20 ms·

> Multiple major recessions One. They lived through one major recession, and here it wasn't really major, and is not something they lived through recently. The

by tgv 5y ago

> Multiple major recessions One. They lived through one major recession, and here it wasn't really major, and is not something they lived through recently. They were younger than 6 when it started. I've lived through two. The 80s weren't a happy time, and there are no signs that that had such an impact on teen mental health. If it did, it would be proof that the impact of a major recession is temporary. > prospect of a mountain of debt right after graduation Situation wrt to teen mental health is similar in Europe, but there's a much smaller graduation debt. Don't try to downplay the role of internet, mobile devices and social media. Here's a thought for your correlationism: > Teens are aware that they are going to inherit a pretty terrible world, and are powerless to do anything about it. Perhaps it's social media that makes that they are either too aware of it or simply mention it more often.

nandhinianand 5y ago
>Perhaps it's social media that makes that they are either too aware of it or simply mention it more often. Here's a question for me to understand where you're coming from and you to examine your assumptions. How does "too aware" get defined? Who defines it? I am an 80s kid(though grew up in India) and seen some issues myself, but can't claim I am worse off for knowing what I did. And to be clear, I didn't have internet till the start of the millenium and relied on books, radio and newspapers and I still was more about the state of the world i was to inherit than my parents.
- tgv 5y ago
  > How does "too aware" get defined? Who defines it? It doesn't seem that difficult to get a proxy for awareness; perhaps "more aware" had been a better choice of words. But however it's measured, it's not unreasonable to assume that social media can promote awareness, and that thus the effect of social issues on mental health can still be mediated by social media.
Semaphor 5y ago
> Situation wrt to teen mental health is similar in Europe, but there's a much smaller graduation debt. We have other issues here, though (speaking for the situation in Germany). I’m quite some time out of my teens at 36, but for many years now I’ve been told that all that tax (technically not a tax) I pay for my pension will not result in me getting any meaningful pension. For people who are currently teenagers it probably sounds like this: "Once you get a job, which won’t afford you a house, you’ll pay a decent chunk of your salary so the people who managed to destroy the environment and don’t care about you have a better end of life. You’ll not see anything of this money ever again." And that is without including all the messaging during the pandemic that young people (more towards people in their early 20ies, but still) are at fault for nearly everything. edit: I should mention that I’m still not discounting social media, I couldn’t, as I know next to nothing about it.
- moonchrome 5y ago
  You think teenagers are thinking about pensions... If they are they are probably already having mental issues because that's not something someone pre 20s should be concerned about. People in this thread need to stop projecting their problems and worldviews as universal social issues.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    > You think teenagers are thinking about pensions... German here. Yes we absolutely fucking did, especially as our parents pushed us from early on to obtain as much education as we could because unlike even in the 80s, manual labor would not be enough to sustain a family or to have a comfortable retirement.
    - moonchrome 5y ago
      Retirement planning is a different thing from career pressure. I agree that's been increasing consistently - but even if your retirement was guaranteed - that wouldn't change anything about this problem - you aren't chassing a career so you can live well past 60s, and if you are, as a teen, you probably need to have counseling because you're setting yourself up for a depressing life.
  - Semaphor 5y ago
    It’s a decently big issue that’s affecting you more the later you were born, we already heard about it when we were teenagers, but now it’s far more prominent in the media than it was back then.
  - Shared404 5y ago
    Eh, as a 20 year old I've been told my whole life that I'll be paying for social security but never see the money. Same for most of my peers.
    - pydry 5y ago
      This is part of the effort to kill it. If enough people believe it is a ponzi scheme, unsustainable, etc. then the political impetus to either privatize or get rid of it can be mustered. Social security is very popular among the working classes (especially retired ofc) and deeply unpopular among the upper classes who see it as a tax burden on them that makes their workers lazy.
nivenkos 5y ago
