long run if you spend a lot of time in such communities. That said I think it is also a rougher way to grow up in many ways than it was for me. Your life might be hyper connected but I think for some that will only suck more when they are lonely outcasts and see everyone else's (appearance of) happy life on Instagram.
40acres 7y ago
I understand your point but must say it's 100% unhelpful, facts on the ground is that suicide rates among young people are up. Are kids faking some sense of doom and gloom to get likes on Instagram? Sure. But I doubt these kids are willing to go far enough to actually commit suicide and influence these numbers in a substantial way.
xenocyon 7y ago
Establishing causation is often more difficult than it seems. You're drawing a particular arrow of causation here: kids talking about or joking about depression or EDs -> kids actually suffering from depression or EDs. How do you know the arrow of causation isn't the other way around? Or that there isn't a third factor that's causing both?
samirillian 7y ago
I guess they just need Jesus eh
sjg007 7y ago
I would be hesitant to label depression and bulimia as trendy when they are clinically defined.
eq_sd_ 7y ago
> some mild mental disorder like TOC or ADHD. Can you not downplay this? Some people might have a mild variation of a disorder but many, like myself, suffer deeply.
- ericmcer 7y ago
  Maybe they mean mild when compared to something like schizophrenia?
- armandososa 7y ago
  Sorry, that was not my intention. Maybe what I'm trying to say that they fake the caricature version of those disorders.
Solvitieg 7y ago
I can't tell, are you implying young people are committing suicide because they think it's cool? I don't think you are, but I'm wondering how this antidote comment is useful in a thread about suicide.
- armandososa 7y ago
  I'm just saying some of the young people I know think it's cool and like to brag about it in social media. The actual cases of suicide I've encountered came as a surprise. But, again, I'm a dumb happy adult that once almost jump in front of a bus because I was a dumb heart-broken twenty something. I know nothing.

everdrive 7y ago

Thanks for mentioning this. This has been the norm for at least 15-20 years. It wasn't until I was in college (early 2000s) that I realized popular and happy people weren't inherently bad. Where did I get the idea that popular people were malevolent? And where did I get the idea suffering gave me validity? Who knows. What I do know is that this misconception was a big waste of time.

mooseburger 7y ago
> Where did I get the idea that popular people were malevolent? They were the primary bullies growing up? That's where I got the idea, at least. And suffering seems like a more authentic emotion than happiness, as there are all sorts of heavy social incentives to constantly project happiness. There's a lot more people out there faking happiness, than there are faking suffering.
throwaway876123 7y ago
> Where did I get the idea that popular people were malevolent? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_morality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_morality
- everdrive 7y ago
  Thanks, I've seen this idea espoused, but didn't realize it had a formal name, or originated with Nietzsche. I'll read further.
  - pwodhouse 7y ago
    It's my older. Aesop published the gable of Sour Grapes.
- chongli 7y ago
  The general concept is much older than even Nietzsche. I would put it at least as far back as the account of Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic[1], a critique of Socrates' concept of justice: I proclaim that justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger [1] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497-h.htm
scruple 7y ago
Some grunge and altrock, no doubt marketed / targeted directly at the youth of the time, pushed those sorts of tropes. The songs aren't bad, perse, in retrospect, but I'm able to view them very differently today than how I felt about them as a youth.
- cbm-vic-20 7y ago
  Coke even made us our own soft drink! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ok_Soda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ok_Soda

throwaway876123 7y ago

I would go one step further and claim that if you're not in some victim group nowadays, you just don't really "fit in". Be a victim instead and you will get all the virtue signals. It's a devil's bargain, because being at the receiving end of virtue signals is actually pretty worthless, unless maybe you get to be a diversity hire. However, if you foster a victim identity you will underachieve because you will blame everything and everyone but yourself when things go wrong. In the past, males in particular would be told in no unclear terms that pretty much nobody cares to hear about their problems and that they need to sort themselves out as part of becoming adults. Today, they'll be given pills and a consultation with therapists whose education is probably nonsense.

shados 7y ago
> you just don't really "fit in" Not only do you not fit in, but you're not allowed to complain about anything/say anything, your problems don't matter, etc. Which is pretty problematic for people who have issues that aren't in the "approved list of things that currently matter".
- qzxvwt 7y ago
  i recently discovered that this approved list of things that currently matter actually has a name, it’s called the overton window: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
  - shados 7y ago
    Well, today I learnt something too! Thanks!
celrod 7y ago
People's beliefs about their responsibility and efficacy do have real impacts on their performance. Research has shown that whether or not someone's will power is limited is largely determined by whether or not they think it is. Basically, if you think will power is a limited resource, people will use that as an excuse to give up. One of my fellow graduate students failed 2 out of 3 classes last semester. He's repeated that will power is finite several times, ignoring me when I mention research suggesting otherwise. It's just too convenient of an excuse for him to say it was beyond his control, he had no choice but to play board games all day instead of studying and doing homework. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797610384745 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09567976103847...

lazyasciiart 7y ago

Eating disorders are slightly more common than they used to be - I think you're suffering from selection bias.

anbop 7y ago
Is this based on physician diagnosis or some objective metric like fraction of teens with BMI < X?
- lazyasciiart 7y ago
  The fraction of teens with BMI < x is not a measure of how many teens have eating disorders. To pick the simplest possible confounding factor - teens dying of cancer would be false positives.
armandososa 7y ago
I most likely am. I had many friends/relatives in my youth with bulimia and anorexia but depression and anxiety were not even in our vocabulary. I'm no expert and I'm just saying what I see, like when talking to a group of friends, except that my group of friends is HN and likes to yell at me for being real dumb.
- lazyasciiart 7y ago
  You're not just saying what you see. You are sharing elaborate theories that are demonstrating an inaccurate and unsympathetic perspective of teenagers with mental illness.

