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Depression, anxiety rising among U.S. college students

240 points by HNLurker2 7y ago

quaquaqua1 7y ago
Imagine taking out 200k in loans for an uncertain future income. Imagine that previous generations paid less for the same hiring opportunities.
- dantheman 7y ago
  These crazy loan amounts are not taken by most students. There are many ways that most people choose to keep their costs low - living not as nice housing, not going to your top school, working while in college. Here's some stats: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/13/facts-about-student-loans/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/13/facts-about... Median bachelors degree debt: $25,000 Most of these people with huge debts are getting graduate degrees and they significantly skew the results when looking at the average, the median is far more insightful.
  - ericd 7y ago
    Thanks for the reality check.
  - mattwest 7y ago
    An appropriate correction, but I don't think it changes the inevitable feeling of doom that many college students and recent graduates face. $25,000 is an enormous amount of debt, especially when there is a multitude of uncertainties with the investment. When you borrow for a house or car, there is an immediate, tangible benefit. With college, it's not so simple. It would be great if you didn't need to go to college, but let's face it. You simply make more money with a degree, and many employers require them. There is an undeniable problem with tuition rates over time and its affect on the mental health of many American students.
    - learc83 7y ago
      >$25,000 is an enormous amount of debt, especially when there is a multitude of uncertainties with the investment. If that $25k is public loans, which it should be since that's well under the limit, the uncertainty should be mitigated by income based repayment plans. You'll never have to pay more than 10% of your disposable income (income over 1.5x the federal poverty level). If anything I think the feeling of doom is caused by people constantly telling kids how bad student debt is without realizing that $25k in public loans and $200k in private loans are vastly different situations. Most younger people I know feel guilty about taking out $25k in loans to make hundreds of thousands more over their life time.
      - throwawayjava 7y ago
        > ...$25k in loans to make hundreds of thousands more over their life time. 1. Future reward should be discounted, usually by a fairly large constant, because of interest and risk. Also, in many fields, most of those extra hundreds will come toward the end of a career. So, highly discounted. 2. I wonder if it's really a good idea to set up a society where banks that provide educational loans are able to capture huge percentages of future productivity. Seems like this would have all sorts of really negative outcomes. Some of those negative outcomes are already happening -- e.g., we effectively import 90+% of our scientific human capital because US students aren't willing to do phds. We realize that allowing financiers to capture a big chunk of the rewards for K-12 ed is a bad idea. Why don't we realize that the same is true for college?
        learc83 7y ago
        1. Enough of the extra income is weighted towards the beginning that for most people it's worth $25k particularly since repayment us based on income. 2. Public loans are over 90% of disbursements, and if you're only borrowing $25k you're definitely getting public loans. Public loans are made directly from the treasury. No banks involved. Also most stem phds work as researchers and teachers--they generally aren't paying tuition.
        7y ago
  - chillwaves 7y ago
    That ignores the fact that out of state schools cost on average of double and not every state either has the programs folks are looking for or the schools to go to, so some resort to out of state and pay $20k per year and will walk out with more than twice that in debt. Also the cost of living around good schools is mostly increasing, at least if they are in an urban environment.
    - dantheman 7y ago
      Completely agree schools cost too much and ideally everyone would have lots of options -- talking about loans isn't they way to get there, the problem is the cost of schools and housing skyrocketing.
    - ericd 7y ago
      So, do a cost benefit analysis of whether it’s worth it to go out of state and pay twice as much to study that esoteric subject? You seem to be implying that students in those situations have no choice but to take on more debt, which seems to be a recurring theme in a lot of these threads, but they do. Or, they can live at home and go to a local community college for the first two years to take the general reqs, and finish up at that expensive 4 year school. A few of my friends did that and saved quite a lot.
      - chillwaves 7y ago
        > study that esoteric subject Where does this come from? The major one had was game design, another was for IT. I'm not implying anything. I know people from states who don't have great schools (or programs) available to them and choose to go out of state. The whole instate/out of state system needs an overhaul as well. Some students want to resettle out of their state and intend to stay after getting their education. That's a net plus for the state, why make it so difficult for them to get an education here if they are academically qualified?
        ericd 7y ago
        Those are slightly more esoteric/unusual programs. More common would be Computer Science. Yep, the public university program could definitely use work, no argument there. But I’m under the impression that most states have at least one serviceable university.
- chrisco255 7y ago
  Imagine skipping college altogether and getting a blue collar job like plumbing or working your way up to retail management. Imagine that colleges take advantage of egregious, lax loan policies and inflate the price of education to exorbitant amounts. Reminder to periodically get away from technology and into nature. Take up a hobby like fishing, kayaking or whatever floats your boat. Too much outrage in the world today.
  - knolax 7y ago
    Imagine breaking your body doing blue-collar work only to be deprecated once what you do is inevitably automated, leaving you with no transferrable skills or employment prospects in middle age.
    - chokolad 7y ago
      > Imagine breaking your body doing blue-collar work only to be deprecated once what you do is inevitably automated, leaving you with no transferrable skills or employment prospects in middle age. Man, I wish plumbing was automated. It's not going to happen any time soon though and plumbers will quote exorbitant prices for their work for quite some time.
      - DanBC 7y ago
        Do it yourself if it's so easy.
        AlexTWithBeard 7y ago
        I do it myself: neither plumbing nor home electricity is a rocket science. My town though thinks only a person who has completed a three years apprenticeship is allowed to install a new electric outlet.
        chokolad 7y ago
        > Do it yourself if it's so easy. That's what I ended up doing after having a few unfortunate interactions with local handymen of various specializations. After going through the motions I understood how badly I was ripped off previously
- brighton36 7y ago
  I don't know why people pay for degrees. I never bought one, and I never had a problem with opportunity in my life as a consequence. Imo, the bottom needs to drop out of this market.
  - mattwest 7y ago
    "I don't know why people pay for degrees" Because some pursuits in life require them. What about someone who wants to pursue genetics or molecular biology? Those are essential fields that provide things like healthcare and food security.
    - brighton36 7y ago
      Yeah, I get that. Those people seem like a minority of the degrees. But even there, I suspect there's probably creative paths through the bureaucracies that don't involve degrees, or push the degree costs onto employers.
  - mLuby 7y ago
    The "bottom dropping out" means at minimum a great depression, quite possibly wide-scale violence. Economists almost always hand-wave away the financial (let alone human) cost of forcing people can switch jobs or careers, then complain people are "irrational actors." I assume they do this because economists are actually bad at economics and so should find jobs more suited to their aptitudes.
    - brighton36 7y ago
      Sure. The fat has to get trimmed. Short these loans I suppose, if you want to make money during the depression.
      - ben_w 7y ago
        What is your advice for the people who are defaulting on the loans because they don’t have enough money to pay them never mind short them? Remember that previous examples of people rioting over poverty has included literally beheading the rich, en-masse, in a fundamental change of the nature of national governance.
- rayiner 7y ago
  The average student loan debt for the class of 2017 was about as much as the average new car loan. And repayment is limited to 10% of disposable income with forgiveness after 20 years. The whole “crisis” is the projected anxiety of the the relatively small handful of upper middle class people who are actually looking at taking $200k in loans.
  - quaquaqua1 7y ago
    I paid 30k and my parents paid 70k for me to get my degree. They don't shut up about it. I don't use my degree 7 years later.
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    Average is misleading. 70% of students borrow, and the average debt is suspiciously similar to the federally backed loan caps. People incur debts in all sorts of ways for school besides a formal student loan as well. Private loans are expensive and often avoided. Home equity loans are common, as are credit cards for both students and parents.
- jedimastert 7y ago
  Edit: You know, I started this comment just wanting to point out the interesting economic relationship of "hours worked to total cost", but apparently got much more rant-y. I'll leave this here as an example of the anxiety I still feel about college, even after 3 years out of it. The important part of the comment is the three of so paragraphs. ===== Not even less in terms of money. Not even less money adjusted for inflation. Less in terms of time. This website[0] lets you look at how much time of minimum wage work it would have taken to pay for a college degree in 1987 vs now, Because of vastly inflating tuition prices and relatively stagnant minimum wage, there's a very significant difference. For the college that I went to, working part time at a minimum wage job not only would have paid for the entirety of tuition, it would have paid 156% of tuition. What I would have had left over would have been more than what my parents paid for the down payment of the house my family of 5 grew up in. (warning: projection time) Now I could barely pay half on a part time job, so I either start my adult life with absolutely crushing debt, hope that my parents set aside what would have been way more that the original tuition to cover what would have been left, kill myself trying to work full time and be a student full time, or stunt my career by a few years doing school part time and coming into the workforce years behind in a fairly ageist sector. And all this for a piece of paper that was pounded into our head that we needed in order to have any kind of hope of getting into even a reasonably basic field. If you can't tell, I can empathize with why college might give someone depression and anxiety. That's not to mention the general artificial competitiveness of getting into a "good" school, internships, and everything else to make sure that your resume is good enough to even find a job after college, lest you spend a year or two floating and having to explain an every growing gap in your resume. There was also the special bureaucratic that I ended up falling into (though those were just unfortunate circumstances). I ended up getting the amazing job I have right now by almost pure luck. I know a lot of my classmates that aren't so lucky and have simply very little extra value (other than the worthy pursuit of knowledge and life experience) for the incredibly expensive piece of paper gathering dust in their closet. [0]: https://www.marketwatch.com/graphics/college-debt-now-and-then/ https://www.marketwatch.com/graphics/college-debt-now-and-th...
- paulpauper 7y ago