> Situation wrt to teen mental health is similar in Europe, but there's a much smaller graduation debt. But Europe has far lower professional salaries than the US. Also economic conditions definitely have a big impact, I could finally buy a small flat after years of renting and it's such a great change to be able to make changes in your own home and buy your own things. My father did that at 23, not 30.
- ben_w 5y ago
  Both for you and the person you are replying to, I would caution that “Europe” isn’t one country like the USA, even just the EU is 27 smaller countries in a trenchcoat — the average may be lower, but bits are higher. University tuition is wildly variable and not directly proportional to income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuition_payments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuition_payments (Housing costs are also wildly variable, but I don’t know where to get enough data to tell if that’s proportional to incomes or not).
  - nivenkos 5y ago
    Yeah, I am European, I've lived and worked in 3 different EU countries. But Americans really don't appreciate how lucky they are. An American CS college grad can earn more than almost all senior/staff engineers anywhere in the EU e.g. ~$150k.
    - MonaroVXR 5y ago
      I figured this out too.
    - lupire 5y ago
      That's an extremely small group of lucky Americans, who happen to hang out on HN.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - 5y ago
alimov 5y ago
> Don't try to downplay the role of internet, mobile devices and social media. The first thing that was said is that Social media definitely amplifies it. I don’t think that’s a dismissal.. you don’t have to be on social media, you just have to hear or read or watch the news.
idrios 5y ago
Also, it's really easy to see how social media is directly affecting kids' mental health. Instagram, TikTok, SnapChat, YouTube, Twitch, on these sites are an endless stream of people their who are better looking, smarter, more successful, funnier, more interesting than them. If you have insecurities, these sites will amplify them. And if you admire someone on one of these platforms, that person literally has no idea who you are and that admiration will not be reciprocated. But unlike the celebrities of yore, a kid can leave comments in a livestream or on a picture or a video and get a response, and they might end up developing a parasocial relationship. It was bad enough when I was in high school when all we had was Facebook, because we were comparing the whole of ourselves to our peers in their best light. It is so much worse now.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  I don't believe the social medias are that much different from what preceding generations were exposed to; TV, magazines, movies, etc all showed more idealized lifestyles. The one difference I will point out though, is that with social media it becomes a lot more attainable to become like that. There's complete randoms that became celebrities through social media - and they don't even need to be conventionally attractive like the celebrities of old.
  - pmlnr 5y ago
    > I don't believe the social medias are that much different from what preceding generations were exposed to; TV, magazines, movies, etc all showed more idealized lifestyles. It is: TV was never meant to make you believe it's real or that someone's life is actually like that. "Reality" TV was always deliberately focused on drama.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      'TV was never meant to make you believe it's real' 'Reality TV' is a thing
      - brewdad 5y ago
meerita 5y ago
+1 kids from previous generations lived under much worse conditions. Not only economical ones, but also social (wars, technology, etc.)
- Jcowell 5y ago
  It depends where you are ? A male kid from Kentucky probably didn’t see his life get worse in the last 60 years. A kid from Yemen & Afghanistan (and now Ukraine) more than likely did.
  - lupire 5y ago
    Methamphetamine has entered the chat.
  - nervousvarun 5y ago
    Did this kid go to college? Did he buy a house? Did he get married and have kids? Did he buy a car? Did he have any sort of major illness at any point along the way? If he experienced any of these relatively common life activities (and many more out there I'm sure) they are more difficult economically than they were 60 years ago. Obviously it's a matter of degrees and I'm sure he wouldn't trade places with his counterpart in Yemen...but to argue that life hasn't changed for him in 60 years as an American seems a bit wrong.
    - philipkglass 5y ago
      If you were a boy 60 years ago in Kentucky, the timing was right for you to be drafted for the Vietnam War a little later in life. My father was. He was sent there against his will, injured during combat, and carried a lifelong burden from what he experienced. My father's friends and brothers avoided his fate by preemptively "volunteering" for service that would keep them away from combat. I remember that every time I envy how great the economy was for his generation. Life was hard in other ways.