aylmao 7y ago

> And what I've seen is that it has become cool or fashionable to be depressed, anxious and to have some mild mental disorder I think this has always been the case. Isn't this what being emo, metal, punk, etc. was about in the early 2000s, 90s and 80s? Calling for attention is common at that age, and with so many and so intense feelings as one feels during teenage years, I have always assumed this is common. > Kids "brag" about it on social media and sometimes discuss who is more miserable and make fun on people who are "wholesome" or "happy" as being shallow. This sounds like punk subculture. And really a lot of other sub and counter-cultures. IMO this is also healthy. In the context of college I know people who went to schools where, they told me, the overarching social dynamic was "showing a put-together facade". They said this was very stressing. Not only would you struggle, but on top of that you'd have to hide it. I went to a college where the overarching social dynamic was to complain and talk about how miserable we were, how much work we had, how stressed we all were, etc. It is very refreshing to not have to pretend you've got everything under control and to know that other people are struggling in the same way you are. On that note, IMO it's worth having a look at wether it is in the other side of the coin that this problem resides— those "wholesome" kids. Especially in some areas of the US, kids are under immense amounts of pressure. Many times the people you'd less think are at risk of committing suicide are the ones who do [1]. It makes sense. If the middle-class keeps disappearing, this becomes an all-or-nothing game. Getting into a good college to study a lucrative career can sound like a ticket to a drastically better life. In the US you hear the word "success" a lot. If everyone around you is a high achiever in one monoculture, not fitting into that monoculture or not achieving the same things your community has can make you feel alone and inadequate. Here are some quotes from that article I linked [1]: > A goofy basketball player with short brown hair and a pixie face, Cam, as he was known to friends, was the last kid anyone would have suspected of being troubled. His classmates describe him as having been happy, nonchalant, and popular, and that’s exactly how he appears in the homecoming photos posted on so many Facebook pages before his death: a handsome, grinning kid, standing smack in the center of his clique. “If you told me that someone in my friend group would commit suicide, he would be my straight-up last guess,” says Lisa Hao. > “There’s no middle point for success. There’s no ‘I’m here and I’m happy with where I am.’ It’s always ‘I need to be up there,’” she says. The kids paint a picture of a sort of academic coliseum, where students look down their noses at peers in a lower math “lane,” guard their grade point averages like state secrets, brag about 2 a.m. cramming sessions, and consider a B a disaster. > “Because we live in this extraordinary place that really has some singular qualities,” says Ken Dauber, a Palo Alto father and a member of the school board, “we think somehow that our kids are also singular and extraordinary. But they are just kids.” [1]: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Why-are-Palo-Alto-s-kids-killing-themselves-6270854.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Why-are-Palo-Alto-s-k...

cc81 7y ago

Last year I listened to an interesting program on Swedish public radio about this topic. There was a researcher there who said something similar; that Swedish youth today are more likely to answer that they are depressed even though if you looked the actual questions they were not saying that they were less happy than previous age groups that had answered similar but did not see themselves as depressed. There was an expectation that they should be depressed because there are so many stories about kids these days being depressed. It could be a self fulfilling prophecy for some and if you add internet where a lot of people tend to make their diagnosis their whole life. My guess is that if you are feeling depressed it can be very comforting to talk with other people in the same state but I'm not sure how healthy it is in the long run if you spend a lot of time in such communities. That said I think it is also a rougher way to grow up in many ways than it was for me. Your life might be hyper connected but I think for some that will only suck more when they are lonely outcasts and see everyone else's (appearance of) happy life on Instagram.

40acres 7y ago

I understand your point but must say it's 100% unhelpful, facts on the ground is that suicide rates among young people are up. Are kids faking some sense of doom and gloom to get likes on Instagram? Sure. But I doubt these kids are willing to go far enough to actually commit suicide and influence these numbers in a substantial way.

xenocyon 7y ago

Establishing causation is often more difficult than it seems. You're drawing a particular arrow of causation here: kids talking about or joking about depression or EDs -> kids actually suffering from depression or EDs. How do you know the arrow of causation isn't the other way around? Or that there isn't a third factor that's causing both?

samirillian 7y ago

I guess they just need Jesus eh

sjg007 7y ago

I would be hesitant to label depression and bulimia as trendy when they are clinically defined.

eq_sd_ 7y ago

> some mild mental disorder like TOC or ADHD. Can you not downplay this? Some people might have a mild variation of a disorder but many, like myself, suffer deeply.

ericmcer 7y ago
Maybe they mean mild when compared to something like schizophrenia?
armandososa 7y ago
Sorry, that was not my intention. Maybe what I'm trying to say that they fake the caricature version of those disorders.

Solvitieg 7y ago

I can't tell, are you implying young people are committing suicide because they think it's cool? I don't think you are, but I'm wondering how this antidote comment is useful in a thread about suicide.

armandososa 7y ago
I'm just saying some of the young people I know think it's cool and like to brag about it in social media. The actual cases of suicide I've encountered came as a surprise. But, again, I'm a dumb happy adult that once almost jump in front of a bus because I was a dumb heart-broken twenty something. I know nothing.