  It's more like $20k-40k Given all the generous payment, deferral, and forbearance plans, student loan debt is a better deal than other types of debt, and unlike consumer debt ,a college degree gains value in term of higher inflation adjusted wages.
- masonic 7y ago
  Imagine that previous generations paid less for the same hiring opportunities. Acknowledge that many minimized (or avoided) debt by working their way through school, often doing jobs the current generation considers "beneath" them.
readbtc 7y ago
college kills creativity. think about thousands of people studying for the same position, same books, same knowledge.. anyone thinks about robots?
alephnan 7y ago
> Students may also avoid using resources on campus because some colleges may expel students who have suicidal ideation ... to avoid liability related to student suicides
- throwoutIIIII 7y ago
  My (top tier) school forced me to take a medical leave of absence, which required a doctors note to get back in and finish the degree. A very expensive endeavor. Edit: Ah, it says that right in the article. Yeah it sucks, I wouldn't trust the schools mental health services again.
  - SomeOldThrow 7y ago
    Exact same scenario. I never ended up going back.
tempsy 7y ago
I think a huge part of it is that getting a “good” job out of college has never been more competitive and more important. The idea that one works their way up from a secretarial position to executive could not be more unrealistic today. On the other hand, if you beat the competition (your peers) to get a reputable corporate gig at a big co, well known startup, or prestigious consulting or banking you’re setting yourself up for life. Not getting one of those jobs out of college makes it near impossible to be hired at those companies even a year or two down the road simply because many of those companies source all their entry level people from colleges and past interns. Your trajectory is just so different depending on your first job and I think everyone is acutely aware but no one wants to talk about it.
- cmxch 7y ago
  So how do you get the best out of "less desirable" situations (which might include temp-to-hire or staffing agency work)?
- wallace_f 7y ago
  I wish it was only fair "competition." Even at the best schools (especially at the best?) it is a lot about family/friend relationships, corruption (ymmv by field).
  - twblalock 7y ago
    The well-connected people you are describing will be fine no matter what. The majority of students are the ones who will need to compete for jobs after they graduate.
- apples12345 7y ago
  Totally agree about the getting job part, but as someone who got a job in a big bank as a software developer as well as getting a graduate degree life still sucks.... when not only I feel like a wage slave but my friends who have even better jobs feel like wage slaves and are constantly looking for the next job it’s depressing all around...
Vomzor 7y ago
I think it's parenting. Parents started to become overprotective somewhere in the late 90's and it's only getting worse. Kids don't learn to deal with setbacks anymore. So the real world overwhelms them. There's a book, The Coddling of the American Mind, that explains the problem much better than I do. "First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom from many cultures. Embracing these untruths—and the resulting culture of safetyism—interferes with young people’s social, emotional, and intellectual development. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life." https://www.thecoddling.com https://www.thecoddling.com
- ben_jones 7y ago
  I disagree. Parenting is critical but I believe the root is the relationship with smart phones by not only students but everyone else in the students lives (parents/teachers/counselors/other role models). A mixture of constant audio, visual, and social, inputs has lowered our attention spans and rotted our ability to deal with stress in healthy ways (and likely created new stresses simultaneously). To support this I would cross-reference screen time between 1st world countries and mental health records, normalizing as best I could for all the other variables in the equation.
  - Vomzor 7y ago
    Smartphones definitely play a role but aren't the main cause. The rise of depression and anxiety started before smartphones were mainstream. "Comparing groups across generations is admittedly difficult, but the data clearly point to things being far worse now. Trend data clearly suggest increases in levels of stress, depression and anxiety at least since the 1980s. Consider that one study found that the average high school student in the year 2000 has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient did in the 1950s; and those rates have only increased in the last decade. Utilizing the MMPI to assess psychopathology, Twenge and colleagues found five times as many students in 2007 surpassed clinical cutoffs in one or more mental health categories, compared with those who took the measure several decades ago." https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/theory-knowledge/201402/the-college-student-mental-health-crisis https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/theory-knowledge/2...
systematical 7y ago
Is it on the rise or are people feeling more comfortable about reporting these things compared to decades ago?
- insickness 7y ago
  Or it could be that people are more aware of their internal states. In other words, twenty years ago, I would not be able to tell you that I had anxiety or depression, even though I did. As I went through cognitive behavioral therapy and became more aware of my internal states, I can tell immediately if I start to feel anxious or depressed. Due to cb therapy, I experience far less anxiety and depression but I am aware of it when I do experience it (which can help minimize it).
- flaque 7y ago
  Likely both. There's also more suicides: https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/ https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/
JulianMorrison 7y ago
Could it be something to do with the CRUSHING BURDEN OF DEBT? No, clearly it is smartphones.
- grenoire 7y ago
  European students who are not under crushing debt are also having difficulties with such mental health problems. The root of the anxiety and the following depression is economic prospects and the terrible status quo.
  - JulianMorrison 7y ago
    Fair, although I expect you'd find less of it. The feeling of "I am literally going to die owing this, I will never be free" isn't doing anyone but the loan-owners any favours.
    - grenoire 7y ago
      In the end it's not a pissing contest by any means. The factors contributing to the mental issues of European students might be different than the Americans', but the overall trend is apparent for both demographics. Sadly enough, the environmental pressures faced in terms of economic situation and extreme competition have been observed for a very long time in Asian nations, exhibiting themselves in the form of suicides. I hope, deeply so, that the West does not devolve that far...
  - alexgmcm 7y ago
    Indeed. In Europe we still have huge issues with declining home ownership, youth unemployment and precarious/low-paid jobs (incl. the 'gig economy') etc. I did okay-ish (home ownership still seems impossible), but when I see some of my high school and uni friends stuck in bad jobs with seemingly little hope of escape you can understand the despair.
- KaoruAoiShiho 7y ago
  I honestly think it's the smartphones. Source: Anecdotal data off of yours truly
tehjoker 7y ago
Could it be the increasing inequality in the United States? The elimination of most middle class jobs? The increasingly generational inheritance of wealth, power, and connections? College debt? Asking for a friend.
- waynecochran 7y ago
  I can't imagine the debt students are taking on now. Add to that the high expense of housing. Why don't student speak up about this instead of defending all the "safe space" and "trigger warning" nonsense?
  - sudosteph 7y ago
    I'm not Gen Z myself (millenial who graduated right before asking for pronouns became a thing on college campuses), but that's a question I've asked myself as I well. I get the feeling that it's simply because they believe they have leverage over the words people use on their campus, but no leverage over housing expenses or other economic issues that actually have broader appeal. Remember that neither Gen Z nor Millenials have ever witnessed significant economic change that was brought on by direct action of normal people. Unions have been utterly defanged and left-wing candidates never manage to win or drive change either. Occupy Wall Street was the closest thing we've ever seen to an economic solidarity movement, and that was widely mocked and derided as an utter failure. While the movement around language policing may give Gen Z the feeling of participating in successful direct action, it unfortunately is contributing to a schism between them and older generations who may be otherwise willing to ally with them on broader causes, but are fearful of mis-stepping and being called out publicly. Of course, maybe that very same fear of public call-outs ties back to what one of the professors in the article mentioned. The new generation is used to having every little thing they do be potentially subjected to being recorded, publicized, and criticized at any moment through social media. They are constantly self-managing themselves and their social media presence with that in mind. They don't see why older generations shouldn't be held to the same standards - even if they'd rather be exempt from that standard themselves, they accept it as reality. There's a mockumentary series on netflix called "American Vandal", which besides being funny, was surprisingly insightful about the challenges that young adults are facing in part due to growing up with instagram, twitter, etc. as part of their world. I have a lot more sympathy for them after watching that.
amriksohata 7y ago
The link between modern day food....
kingkawn 7y ago
American culture has become a dysfunctional parody of itself, and young people are left to grapple with a worldview that does not seem to adequately address the world.
- adjkant 7y ago
  This x 100. Most of Gen Z has become absurdist (memes only make sense to young people often for this reason) out of necessity. The "adults" have failed them and they have no power to change it. Depression and anxiety should only be expected. There really should also be more discussion about the complexity of the world and decision fatigue, both of which I think are affecting people of all ages but especially younger people.
- mises 7y ago
  First, "American culture" is a very loose and nebulous term at best, and an attempt to straw-man all your opponents at once at worst. America is a very large and very diverse nation; please be a little clearer as to which culture you are referring, or to which attributes thereof. Secondly, to what worldview are you referring, and what does it not adequately address?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
DoctorOetker 7y ago
depression is just the natural response to oppression
dschuetz 7y ago
TL;DR: people sharing their angst inside filter bubbles causes unrealistic expectations from questionable sources I think, thanks to social media classic socialization among students via social events and clubs has ceased. Person to person interaction isn't a thing anymore, but it's necessary to learn having realistic expectations. Most people crave interaction, comparison, sharing experiences with others, this is normal. With social media it's a two-fold problem: much more people are involved in comparisons (likes, followers), so having little or no followers doesn't help feeling worthy, and the expectation having to have followers at all is unreasonable and unrealistic. The depression is based on doubts that one has any significance in the world, plus, having to keep up with competition. Then there is fear of missing out that drives anxiety like wildfire. There's pressure from everywhere, even internal. Why wasn't it that big a thing back then? Because personal expectations weren't as bloated then as they are now, and today's young people derive their expectations of themselves (what they think they ought to be, to do) and expectations of others (what they think they can expect from others) from the Internet, forums, social networks mostly, not from personal experience. That is it. Personal physical experience once provided the basis for expectations, people had to learn everything themselves. But now people learn expectations from other peoples' experiences, and not their own. So, today the unrealistic expectations of other people are failing on us, naturally, and we are confronted with the reality of things and people. This is what it feels like leaving one's favorite Twitter filter bubble and learning that the actual world is different and much more complicated. And I didn't mention the job market yet, because I think it's just a part in the pool of sources of pressure. Anxiety about one's job isn't as new as people think. The awareness is different now, because people share their angst and amplify it via the social media making it even worse. Social media, job situation, pressure are all parts of the same problem - unrealistic expectations from questionable sources.