  - vel0city 5y ago
    I have family in small town Appalachia. 60 years ago their towns were still growing. New infrastructure was being built. Jobs were plentiful. These days tons of those small towns are dying. People don't care to live out there anymore. Factories keeping towns alive closed in the late 90's. Coal mines closed. Rail yards are quiet since the factories aren't receiving and shipping and the coal mines aren't moving coal. Other than some fast food chains, its almost hard to find infrastructure built since the late 80s. States like KY and WV are largely these small dying towns, not mostly big cities. I'm not arguing that overall life in the US has gone down in 60 years or that we should be starting up the coal mines. I'm just trying to suggest Kentucky probably wasn't the best place to pick to suggest life not getting worse; for tons of people in Appalachia life has gotten worse over the last 60 years. Note, this isn't even a small town vs. big city argument, there are plenty of small towns out there that have had their own booms and due to the US tendency to sprawl our cities out places that used to be small backwater towns are now shiny new mini-cities attached to giant sprawling city regions.
andyjohnson0 5y ago
> One. They lived through one major recession If seems like one continuous recession since 2008 - at least here in the UK, and I suspect also in many places. Nearly a decade and a half of austerity and failure: what does that do to their hopes for the future? My children (both teenagers) ask me "has it always been like this?" I was a child/teen in the seventies and I remember thinking the same thing. Add to that the perma-war, the climate crisis, massive and pervasive social inequality, housing and employment precarity, Trump/Putin, Brexit... > Perhaps it's social media that makes that they are either too aware of it or simply mention it more often. Teenagers know what's coming down the road. They just, broadly, haven't developed the adult habits of denial and avoidance yet. We need to listen to them, not tell them that they are "too aware".
- lupire 5y ago
  We used to have the cold war and the nuclear bomb threat, WWII, the Communist devastation of Asia, not to mention global poverty in general, and the old global warming". The "climate crisis isn't a new kid of psychological threat.
exyi 5y ago
> Perhaps it's social media that makes that they are either too aware of it or simply mention it more often. Then I wouldn't really say it's social media failure.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
'Don't try to downplay the role of internet, mobile devices and social media' Exhibit A people: we have impeding total collapse of the ecosystem, and they blame 'too many phones'. Have you spoken to a teenager lately? All my younger colleagues are convinced they are the ones that will have to deal with the mess, and they are probably right
- antisinguIarity 5y ago
  It's funny how people don't associate the endless stream of shiny gadgets they own, that are stuffed full with the latest and greatest in rare minerals, with the destruction of the ecosystem. Just to pick a recent-ish story at random: https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/nickel-deforestation https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/nickel-deforestation
  - adrianN 5y ago
    Buying a smartphone every year or two absolutely pales in comparison with having to rent a poorly insulated flat that is heated with oil in a city that forces you to own a car to get to work in a country that mostly burns coal and gas for electricity. Individual choices can only save a small part of your emissions. Blaming individuals for problems that need state policy is an effective tool of fossil fuel interest groups.
    - antisinguIarity 5y ago
      Ah so I'm a shill for the fossil fuel industry, because I believe in the power of individual choices? Fantastic. FWIW I had made no mention of emissions - I was talking purely about destruction of the ecosystem (which was the phrase used in the parent comment). I believe that (in some cases, deliberately) ignoring those impacts of our consumer habits makes us in the West the greatest force for planetary destruction. It won't matter if the planet is a few degrees warmer in a few decades, if there are no trees left. The embodied energy of a person's collection of tech absolutely does sit in the same ballpark as heating and transportation energy costs. Once you've added up your smartwatch, phone, laptop, tv, monitors, etc, I wouldn't be surprised if it was about the same energy as that required to heat your home for a year. PS. Move. There are plenty of places.
mschuster91 5y ago
> Perhaps it's social media that makes that they are either too aware of it or simply mention it more often. Or rather, they see how historically threats were dealt with: lead was banned, CFCs were banned, sulphur in fuel was banned - in short, environmental threats were met with decisive action. And then they see how scientists have warned for decades now about climate change and they can clearly see that nothing happens except a lot of useless bla-bla. Children, even as young as ten, are not dumb. They can see and understand what is going on, and to recognize inaction and corruption in politics is not rocket science.
- snikeris 5y ago
  Perhaps the threats that were met with decisive action were better understood. What decisive actions should be taken in this case?
  - adrianN 5y ago
    https://www.drawdown.org/solutions https://www.drawdown.org/solutions for example
  - lupire 5y ago
    > What decisive actions should be taken in this case? Putting humanity in the environment could be banned. But we're seeing a trend in the other direction.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    There are a lot of decisive action ideas to combat climate change (and a host of other issues). Right now out of the top of my head: - impose a maximum limit on size, weight and fuel consumption of cars, ban SUVs and pickup trucks (and no, a tax won't work because the rich will simply buy their "freedom"). Exceptions only upon proof of need (e.g. commercial or farming usage). - ban all inner-country flights of less than 2 hours duration (this one is not that applicable to the US but more towards Europe) - improve passenger high speed rail networks in accessibility, affordability and speed - improve (or, in some places, create) usable public transport systems to reduce the need for cars - entirely ban naval cruise ships unless fueled by renewable fuel - construct immense amounts of solar and wind electricity generation, invest into storage mechanisms and power-to-gas - impose bans or limitations on concrete for construction (8% of global CO2 emissions result out of the manufacturing of concrete!) - ban "fast fashion", impose durability requirements on clothing - force all manufacturers to provide spare parts, 3D designs and tooling needed for repairs, no matter what kind of thing - impose per-capita meat consumption quotas. Yes, this is communism-style, but we cannot sustainably continue with mass animal farming at the scale we are at.
n4r9 5y ago
Are you claiming that the event referred to as the "Great Recession" and described by the IMF as "the most severe economic and financial meltdown since the Great Depression" wasn't really major?
LightG 5y ago
I absolutely believe that much of social media is a cess pit at the behest of the advertising industry. For some it will be liberation and an incredible tool to leverage but for many it will be just a waste of their life and even, for some, the end of their lives. I left Facebook years ago and recently left Twitter for higher quality sources. But ... your "One." is distasteful ... The GFC caused a decade of austerity and quiet unseen cuts in support and public service. If we agree there should, in fact, be some form of safety net, they had had many holes cut in that net in the last 15 years. Where I am, I was one of the last who had their Uni tuition paid for, I had a relatively fun time growing up, my wife and I bought a property when they had gone through multiple incredible price increases, we have just paid off a mortgage, no matter what happens next short of a world war, we'll be ok. I cannot imagine how we would have done that in today's enviroment ... look beyond this forum and your own experience. I feel absolutely gutted for the continuous squeeze the generation that followed me have endured. And, considering the outlook, the next recession seems on its way just to compound things at a time when exogenous inflation is all the rage. It's a mess. So, please hold both factors in mind. Social media is the cesspit that has amplified just an incredible economics and political mess of the last 15 years.
devwastaken 5y ago
Their parents experienced multiple, poverty is the actual trickle down economics. Middle class is the new living paycheck to paycheck having to do without insurance and requiring two individuals to do anything. Yet government thinks it's too much money and won't cover education costs and even if they did universities are ever more irrelevant and filled with money and politics just the same as Congress.
to11mtm 5y ago
> The 80s weren't a happy time, and there are no signs that that had such an impact on teen mental health Are we sure about that? The fun thing with a lot of childhood trauma can take years to surface, let alone figure out. I personally wonder whether it has contributed to our race towards a kleptocratic society. I can say that personally, while I was born in the early 80s, the recession had an impact on my family. Essentially, my parents chose to focus their efforts on making sure we could get as many college grants/scholarships as possible. An insanely intense focus on education and being able to sustain oneself. Didn't quite work out how they hoped.
- tgv 5y ago
  > The fun thing with a lot of childhood trauma can take years to surface In that case, the recession can't be the cause for the spike in mental health issues.