patientplatypus 7y ago
“It suggests that something is seriously wrong in the lives of young people and that whatever went wrong seemed to happen around 2012, or 2013,” said study coauthor Jean Twenge. She noted that this was around the time smartphones became common and social media moved from being optional to mandatory among youngsters. I just...OMG who the hell are these people. Maybe the economy just stopped getting better for most people after 2008? I mean duh. After a few years when finally becomes obvious that the new normal is gig economy jobs and living under debt until you die, say around 2012-2013, then people's happiness starts to nose dive. That's a much more explanatory answer than "the cell phones did it". It's like an old person - I thought she was a baby boomer, but she's only 48 - that has a phd (and everything!) is desperately trying to figure out what's going wrong, and they have all the data. They. Just. Can't. Quite. Get There. This is the type of person that's running society, maybe that's the problem. Face palm.
elicash 7y ago
ITT: People taking whatever their pet issue is and saying THAT must be responsible without having any data to back it up.
- crummy 7y ago
  It's the increased prominence of languages with garbage collection that is ruining children. They need to learn proper memory management!
  - defterGoose 7y ago
    And their music! It's just ones and zeroes!
- antisemiotic 7y ago
  I think Zerzan was on to something with his claim that things took a nosedive after the invention of symbolic language.
- newsgremlin 7y ago
  I think we are more aware of depression than we ever have been but it has been going on for much longer than millennials or gen z. The _value_ that each individual seeks in life cannot be found in this modern world. I think that's due to both fewer human connections and a lack of purpose from some passionate skill or trade - more value placed on high social status determined by virtual numbers, your _perceived_ life, and consumerism.
Zarath 7y ago
Duh. I'd also be willing to bet it's correlated with screen time.
muzani 7y ago
We have vastly increased wealth, and now every college student owns a credit card, a smartphone, high speed internet, nice clothes, and has a far higher likelihood of landing a good job with savings compared to 50 years ago. Or even compared to graduates in poorer countries. Maybe there's a mismatch between wealth and happiness.
Proven 7y ago
Just wait until Trump wins the next election
Havoc 7y ago
Seeing this among my peers. A scary amount are on some form of meds
dgzl 7y ago
Today's kids are essentially experiments. Being connected to the modern internet from as early as age zero is going to have some very serious side effects, and I don't believe parents understand that. This is especially bad if the parents don't have the understanding or ability to keep the child's experienced age appropriate.
flaque 7y ago
Since no one's mentioned it yet: both depression and anxiety are extremely treatable. Regardless of whatever HN folks think is the cause, therapists and psychiatrists are an actual solution; you should see one.
- ThrowawayP 7y ago
  > ...both depression and anxiety are extremely treatable. When did that happen? As someone who has undergone treatment for many years and read a lot of the literature, the long-term success rates for treatment of depression are mediocre, at best.
- tomhoward 7y ago
  This is largely false. Some mainstream treatment approaches can be somewhat effective for some people. Maybe they can be completely effective for some people. I'm not going to argue the toss on that. But there's a significant cohort of people for whom these conditions do not respond well to conventional treatment, at least to the extent of full recovery. I'm one of those people. We're talking about at least 19 years of dealing with anxiety, and plenty of depression along the way. Some medications have been moderately effective at abating some of the symptoms, but not at bringing about anything approximating complete recovery and a "normal" life. What has been effective for me is a long-term program involving a combination of subconscious emotional healing techniques, as well as various physiological healing methods, including: - detoxification of heavy metals (including lead, mercury, aluminium), - increasing/balancing levels of critical nutrients (particularly minerals - calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, iron and zinc, as well as iodine, which is critically low in many people with complex health problems, due to its crucial role in thyroid function, and which is insufficient in may people's diets, particularly in western countries), - addressing chronic infections (e.g., Epstein Barr, Cytomegalovirus, fungal, bacterial and parasitic infections), - adopting an anti-inflammatory diet, and - regularly engaging in the right kinds of exercise (stretching and core strength exercises like yoga/pilates), and moderate (definitely not strenuous) cardio exercise like brisk walking. After about 8 years of that I'm almost fully recovered, I think and desperately hope. But you won't get recommendations for any of these approaches from a conventional psychologist or psychiatrist, and if you were to ask one about them you'd get laughed out of the clinic. Thus, many people continue to suffer, even after years of treatment from mainstream practitioners.
segmondy 7y ago
Depression and anxiety is rising among the entire population of the US, from middle schoolers to senior citizens 1 year away from their grave.
redleggedfrog 7y ago
Does it really matter what the causes of the depression and anxiety are if there is no easy way to change them (global warming, debt, parody of a government, news that's hyperbole not information, overwhelming technology, world competition, and so on)? None of those are going away, so the emphasis needs to be on taking care of the the young people (or all people) stressed by these factors. What to do? Anecdotally, I can certainly say that lessening exposure to these things really helps. But not everyone has the environment or self control to do such things.
bitexploder 7y ago
I think Cal Newport touches on this in his book Digital Minimalism. He links it pretty convincingly to the rise of people been glued to screens.
Gustomaximus 7y ago
I'm a big believer in social media being toxic for many people. I see the core problems as it pushes life views to the extremes. Its full of posts of 'see how great my life is' or 'see how bad the world is'. This combined with a media intergrated into our lives almost real-time whose organisations are all looking to maximise our attention. We used to go through the world in a much simpler bubble and get our half hours news window on TV or newspaper in the morning. And being connected to the wider journeys of people for more realistic expectations e.g. rather than seeing someone post a picture of a great car saying 'how good is this' you also got to see they had been working and saving hard for a few years. Ive thought about this a bunch and dont know how we can deal with it better. I cant see social media going away. I tried one of those apps that shows the screen time you spend but it didnt really change habits for me. I mentioned to my partner the other day that we should consider setting on weekend day as a screen free day. I really think this is somethign important for society to work on.
- sdrothrock 7y ago
  > Its full of posts of 'see how great my life is' or 'see how bad the world is'. This combined with a media intergrated into our lives almost real-time whose organisations are all looking to maximise our attention. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11031-018-9683-5 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11031-018-9683-... https://time.com/4358140/overcome-fomo/ https://time.com/4358140/overcome-fomo/ For a long time I thought "FOMO" was just a trendy bit of slang that hit the nail on the head nicely, but it's actually a documented psychological phenomenon (though I don't know which came first). Ever since I learned about it, I've basically trained myself to not check social media often and, when I do, to remind myself that the pieces I see of other people's lives aren't representative of their lives as a whole, nor are they representative of what I should be expecting or enjoying from my own life. It's helped a little.
- mnm1 7y ago
  Traditional media (news) is also toxic. For the last few months I stopped consuming it and my level of happiness and life satisfaction has gone up tremendously. I don't consume social media at all unless you count hn. I highly recommend that people try this. The occasional traditional news articles on hn are the only exception but generally I avoid them and never dig further. I haven't missed out on anything important. The news is mostly irrelevant and imo, harmful to one's everyday life. After all, it makes me feel helpless and hopeless. I can't change politics or politicians or disasters or crime or whatever. Watching the news just creates anger and anxiety over things that are purely out of my control. Fuck that.
tickerticker 7y ago
Although I am not a college student, something that causes worry for me is the difficulty of knowing what is going on and what to believe, even though I consume news from many sources. The battle for readers/viewers' attention has escalated to manipulative tactics like clickbait or pandering. The slow demise of old media has created a sense of desperation in their reportage. New media RARELY seeks a footing of disinterested journalism. This adds a struggle to the experience of "adulting" for college kids. Another issue is the change in the number of people living here. 1990 had 250MM. 2018 had 327MM. That 30% increase is bound to add stress and conflict. Another: the pace of change has been overwhelming in the last 25 years. That might create self-doubt about one's capacity to keep skills updated. Another: the decrease in life expectancy of white middle class people due to overdose and suicide. The plague of suicide is the message of futility and nihilism for survivors to absorb. Prosperity cures a multitude of ills. Widespread under-employment brings every bruise, boil, laceration, and trauma to the forefront. College students see the employment landscape. They face competition from citizens and non-citizens, and thus a pie that gets divided among a bigger denominator. The economic reality is that college is necessary for skilled occupations. Parents steer their kids into college, even though some of those kids don't have the self-management skills to succeed in college. If they do have these skills, they commonly are allowed to take coursework that is bound to result in a minimum wage job. This mortgages the first 20 working years of their adult lives with student loan debt service. I would certainly be discouraged by this prospect. Lastly, the disconnect in authentic relationships that social media fostered took away a piece of the fundamental human safety net.
rvn1045 7y ago
How much of this perceived increase is also because people are more open to communicate they have mental health problems. People are also more encouraged to seek help and counseling as opposed to before. I also think that people today more readily label their feelings with labels such as anxiety, depression or whatever. As opposed to previous generations who lacked such a vocabulary.
pippy 7y ago
Here's a 2019 APA study that suggests that technology, and digital media use, and sleep disturbance may play in mood disorder. https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/abn-abn0000410.pdf https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/abn-abn0000410.pd...
- veb 7y ago
  As soon as I learned the discipline for social media, and that's all forms: Facebook, Twitter, IRC, Slack etc and learned how to control myself from visiting every three seconds, I got a lot happier. There's just nothing better for peoples health than to ignore social media, to ignore technology, to keep their phone far away from them as possible. While I have other issues, it really wasn't until I cut out all medications, alcohol and then technology from my life. I use social media sparingly these days because I've trained myself to avoid it. I lost a lot of friends when I went through a segment in my life where I was depressed, moody and so on so forth, but at the end of the day I'm happier now because the experience taught me what I did wrong, and what some of the catalysts were, so there's a silver lining in every 'bad' thing that happens so to speak. Regarding sleep disturbance, I've just taken to edibles and having zero light in my room with one of those artificial sunlight alarms to wake me up in the morning. Seems to help a lot. New Zealand also seems to have a crisis with suicide. I'm super lucky that I have a blank cheque from ACC to get any help I need, along with my family. Most people don't have that, unfortunately and I feel extremely bad for them. I wish I could help, but really I feel, what can one person do in this instance than to try and understand what people are going through but that's difficult as hell because most people hide and mask their symptoms through other crap like drugs, alcohol, which all simply lead to temporary psychosis and worsening depression-like symptoms. At least these days things are better, but I'd like to reconnect with old friends and say sorry for all the damage I caused, but it's hard to know where to even start.
mlang23 7y ago
Well, since education puts people deeply into debt in the USA, I am actually not very surprised.
gingabriska 7y ago
It's the lack of meaningful connections which is on rise. When my wife was at university, I was shocked being a pretty woman - how lonely she was. She did try to talk with people and even hang out on weekend with a girl group but it seemed as if during the weekdays nobody had any time for her. This is the main reason I think. Men are being treated as disposable just look at the male Vs female sucide statistics. Present society is very toxic to be a man. There is nowhere to get support from if you are a "weak man" for the society, a label which is slapped on you the moment you talk about your issues. In relationships, there is a new trend that relationship ends when initial spark ends. If you go to any relationship advice forum, you can see people dumping their partner because the initial spark ended, it's too easy to find a new partner for some. Nobody bothers putting much effort into a relationship.
alephnan 7y ago
Facebook was already popular before 2012, 2013 which the article highlighted as the transition point. Instagram was becoming popular at this time.
elamje 7y ago
Put simply, social media and news exists to drive clicks. Once you understand that terrible news and completely misleading story titles drive clicks better than anything else, you realize that there is almost no value in today’s news. When you are listening to a news anchor, or reading a story, ask yourself one simple question - “How is the organization maximizing profit off of this story?” Mainstream, advertising-supported, news sources will continue to devolve until everyone wises up.
- InternetUser 7y ago
  When do you think everyone will wise up? Like in what year?
  - throwawayjava 7y ago
    s/click/viewers and the basic business model has been going strong for half a century. s/clicks/listeners and the basic business model has been going strong for just a little over a century. s/clicks/circulation and the basic business model has been going strong for at least a few centuries now. So, never. Or, more accurately, in about 20 years when "clicking" becomes an anachronism and someone will make this comment except it'll be: "s/taps/clicks and this has been going on for half a century"
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      Mass circulation media date to the early 19th century, so approaching 200 years. Benjamin Day's Sun wasn't the first "penny-press" newspaper, but it transformed the concept, in 1833. Developments (and cost reductions) in printing and paper-making, as well as rapidly increasing literacy rates, climbing from 25% or lower around 1700 to 90%+ by 1900 throughout much of Europe and North America, also meant that prior to 1800 there really wasn't a mass-circulation media of any stripe, outside religious mass, and that there very much was one afterwards. Though yes, your observation that this has been going on for a while is valid.
- asdff 7y ago
  There is always going to be value on something that gets eyes pointed in a direction, whether it's a billboard, an influencer, a news story, or a blog post. If you want to really know what's going on, find a relevant academic journal.
88840-8855 7y ago
I agree with the article and most comments here. Although I am not in the US but Europe, similar trends have evolved here: pressure from getting a good job, non-satisfaction with the status quo, high pressure from the race against the peers and much more. My direct question to this community. What do you think could help these people/us? What are tactical quick win measures and what are strategic long term measures that could work? I am interested not only in "getting your shit together by yourself", but also in what help can be offered to the people that suffer to help?
supergilbert 7y ago
Depression, anxiety are rising among a large part of the population in Western society. My personal take on this: we need to reconnect with religion because we need something transcendant to help us go through life. Modern life is very alienating if you take a purely material approach to it.
gingabriska 7y ago
I'd mention one thing which I think no one has mentioned so far. Today we've more freedom than ever, more access to people and more prosperity than ever. This creates a dynamic were people cluster according to their outlook. No one accepts a "downer" in a happy group. I'd say more happy, more prosperous country, a country which has more freedom will see higher sucide rates due to loneliness. I wouldn't be surprised if the examples of this like Scandinavian countries have higher sucide rate if not highest. I'd be lot better being a "sad" person with other sad people than being the only sad person among all other happy people.
- jinglebells 7y ago
  You'd be surprised to find the US has a higher suicide rate than Sweden and Norway then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...
raxxorrax 7y ago
I would also be depressed if my education nets me excessive debt. Probably manageable for lawyers, doctors, engineers, etc., but general higher education seems to be something restricted to people with rich parents. I don't know the details since I am not based in the US. But from outside it seems that there are incentives to willfully sabotage the educational system. And the raw numbers about the accumulated debt look terrifying.
- tracer4201 7y ago
  Imo even if it is manageable debt, that doesn’t make the problem just disappear. My own student debt is long paid off. It was only $25K - not exactly chump change but only a fraction of the more egregious examples I’ve seen. Honestly, college provided some decent experiences but did it make me a better human or teach me something significant enough to justify that debt? No. There were maybe 3 or 4 key classes in my four year program that had anything really relevant to my career. Most of it was stuff I would forget after a couple semesters and never apply anywhere. In hindsight, college is an institutional shackle. It’s a right of passage we force on kids, and employers require it when it shouldn’t be necessary. My $25K feel less like an investment an education and more like a bribe I had to pay before anyone would hire me.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
newsgremlin 7y ago
The rat race is no longer desirable as the old dream of owning your own home is becoming more fantasy. Pregnancy rates are down and divorce rates are high. Housing is simply too big an investment for people barely able to afford a single home. Your only options are to move to a city and adjust to make a lucrative and highly commercial life there - or live in the middle of nowhere with fewer job prospects while the cost of everything around you goes up. As others mentioned, we now all have devices in our pockets that tell and show us the lives we don't have and the lives we desire.
inquisitor19 7y ago
There are a lot of factors contributing here, but kids today, probably more than in Leary's days, need to turn on, tune in, and drop out.
- hi41 7y ago
  I have heard this phrase several times before - "turn on, tune in, and drop out." Could you please give more context and explain more. I don't understand this phrase. Please note that I did not grow up in USA. Turn on to what? Radio? Tune in to what? A radio music program? drop out from what? From high school or college?
  - madman1444 7y ago
    From Timothy Leary's 1983 autobiography, Flashbacks (via Wikipedia): "Turn on" meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers engaging them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. "Tune in" meant interact harmoniously with the world around you—externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. "Drop out" suggested an active, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. "Drop Out" meant self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily, my explanations of this sequence of personal development are often misinterpreted to mean "Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity"
    - hi41 7y ago
      Thank you! I find this happening with acronyms and truisms that get shortened to look like captions. Outside the in-group, people don’t understand the meaning. With times passage, the in-group slowly fades and the usage and meaning that is generally understood is incorrect like the one you mentioned about getting stoned and do nothing worthwhile.
marianicolae 7y ago
You can listen to this article in audio: https://www.listle.io/#/article/1720317817 https://www.listle.io/#/article/1720317817
sak5sk 7y ago
Multiple reasons really: - Grass is always greener - Access to 24/7 negative news - Environmental doom and gloom (we even call it an existential crisis) - Baked in addiction building mechanisms (likes, retweets, shares, views, unlimited scrolling, constant stream of crap to consume) - Fewer personal interactions - Less community activity - Lack of sleep (probably one of the, if not the biggest issue) - Stress from having a constantly busy mind full of useless thoughts - Worry about the future - Worry about environment - Worry about lack of jobs - Worry about money - Worry about school debt This is probably just scratching the surface.
Jonahgay 7y ago
I'm not from the US, and I'm shit depressed.
lunias 7y ago
I believe that we've reached an inflection point on the path to a utopian-esque society and it feels as though we're primed to backslide catastrophically. For a variety of reasons innumerable, but generally containing in my mind: Technical literacy being outpaced by technical dependence. The threat of the oligopoly - and the lack of action to dismantle it. The inability of humans to work together as a species and their preference for in-fighting over collaboration and compromise. A breakdown in natural selection, increased coddling, and a general weakening of ability and character relative to other nations. Short-sidedness with regard to most everything from education to the environment. Existing in a liminal state where great things appear to be possible, but seem unlikely to be obtained is torturous.
abc_lisper 7y ago
I know this is late, but check this article that appeared couple of days after this was published https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjEjYqWxLfkAhWRtlkKHd_kB1oQFjAAegQIAxAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2019%2F09%2F03%2Fopinion%2Fcollege-graduates.html https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