by tgv 5y ago

nandhinianand 5y ago

>Perhaps it's social media that makes that they are either too aware of it or simply mention it more often. Here's a question for me to understand where you're coming from and you to examine your assumptions. How does "too aware" get defined? Who defines it? I am an 80s kid(though grew up in India) and seen some issues myself, but can't claim I am worse off for knowing what I did. And to be clear, I didn't have internet till the start of the millenium and relied on books, radio and newspapers and I still was more about the state of the world i was to inherit than my parents.

tgv 5y ago
> How does "too aware" get defined? Who defines it? It doesn't seem that difficult to get a proxy for awareness; perhaps "more aware" had been a better choice of words. But however it's measured, it's not unreasonable to assume that social media can promote awareness, and that thus the effect of social issues on mental health can still be mediated by social media.

Semaphor 5y ago

> Situation wrt to teen mental health is similar in Europe, but there's a much smaller graduation debt. We have other issues here, though (speaking for the situation in Germany). I’m quite some time out of my teens at 36, but for many years now I’ve been told that all that tax (technically not a tax) I pay for my pension will not result in me getting any meaningful pension. For people who are currently teenagers it probably sounds like this: "Once you get a job, which won’t afford you a house, you’ll pay a decent chunk of your salary so the people who managed to destroy the environment and don’t care about you have a better end of life. You’ll not see anything of this money ever again." And that is without including all the messaging during the pandemic that young people (more towards people in their early 20ies, but still) are at fault for nearly everything. edit: I should mention that I’m still not discounting social media, I couldn’t, as I know next to nothing about it.

moonchrome 5y ago
You think teenagers are thinking about pensions... If they are they are probably already having mental issues because that's not something someone pre 20s should be concerned about. People in this thread need to stop projecting their problems and worldviews as universal social issues.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > You think teenagers are thinking about pensions... German here. Yes we absolutely fucking did, especially as our parents pushed us from early on to obtain as much education as we could because unlike even in the 80s, manual labor would not be enough to sustain a family or to have a comfortable retirement.
  - moonchrome 5y ago
    Retirement planning is a different thing from career pressure. I agree that's been increasing consistently - but even if your retirement was guaranteed - that wouldn't change anything about this problem - you aren't chassing a career so you can live well past 60s, and if you are, as a teen, you probably need to have counseling because you're setting yourself up for a depressing life.
- Semaphor 5y ago
  It’s a decently big issue that’s affecting you more the later you were born, we already heard about it when we were teenagers, but now it’s far more prominent in the media than it was back then.
- Shared404 5y ago
  Eh, as a 20 year old I've been told my whole life that I'll be paying for social security but never see the money. Same for most of my peers.
  - pydry 5y ago
    This is part of the effort to kill it. If enough people believe it is a ponzi scheme, unsustainable, etc. then the political impetus to either privatize or get rid of it can be mustered. Social security is very popular among the working classes (especially retired ofc) and deeply unpopular among the upper classes who see it as a tax burden on them that makes their workers lazy.

nivenkos 5y ago

> Situation wrt to teen mental health is similar in Europe, but there's a much smaller graduation debt. But Europe has far lower professional salaries than the US. Also economic conditions definitely have a big impact, I could finally buy a small flat after years of renting and it's such a great change to be able to make changes in your own home and buy your own things. My father did that at 23, not 30.

ben_w 5y ago
Both for you and the person you are replying to, I would caution that “Europe” isn’t one country like the USA, even just the EU is 27 smaller countries in a trenchcoat — the average may be lower, but bits are higher. University tuition is wildly variable and not directly proportional to income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuition_payments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuition_payments (Housing costs are also wildly variable, but I don’t know where to get enough data to tell if that’s proportional to incomes or not).
- nivenkos 5y ago
  Yeah, I am European, I've lived and worked in 3 different EU countries. But Americans really don't appreciate how lucky they are. An American CS college grad can earn more than almost all senior/staff engineers anywhere in the EU e.g. ~$150k.
  - MonaroVXR 5y ago
    I figured this out too.
  - lupire 5y ago
    That's an extremely small group of lucky Americans, who happen to hang out on HN.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- 5y ago

alimov 5y ago

> Don't try to downplay the role of internet, mobile devices and social media. The first thing that was said is that Social media definitely amplifies it. I don’t think that’s a dismissal.. you don’t have to be on social media, you just have to hear or read or watch the news.