240 points by HNLurker2 7y ago

Imagine taking out 200k in loans for an uncertain future income. Imagine that previous generations paid less for the same hiring opportunities.

dantheman 7y ago
These crazy loan amounts are not taken by most students. There are many ways that most people choose to keep their costs low - living not as nice housing, not going to your top school, working while in college. Here's some stats: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/13/facts-about-student-loans/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/13/facts-about... Median bachelors degree debt: $25,000 Most of these people with huge debts are getting graduate degrees and they significantly skew the results when looking at the average, the median is far more insightful.
- ericd 7y ago
  Thanks for the reality check.
- mattwest 7y ago
  An appropriate correction, but I don't think it changes the inevitable feeling of doom that many college students and recent graduates face. $25,000 is an enormous amount of debt, especially when there is a multitude of uncertainties with the investment. When you borrow for a house or car, there is an immediate, tangible benefit. With college, it's not so simple. It would be great if you didn't need to go to college, but let's face it. You simply make more money with a degree, and many employers require them. There is an undeniable problem with tuition rates over time and its affect on the mental health of many American students.
  - learc83 7y ago
    >$25,000 is an enormous amount of debt, especially when there is a multitude of uncertainties with the investment. If that $25k is public loans, which it should be since that's well under the limit, the uncertainty should be mitigated by income based repayment plans. You'll never have to pay more than 10% of your disposable income (income over 1.5x the federal poverty level). If anything I think the feeling of doom is caused by people constantly telling kids how bad student debt is without realizing that $25k in public loans and $200k in private loans are vastly different situations. Most younger people I know feel guilty about taking out $25k in loans to make hundreds of thousands more over their life time.
    - throwawayjava 7y ago
      > ...$25k in loans to make hundreds of thousands more over their life time. 1. Future reward should be discounted, usually by a fairly large constant, because of interest and risk. Also, in many fields, most of those extra hundreds will come toward the end of a career. So, highly discounted. 2. I wonder if it's really a good idea to set up a society where banks that provide educational loans are able to capture huge percentages of future productivity. Seems like this would have all sorts of really negative outcomes. Some of those negative outcomes are already happening -- e.g., we effectively import 90+% of our scientific human capital because US students aren't willing to do phds. We realize that allowing financiers to capture a big chunk of the rewards for K-12 ed is a bad idea. Why don't we realize that the same is true for college?
      - learc83 7y ago
        1. Enough of the extra income is weighted towards the beginning that for most people it's worth $25k particularly since repayment us based on income. 2. Public loans are over 90% of disbursements, and if you're only borrowing $25k you're definitely getting public loans. Public loans are made directly from the treasury. No banks involved. Also most stem phds work as researchers and teachers--they generally aren't paying tuition.
        7y ago
- chillwaves 7y ago
  That ignores the fact that out of state schools cost on average of double and not every state either has the programs folks are looking for or the schools to go to, so some resort to out of state and pay $20k per year and will walk out with more than twice that in debt. Also the cost of living around good schools is mostly increasing, at least if they are in an urban environment.
  - dantheman 7y ago
    Completely agree schools cost too much and ideally everyone would have lots of options -- talking about loans isn't they way to get there, the problem is the cost of schools and housing skyrocketing.
  - ericd 7y ago
    So, do a cost benefit analysis of whether it’s worth it to go out of state and pay twice as much to study that esoteric subject? You seem to be implying that students in those situations have no choice but to take on more debt, which seems to be a recurring theme in a lot of these threads, but they do. Or, they can live at home and go to a local community college for the first two years to take the general reqs, and finish up at that expensive 4 year school. A few of my friends did that and saved quite a lot.
    - chillwaves 7y ago
      > study that esoteric subject Where does this come from? The major one had was game design, another was for IT. I'm not implying anything. I know people from states who don't have great schools (or programs) available to them and choose to go out of state. The whole instate/out of state system needs an overhaul as well. Some students want to resettle out of their state and intend to stay after getting their education. That's a net plus for the state, why make it so difficult for them to get an education here if they are academically qualified?
      - ericd 7y ago
        Those are slightly more esoteric/unusual programs. More common would be Computer Science. Yep, the public university program could definitely use work, no argument there. But I’m under the impression that most states have at least one serviceable university.
chrisco255 7y ago
Imagine skipping college altogether and getting a blue collar job like plumbing or working your way up to retail management. Imagine that colleges take advantage of egregious, lax loan policies and inflate the price of education to exorbitant amounts. Reminder to periodically get away from technology and into nature. Take up a hobby like fishing, kayaking or whatever floats your boat. Too much outrage in the world today.
- knolax 7y ago
  Imagine breaking your body doing blue-collar work only to be deprecated once what you do is inevitably automated, leaving you with no transferrable skills or employment prospects in middle age.
  - chokolad 7y ago
    > Imagine breaking your body doing blue-collar work only to be deprecated once what you do is inevitably automated, leaving you with no transferrable skills or employment prospects in middle age. Man, I wish plumbing was automated. It's not going to happen any time soon though and plumbers will quote exorbitant prices for their work for quite some time.
    - DanBC 7y ago
      Do it yourself if it's so easy.
      - AlexTWithBeard 7y ago
        I do it myself: neither plumbing nor home electricity is a rocket science. My town though thinks only a person who has completed a three years apprenticeship is allowed to install a new electric outlet.
      - chokolad 7y ago
        > Do it yourself if it's so easy. That's what I ended up doing after having a few unfortunate interactions with local handymen of various specializations. After going through the motions I understood how badly I was ripped off previously
brighton36 7y ago
I don't know why people pay for degrees. I never bought one, and I never had a problem with opportunity in my life as a consequence. Imo, the bottom needs to drop out of this market.
- mattwest 7y ago
  "I don't know why people pay for degrees" Because some pursuits in life require them. What about someone who wants to pursue genetics or molecular biology? Those are essential fields that provide things like healthcare and food security.
  - brighton36 7y ago
    Yeah, I get that. Those people seem like a minority of the degrees. But even there, I suspect there's probably creative paths through the bureaucracies that don't involve degrees, or push the degree costs onto employers.
- mLuby 7y ago
  The "bottom dropping out" means at minimum a great depression, quite possibly wide-scale violence. Economists almost always hand-wave away the financial (let alone human) cost of forcing people can switch jobs or careers, then complain people are "irrational actors." I assume they do this because economists are actually bad at economics and so should find jobs more suited to their aptitudes.
  - brighton36 7y ago
    Sure. The fat has to get trimmed. Short these loans I suppose, if you want to make money during the depression.
    - ben_w 7y ago
      What is your advice for the people who are defaulting on the loans because they don’t have enough money to pay them never mind short them? Remember that previous examples of people rioting over poverty has included literally beheading the rich, en-masse, in a fundamental change of the nature of national governance.
rayiner 7y ago
The average student loan debt for the class of 2017 was about as much as the average new car loan. And repayment is limited to 10% of disposable income with forgiveness after 20 years. The whole “crisis” is the projected anxiety of the the relatively small handful of upper middle class people who are actually looking at taking $200k in loans.
- quaquaqua1 7y ago
  I paid 30k and my parents paid 70k for me to get my degree. They don't shut up about it. I don't use my degree 7 years later.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  Average is misleading. 70% of students borrow, and the average debt is suspiciously similar to the federally backed loan caps. People incur debts in all sorts of ways for school besides a formal student loan as well. Private loans are expensive and often avoided. Home equity loans are common, as are credit cards for both students and parents.
jedimastert 7y ago
Edit: You know, I started this comment just wanting to point out the interesting economic relationship of "hours worked to total cost", but apparently got much more rant-y. I'll leave this here as an example of the anxiety I still feel about college, even after 3 years out of it. The important part of the comment is the three of so paragraphs. ===== Not even less in terms of money. Not even less money adjusted for inflation. Less in terms of time. This website[0] lets you look at how much time of minimum wage work it would have taken to pay for a college degree in 1987 vs now, Because of vastly inflating tuition prices and relatively stagnant minimum wage, there's a very significant difference. For the college that I went to, working part time at a minimum wage job not only would have paid for the entirety of tuition, it would have paid 156% of tuition. What I would have had left over would have been more than what my parents paid for the down payment of the house my family of 5 grew up in. (warning: projection time) Now I could barely pay half on a part time job, so I either start my adult life with absolutely crushing debt, hope that my parents set aside what would have been way more that the original tuition to cover what would have been left, kill myself trying to work full time and be a student full time, or stunt my career by a few years doing school part time and coming into the workforce years behind in a fairly ageist sector. And all this for a piece of paper that was pounded into our head that we needed in order to have any kind of hope of getting into even a reasonably basic field. If you can't tell, I can empathize with why college might give someone depression and anxiety. That's not to mention the general artificial competitiveness of getting into a "good" school, internships, and everything else to make sure that your resume is good enough to even find a job after college, lest you spend a year or two floating and having to explain an every growing gap in your resume. There was also the special bureaucratic that I ended up falling into (though those were just unfortunate circumstances). I ended up getting the amazing job I have right now by almost pure luck. I know a lot of my classmates that aren't so lucky and have simply very little extra value (other than the worthy pursuit of knowledge and life experience) for the incredibly expensive piece of paper gathering dust in their closet. [0]: https://www.marketwatch.com/graphics/college-debt-now-and-then/ https://www.marketwatch.com/graphics/college-debt-now-and-th...
paulpauper 7y ago
It's more like $20k-40k Given all the generous payment, deferral, and forbearance plans, student loan debt is a better deal than other types of debt, and unlike consumer debt ,a college degree gains value in term of higher inflation adjusted wages.
masonic 7y ago
Imagine that previous generations paid less for the same hiring opportunities. Acknowledge that many minimized (or avoided) debt by working their way through school, often doing jobs the current generation considers "beneath" them.

readbtc 7y ago

college kills creativity. think about thousands of people studying for the same position, same books, same knowledge.. anyone thinks about robots?

alephnan 7y ago

> Students may also avoid using resources on campus because some colleges may expel students who have suicidal ideation ... to avoid liability related to student suicides

throwoutIIIII 7y ago
My (top tier) school forced me to take a medical leave of absence, which required a doctors note to get back in and finish the degree. A very expensive endeavor. Edit: Ah, it says that right in the article. Yeah it sucks, I wouldn't trust the schools mental health services again.
- SomeOldThrow 7y ago
  Exact same scenario. I never ended up going back.

tempsy 7y ago

I think a huge part of it is that getting a “good” job out of college has never been more competitive and more important. The idea that one works their way up from a secretarial position to executive could not be more unrealistic today. On the other hand, if you beat the competition (your peers) to get a reputable corporate gig at a big co, well known startup, or prestigious consulting or banking you’re setting yourself up for life. Not getting one of those jobs out of college makes it near impossible to be hired at those companies even a year or two down the road simply because many of those companies source all their entry level people from colleges and past interns. Your trajectory is just so different depending on your first job and I think everyone is acutely aware but no one wants to talk about it.

cmxch 7y ago
So how do you get the best out of "less desirable" situations (which might include temp-to-hire or staffing agency work)?
wallace_f 7y ago
I wish it was only fair "competition." Even at the best schools (especially at the best?) it is a lot about family/friend relationships, corruption (ymmv by field).
- twblalock 7y ago
  The well-connected people you are describing will be fine no matter what. The majority of students are the ones who will need to compete for jobs after they graduate.
apples12345 7y ago
Totally agree about the getting job part, but as someone who got a job in a big bank as a software developer as well as getting a graduate degree life still sucks.... when not only I feel like a wage slave but my friends who have even better jobs feel like wage slaves and are constantly looking for the next job it’s depressing all around...

Vomzor 7y ago

I think it's parenting. Parents started to become overprotective somewhere in the late 90's and it's only getting worse. Kids don't learn to deal with setbacks anymore. So the real world overwhelms them. There's a book, The Coddling of the American Mind, that explains the problem much better than I do. "First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom from many cultures. Embracing these untruths—and the resulting culture of safetyism—interferes with young people’s social, emotional, and intellectual development. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life." https://www.thecoddling.com https://www.thecoddling.com

ben_jones 7y ago
I disagree. Parenting is critical but I believe the root is the relationship with smart phones by not only students but everyone else in the students lives (parents/teachers/counselors/other role models). A mixture of constant audio, visual, and social, inputs has lowered our attention spans and rotted our ability to deal with stress in healthy ways (and likely created new stresses simultaneously). To support this I would cross-reference screen time between 1st world countries and mental health records, normalizing as best I could for all the other variables in the equation.
- Vomzor 7y ago
  Smartphones definitely play a role but aren't the main cause. The rise of depression and anxiety started before smartphones were mainstream. "Comparing groups across generations is admittedly difficult, but the data clearly point to things being far worse now. Trend data clearly suggest increases in levels of stress, depression and anxiety at least since the 1980s. Consider that one study found that the average high school student in the year 2000 has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient did in the 1950s; and those rates have only increased in the last decade. Utilizing the MMPI to assess psychopathology, Twenge and colleagues found five times as many students in 2007 surpassed clinical cutoffs in one or more mental health categories, compared with those who took the measure several decades ago." https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/theory-knowledge/201402/the-college-student-mental-health-crisis https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/theory-knowledge/2...

systematical 7y ago

Is it on the rise or are people feeling more comfortable about reporting these things compared to decades ago?

insickness 7y ago
Or it could be that people are more aware of their internal states. In other words, twenty years ago, I would not be able to tell you that I had anxiety or depression, even though I did. As I went through cognitive behavioral therapy and became more aware of my internal states, I can tell immediately if I start to feel anxious or depressed. Due to cb therapy, I experience far less anxiety and depression but I am aware of it when I do experience it (which can help minimize it).
flaque 7y ago
Likely both. There's also more suicides: https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/ https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/

JulianMorrison 7y ago

Could it be something to do with the CRUSHING BURDEN OF DEBT? No, clearly it is smartphones.

grenoire 7y ago
European students who are not under crushing debt are also having difficulties with such mental health problems. The root of the anxiety and the following depression is economic prospects and the terrible status quo.
- JulianMorrison 7y ago
  Fair, although I expect you'd find less of it. The feeling of "I am literally going to die owing this, I will never be free" isn't doing anyone but the loan-owners any favours.
  - grenoire 7y ago
    In the end it's not a pissing contest by any means. The factors contributing to the mental issues of European students might be different than the Americans', but the overall trend is apparent for both demographics. Sadly enough, the environmental pressures faced in terms of economic situation and extreme competition have been observed for a very long time in Asian nations, exhibiting themselves in the form of suicides. I hope, deeply so, that the West does not devolve that far...
- alexgmcm 7y ago
  Indeed. In Europe we still have huge issues with declining home ownership, youth unemployment and precarious/low-paid jobs (incl. the 'gig economy') etc. I did okay-ish (home ownership still seems impossible), but when I see some of my high school and uni friends stuck in bad jobs with seemingly little hope of escape you can understand the despair.
KaoruAoiShiho 7y ago
I honestly think it's the smartphones. Source: Anecdotal data off of yours truly

tehjoker 7y ago

Could it be the increasing inequality in the United States? The elimination of most middle class jobs? The increasingly generational inheritance of wealth, power, and connections? College debt? Asking for a friend.

waynecochran 7y ago
I can't imagine the debt students are taking on now. Add to that the high expense of housing. Why don't student speak up about this instead of defending all the "safe space" and "trigger warning" nonsense?
- sudosteph 7y ago
  I'm not Gen Z myself (millenial who graduated right before asking for pronouns became a thing on college campuses), but that's a question I've asked myself as I well. I get the feeling that it's simply because they believe they have leverage over the words people use on their campus, but no leverage over housing expenses or other economic issues that actually have broader appeal. Remember that neither Gen Z nor Millenials have ever witnessed significant economic change that was brought on by direct action of normal people. Unions have been utterly defanged and left-wing candidates never manage to win or drive change either. Occupy Wall Street was the closest thing we've ever seen to an economic solidarity movement, and that was widely mocked and derided as an utter failure. While the movement around language policing may give Gen Z the feeling of participating in successful direct action, it unfortunately is contributing to a schism between them and older generations who may be otherwise willing to ally with them on broader causes, but are fearful of mis-stepping and being called out publicly. Of course, maybe that very same fear of public call-outs ties back to what one of the professors in the article mentioned. The new generation is used to having every little thing they do be potentially subjected to being recorded, publicized, and criticized at any moment through social media. They are constantly self-managing themselves and their social media presence with that in mind. They don't see why older generations shouldn't be held to the same standards - even if they'd rather be exempt from that standard themselves, they accept it as reality. There's a mockumentary series on netflix called "American Vandal", which besides being funny, was surprisingly insightful about the challenges that young adults are facing in part due to growing up with instagram, twitter, etc. as part of their world. I have a lot more sympathy for them after watching that.

amriksohata 7y ago

The link between modern day food....

kingkawn 7y ago

American culture has become a dysfunctional parody of itself, and young people are left to grapple with a worldview that does not seem to adequately address the world.

adjkant 7y ago
This x 100. Most of Gen Z has become absurdist (memes only make sense to young people often for this reason) out of necessity. The "adults" have failed them and they have no power to change it. Depression and anxiety should only be expected. There really should also be more discussion about the complexity of the world and decision fatigue, both of which I think are affecting people of all ages but especially younger people.
mises 7y ago
First, "American culture" is a very loose and nebulous term at best, and an attempt to straw-man all your opponents at once at worst. America is a very large and very diverse nation; please be a little clearer as to which culture you are referring, or to which attributes thereof. Secondly, to what worldview are you referring, and what does it not adequately address?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

DoctorOetker 7y ago

depression is just the natural response to oppression

dschuetz 7y ago

TL;DR: people sharing their angst inside filter bubbles causes unrealistic expectations from questionable sources I think, thanks to social media classic socialization among students via social events and clubs has ceased. Person to person interaction isn't a thing anymore, but it's necessary to learn having realistic expectations. Most people crave interaction, comparison, sharing experiences with others, this is normal. With social media it's a two-fold problem: much more people are involved in comparisons (likes, followers), so having little or no followers doesn't help feeling worthy, and the expectation having to have followers at all is unreasonable and unrealistic. The depression is based on doubts that one has any significance in the world, plus, having to keep up with competition. Then there is fear of missing out that drives anxiety like wildfire. There's pressure from everywhere, even internal. Why wasn't it that big a thing back then? Because personal expectations weren't as bloated then as they are now, and today's young people derive their expectations of themselves (what they think they ought to be, to do) and expectations of others (what they think they can expect from others) from the Internet, forums, social networks mostly, not from personal experience. That is it. Personal physical experience once provided the basis for expectations, people had to learn everything themselves. But now people learn expectations from other peoples' experiences, and not their own. So, today the unrealistic expectations of other people are failing on us, naturally, and we are confronted with the reality of things and people. This is what it feels like leaving one's favorite Twitter filter bubble and learning that the actual world is different and much more complicated. And I didn't mention the job market yet, because I think it's just a part in the pool of sources of pressure. Anxiety about one's job isn't as new as people think. The awareness is different now, because people share their angst and amplify it via the social media making it even worse. Social media, job situation, pressure are all parts of the same problem - unrealistic expectations from questionable sources.

patientplatypus 7y ago

“It suggests that something is seriously wrong in the lives of young people and that whatever went wrong seemed to happen around 2012, or 2013,” said study coauthor Jean Twenge. She noted that this was around the time smartphones became common and social media moved from being optional to mandatory among youngsters. I just...OMG who the hell are these people. Maybe the economy just stopped getting better for most people after 2008? I mean duh. After a few years when finally becomes obvious that the new normal is gig economy jobs and living under debt until you die, say around 2012-2013, then people's happiness starts to nose dive. That's a much more explanatory answer than "the cell phones did it". It's like an old person - I thought she was a baby boomer, but she's only 48 - that has a phd (and everything!) is desperately trying to figure out what's going wrong, and they have all the data. They. Just. Can't. Quite. Get There. This is the type of person that's running society, maybe that's the problem. Face palm.

elicash 7y ago

ITT: People taking whatever their pet issue is and saying THAT must be responsible without having any data to back it up.

crummy 7y ago
It's the increased prominence of languages with garbage collection that is ruining children. They need to learn proper memory management!
- defterGoose 7y ago
  And their music! It's just ones and zeroes!
antisemiotic 7y ago
I think Zerzan was on to something with his claim that things took a nosedive after the invention of symbolic language.
newsgremlin 7y ago
I think we are more aware of depression than we ever have been but it has been going on for much longer than millennials or gen z. The _value_ that each individual seeks in life cannot be found in this modern world. I think that's due to both fewer human connections and a lack of purpose from some passionate skill or trade - more value placed on high social status determined by virtual numbers, your _perceived_ life, and consumerism.

Zarath 7y ago

Duh. I'd also be willing to bet it's correlated with screen time.

muzani 7y ago

We have vastly increased wealth, and now every college student owns a credit card, a smartphone, high speed internet, nice clothes, and has a far higher likelihood of landing a good job with savings compared to 50 years ago. Or even compared to graduates in poorer countries. Maybe there's a mismatch between wealth and happiness.

Proven 7y ago

Just wait until Trump wins the next election

Havoc 7y ago

Seeing this among my peers. A scary amount are on some form of meds

dgzl 7y ago

Today's kids are essentially experiments. Being connected to the modern internet from as early as age zero is going to have some very serious side effects, and I don't believe parents understand that. This is especially bad if the parents don't have the understanding or ability to keep the child's experienced age appropriate.

flaque 7y ago

Since no one's mentioned it yet: both depression and anxiety are extremely treatable. Regardless of whatever HN folks think is the cause, therapists and psychiatrists are an actual solution; you should see one.

ThrowawayP 7y ago
> ...both depression and anxiety are extremely treatable. When did that happen? As someone who has undergone treatment for many years and read a lot of the literature, the long-term success rates for treatment of depression are mediocre, at best.
tomhoward 7y ago
This is largely false. Some mainstream treatment approaches can be somewhat effective for some people. Maybe they can be completely effective for some people. I'm not going to argue the toss on that. But there's a significant cohort of people for whom these conditions do not respond well to conventional treatment, at least to the extent of full recovery. I'm one of those people. We're talking about at least 19 years of dealing with anxiety, and plenty of depression along the way. Some medications have been moderately effective at abating some of the symptoms, but not at bringing about anything approximating complete recovery and a "normal" life. What has been effective for me is a long-term program involving a combination of subconscious emotional healing techniques, as well as various physiological healing methods, including: - detoxification of heavy metals (including lead, mercury, aluminium), - increasing/balancing levels of critical nutrients (particularly minerals - calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, iron and zinc, as well as iodine, which is critically low in many people with complex health problems, due to its crucial role in thyroid function, and which is insufficient in may people's diets, particularly in western countries), - addressing chronic infections (e.g., Epstein Barr, Cytomegalovirus, fungal, bacterial and parasitic infections), - adopting an anti-inflammatory diet, and - regularly engaging in the right kinds of exercise (stretching and core strength exercises like yoga/pilates), and moderate (definitely not strenuous) cardio exercise like brisk walking. After about 8 years of that I'm almost fully recovered, I think and desperately hope. But you won't get recommendations for any of these approaches from a conventional psychologist or psychiatrist, and if you were to ask one about them you'd get laughed out of the clinic. Thus, many people continue to suffer, even after years of treatment from mainstream practitioners.

segmondy 7y ago

Depression and anxiety is rising among the entire population of the US, from middle schoolers to senior citizens 1 year away from their grave.

redleggedfrog 7y ago

Does it really matter what the causes of the depression and anxiety are if there is no easy way to change them (global warming, debt, parody of a government, news that's hyperbole not information, overwhelming technology, world competition, and so on)? None of those are going away, so the emphasis needs to be on taking care of the the young people (or all people) stressed by these factors. What to do? Anecdotally, I can certainly say that lessening exposure to these things really helps. But not everyone has the environment or self control to do such things.

bitexploder 7y ago

I think Cal Newport touches on this in his book Digital Minimalism. He links it pretty convincingly to the rise of people been glued to screens.

Gustomaximus 7y ago

I'm a big believer in social media being toxic for many people. I see the core problems as it pushes life views to the extremes. Its full of posts of 'see how great my life is' or 'see how bad the world is'. This combined with a media intergrated into our lives almost real-time whose organisations are all looking to maximise our attention. We used to go through the world in a much simpler bubble and get our half hours news window on TV or newspaper in the morning. And being connected to the wider journeys of people for more realistic expectations e.g. rather than seeing someone post a picture of a great car saying 'how good is this' you also got to see they had been working and saving hard for a few years. Ive thought about this a bunch and dont know how we can deal with it better. I cant see social media going away. I tried one of those apps that shows the screen time you spend but it didnt really change habits for me. I mentioned to my partner the other day that we should consider setting on weekend day as a screen free day. I really think this is somethign important for society to work on.

sdrothrock 7y ago
> Its full of posts of 'see how great my life is' or 'see how bad the world is'. This combined with a media intergrated into our lives almost real-time whose organisations are all looking to maximise our attention. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11031-018-9683-5 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11031-018-9683-... https://time.com/4358140/overcome-fomo/ https://time.com/4358140/overcome-fomo/ For a long time I thought "FOMO" was just a trendy bit of slang that hit the nail on the head nicely, but it's actually a documented psychological phenomenon (though I don't know which came first). Ever since I learned about it, I've basically trained myself to not check social media often and, when I do, to remind myself that the pieces I see of other people's lives aren't representative of their lives as a whole, nor are they representative of what I should be expecting or enjoying from my own life. It's helped a little.
mnm1 7y ago
Traditional media (news) is also toxic. For the last few months I stopped consuming it and my level of happiness and life satisfaction has gone up tremendously. I don't consume social media at all unless you count hn. I highly recommend that people try this. The occasional traditional news articles on hn are the only exception but generally I avoid them and never dig further. I haven't missed out on anything important. The news is mostly irrelevant and imo, harmful to one's everyday life. After all, it makes me feel helpless and hopeless. I can't change politics or politicians or disasters or crime or whatever. Watching the news just creates anger and anxiety over things that are purely out of my control. Fuck that.

tickerticker 7y ago

Although I am not a college student, something that causes worry for me is the difficulty of knowing what is going on and what to believe, even though I consume news from many sources. The battle for readers/viewers' attention has escalated to manipulative tactics like clickbait or pandering. The slow demise of old media has created a sense of desperation in their reportage. New media RARELY seeks a footing of disinterested journalism. This adds a struggle to the experience of "adulting" for college kids. Another issue is the change in the number of people living here. 1990 had 250MM. 2018 had 327MM. That 30% increase is bound to add stress and conflict. Another: the pace of change has been overwhelming in the last 25 years. That might create self-doubt about one's capacity to keep skills updated. Another: the decrease in life expectancy of white middle class people due to overdose and suicide. The plague of suicide is the message of futility and nihilism for survivors to absorb. Prosperity cures a multitude of ills. Widespread under-employment brings every bruise, boil, laceration, and trauma to the forefront. College students see the employment landscape. They face competition from citizens and non-citizens, and thus a pie that gets divided among a bigger denominator. The economic reality is that college is necessary for skilled occupations. Parents steer their kids into college, even though some of those kids don't have the self-management skills to succeed in college. If they do have these skills, they commonly are allowed to take coursework that is bound to result in a minimum wage job. This mortgages the first 20 working years of their adult lives with student loan debt service. I would certainly be discouraged by this prospect. Lastly, the disconnect in authentic relationships that social media fostered took away a piece of the fundamental human safety net.

rvn1045 7y ago

How much of this perceived increase is also because people are more open to communicate they have mental health problems. People are also more encouraged to seek help and counseling as opposed to before. I also think that people today more readily label their feelings with labels such as anxiety, depression or whatever. As opposed to previous generations who lacked such a vocabulary.

pippy 7y ago

Here's a 2019 APA study that suggests that technology, and digital media use, and sleep disturbance may play in mood disorder. https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/abn-abn0000410.pdf https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/abn-abn0000410.pd...

veb 7y ago
As soon as I learned the discipline for social media, and that's all forms: Facebook, Twitter, IRC, Slack etc and learned how to control myself from visiting every three seconds, I got a lot happier. There's just nothing better for peoples health than to ignore social media, to ignore technology, to keep their phone far away from them as possible. While I have other issues, it really wasn't until I cut out all medications, alcohol and then technology from my life. I use social media sparingly these days because I've trained myself to avoid it. I lost a lot of friends when I went through a segment in my life where I was depressed, moody and so on so forth, but at the end of the day I'm happier now because the experience taught me what I did wrong, and what some of the catalysts were, so there's a silver lining in every 'bad' thing that happens so to speak. Regarding sleep disturbance, I've just taken to edibles and having zero light in my room with one of those artificial sunlight alarms to wake me up in the morning. Seems to help a lot. New Zealand also seems to have a crisis with suicide. I'm super lucky that I have a blank cheque from ACC to get any help I need, along with my family. Most people don't have that, unfortunately and I feel extremely bad for them. I wish I could help, but really I feel, what can one person do in this instance than to try and understand what people are going through but that's difficult as hell because most people hide and mask their symptoms through other crap like drugs, alcohol, which all simply lead to temporary psychosis and worsening depression-like symptoms. At least these days things are better, but I'd like to reconnect with old friends and say sorry for all the damage I caused, but it's hard to know where to even start.

mlang23 7y ago

Well, since education puts people deeply into debt in the USA, I am actually not very surprised.

gingabriska 7y ago

It's the lack of meaningful connections which is on rise. When my wife was at university, I was shocked being a pretty woman - how lonely she was. She did try to talk with people and even hang out on weekend with a girl group but it seemed as if during the weekdays nobody had any time for her. This is the main reason I think. Men are being treated as disposable just look at the male Vs female sucide statistics. Present society is very toxic to be a man. There is nowhere to get support from if you are a "weak man" for the society, a label which is slapped on you the moment you talk about your issues. In relationships, there is a new trend that relationship ends when initial spark ends. If you go to any relationship advice forum, you can see people dumping their partner because the initial spark ended, it's too easy to find a new partner for some. Nobody bothers putting much effort into a relationship.

alephnan 7y ago

Facebook was already popular before 2012, 2013 which the article highlighted as the transition point. Instagram was becoming popular at this time.

elamje 7y ago

Put simply, social media and news exists to drive clicks. Once you understand that terrible news and completely misleading story titles drive clicks better than anything else, you realize that there is almost no value in today’s news. When you are listening to a news anchor, or reading a story, ask yourself one simple question - “How is the organization maximizing profit off of this story?” Mainstream, advertising-supported, news sources will continue to devolve until everyone wises up.

InternetUser 7y ago
When do you think everyone will wise up? Like in what year?
- throwawayjava 7y ago
  s/click/viewers and the basic business model has been going strong for half a century. s/clicks/listeners and the basic business model has been going strong for just a little over a century. s/clicks/circulation and the basic business model has been going strong for at least a few centuries now. So, never. Or, more accurately, in about 20 years when "clicking" becomes an anachronism and someone will make this comment except it'll be: "s/taps/clicks and this has been going on for half a century"
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    Mass circulation media date to the early 19th century, so approaching 200 years. Benjamin Day's Sun wasn't the first "penny-press" newspaper, but it transformed the concept, in 1833. Developments (and cost reductions) in printing and paper-making, as well as rapidly increasing literacy rates, climbing from 25% or lower around 1700 to 90%+ by 1900 throughout much of Europe and North America, also meant that prior to 1800 there really wasn't a mass-circulation media of any stripe, outside religious mass, and that there very much was one afterwards. Though yes, your observation that this has been going on for a while is valid.
asdff 7y ago
There is always going to be value on something that gets eyes pointed in a direction, whether it's a billboard, an influencer, a news story, or a blog post. If you want to really know what's going on, find a relevant academic journal.

88840-8855 7y ago

I agree with the article and most comments here. Although I am not in the US but Europe, similar trends have evolved here: pressure from getting a good job, non-satisfaction with the status quo, high pressure from the race against the peers and much more. My direct question to this community. What do you think could help these people/us? What are tactical quick win measures and what are strategic long term measures that could work? I am interested not only in "getting your shit together by yourself", but also in what help can be offered to the people that suffer to help?

supergilbert 7y ago

Depression, anxiety are rising among a large part of the population in Western society. My personal take on this: we need to reconnect with religion because we need something transcendant to help us go through life. Modern life is very alienating if you take a purely material approach to it.

gingabriska 7y ago

I'd mention one thing which I think no one has mentioned so far. Today we've more freedom than ever, more access to people and more prosperity than ever. This creates a dynamic were people cluster according to their outlook. No one accepts a "downer" in a happy group. I'd say more happy, more prosperous country, a country which has more freedom will see higher sucide rates due to loneliness. I wouldn't be surprised if the examples of this like Scandinavian countries have higher sucide rate if not highest. I'd be lot better being a "sad" person with other sad people than being the only sad person among all other happy people.

jinglebells 7y ago
You'd be surprised to find the US has a higher suicide rate than Sweden and Norway then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...

raxxorrax 7y ago

I would also be depressed if my education nets me excessive debt. Probably manageable for lawyers, doctors, engineers, etc., but general higher education seems to be something restricted to people with rich parents. I don't know the details since I am not based in the US. But from outside it seems that there are incentives to willfully sabotage the educational system. And the raw numbers about the accumulated debt look terrifying.

tracer4201 7y ago
Imo even if it is manageable debt, that doesn’t make the problem just disappear. My own student debt is long paid off. It was only $25K - not exactly chump change but only a fraction of the more egregious examples I’ve seen. Honestly, college provided some decent experiences but did it make me a better human or teach me something significant enough to justify that debt? No. There were maybe 3 or 4 key classes in my four year program that had anything really relevant to my career. Most of it was stuff I would forget after a couple semesters and never apply anywhere. In hindsight, college is an institutional shackle. It’s a right of passage we force on kids, and employers require it when it shouldn’t be necessary. My $25K feel less like an investment an education and more like a bribe I had to pay before anyone would hire me.

deleted 7y ago

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newsgremlin 7y ago

The rat race is no longer desirable as the old dream of owning your own home is becoming more fantasy. Pregnancy rates are down and divorce rates are high. Housing is simply too big an investment for people barely able to afford a single home. Your only options are to move to a city and adjust to make a lucrative and highly commercial life there - or live in the middle of nowhere with fewer job prospects while the cost of everything around you goes up. As others mentioned, we now all have devices in our pockets that tell and show us the lives we don't have and the lives we desire.

inquisitor19 7y ago

There are a lot of factors contributing here, but kids today, probably more than in Leary's days, need to turn on, tune in, and drop out.

hi41 7y ago
I have heard this phrase several times before - "turn on, tune in, and drop out." Could you please give more context and explain more. I don't understand this phrase. Please note that I did not grow up in USA. Turn on to what? Radio? Tune in to what? A radio music program? drop out from what? From high school or college?
- madman1444 7y ago
  From Timothy Leary's 1983 autobiography, Flashbacks (via Wikipedia): "Turn on" meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers engaging them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. "Tune in" meant interact harmoniously with the world around you—externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. "Drop out" suggested an active, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. "Drop Out" meant self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily, my explanations of this sequence of personal development are often misinterpreted to mean "Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity"
  - hi41 7y ago
    Thank you! I find this happening with acronyms and truisms that get shortened to look like captions. Outside the in-group, people don’t understand the meaning. With times passage, the in-group slowly fades and the usage and meaning that is generally understood is incorrect like the one you mentioned about getting stoned and do nothing worthwhile.

marianicolae 7y ago

You can listen to this article in audio: https://www.listle.io/#/article/1720317817 https://www.listle.io/#/article/1720317817

sak5sk 7y ago

Multiple reasons really: - Grass is always greener - Access to 24/7 negative news - Environmental doom and gloom (we even call it an existential crisis) - Baked in addiction building mechanisms (likes, retweets, shares, views, unlimited scrolling, constant stream of crap to consume) - Fewer personal interactions - Less community activity - Lack of sleep (probably one of the, if not the biggest issue) - Stress from having a constantly busy mind full of useless thoughts - Worry about the future - Worry about environment - Worry about lack of jobs - Worry about money - Worry about school debt This is probably just scratching the surface.

Jonahgay 7y ago

I'm not from the US, and I'm shit depressed.

lunias 7y ago

I believe that we've reached an inflection point on the path to a utopian-esque society and it feels as though we're primed to backslide catastrophically. For a variety of reasons innumerable, but generally containing in my mind: Technical literacy being outpaced by technical dependence. The threat of the oligopoly - and the lack of action to dismantle it. The inability of humans to work together as a species and their preference for in-fighting over collaboration and compromise. A breakdown in natural selection, increased coddling, and a general weakening of ability and character relative to other nations. Short-sidedness with regard to most everything from education to the environment. Existing in a liminal state where great things appear to be possible, but seem unlikely to be obtained is torturous.

abc_lisper 7y ago

I know this is late, but check this article that appeared couple of days after this was published https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjEjYqWxLfkAhWRtlkKHd_kB1oQFjAAegQIAxAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2019%2F09%2F03%2Fopinion%2Fcollege-graduates.html https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...