idrios 5y ago

Also, it's really easy to see how social media is directly affecting kids' mental health. Instagram, TikTok, SnapChat, YouTube, Twitch, on these sites are an endless stream of people their who are better looking, smarter, more successful, funnier, more interesting than them. If you have insecurities, these sites will amplify them. And if you admire someone on one of these platforms, that person literally has no idea who you are and that admiration will not be reciprocated. But unlike the celebrities of yore, a kid can leave comments in a livestream or on a picture or a video and get a response, and they might end up developing a parasocial relationship. It was bad enough when I was in high school when all we had was Facebook, because we were comparing the whole of ourselves to our peers in their best light. It is so much worse now.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
I don't believe the social medias are that much different from what preceding generations were exposed to; TV, magazines, movies, etc all showed more idealized lifestyles. The one difference I will point out though, is that with social media it becomes a lot more attainable to become like that. There's complete randoms that became celebrities through social media - and they don't even need to be conventionally attractive like the celebrities of old.
- pmlnr 5y ago
  > I don't believe the social medias are that much different from what preceding generations were exposed to; TV, magazines, movies, etc all showed more idealized lifestyles. It is: TV was never meant to make you believe it's real or that someone's life is actually like that. "Reality" TV was always deliberately focused on drama.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    'TV was never meant to make you believe it's real' 'Reality TV' is a thing
    - brewdad 5y ago

meerita 5y ago

+1 kids from previous generations lived under much worse conditions. Not only economical ones, but also social (wars, technology, etc.)

Jcowell 5y ago
It depends where you are ? A male kid from Kentucky probably didn’t see his life get worse in the last 60 years. A kid from Yemen & Afghanistan (and now Ukraine) more than likely did.
- lupire 5y ago
  Methamphetamine has entered the chat.
- nervousvarun 5y ago
  Did this kid go to college? Did he buy a house? Did he get married and have kids? Did he buy a car? Did he have any sort of major illness at any point along the way? If he experienced any of these relatively common life activities (and many more out there I'm sure) they are more difficult economically than they were 60 years ago. Obviously it's a matter of degrees and I'm sure he wouldn't trade places with his counterpart in Yemen...but to argue that life hasn't changed for him in 60 years as an American seems a bit wrong.
  - philipkglass 5y ago
    If you were a boy 60 years ago in Kentucky, the timing was right for you to be drafted for the Vietnam War a little later in life. My father was. He was sent there against his will, injured during combat, and carried a lifelong burden from what he experienced. My father's friends and brothers avoided his fate by preemptively "volunteering" for service that would keep them away from combat. I remember that every time I envy how great the economy was for his generation. Life was hard in other ways.
- vel0city 5y ago
  I have family in small town Appalachia. 60 years ago their towns were still growing. New infrastructure was being built. Jobs were plentiful. These days tons of those small towns are dying. People don't care to live out there anymore. Factories keeping towns alive closed in the late 90's. Coal mines closed. Rail yards are quiet since the factories aren't receiving and shipping and the coal mines aren't moving coal. Other than some fast food chains, its almost hard to find infrastructure built since the late 80s. States like KY and WV are largely these small dying towns, not mostly big cities. I'm not arguing that overall life in the US has gone down in 60 years or that we should be starting up the coal mines. I'm just trying to suggest Kentucky probably wasn't the best place to pick to suggest life not getting worse; for tons of people in Appalachia life has gotten worse over the last 60 years. Note, this isn't even a small town vs. big city argument, there are plenty of small towns out there that have had their own booms and due to the US tendency to sprawl our cities out places that used to be small backwater towns are now shiny new mini-cities attached to giant sprawling city regions.

andyjohnson0 5y ago

> One. They lived through one major recession If seems like one continuous recession since 2008 - at least here in the UK, and I suspect also in many places. Nearly a decade and a half of austerity and failure: what does that do to their hopes for the future? My children (both teenagers) ask me "has it always been like this?" I was a child/teen in the seventies and I remember thinking the same thing. Add to that the perma-war, the climate crisis, massive and pervasive social inequality, housing and employment precarity, Trump/Putin, Brexit... > Perhaps it's social media that makes that they are either too aware of it or simply mention it more often. Teenagers know what's coming down the road. They just, broadly, haven't developed the adult habits of denial and avoidance yet. We need to listen to them, not tell them that they are "too aware".

lupire 5y ago
We used to have the cold war and the nuclear bomb threat, WWII, the Communist devastation of Asia, not to mention global poverty in general, and the old global warming". The "climate crisis isn't a new kid of psychological threat.

exyi 5y ago

> Perhaps it's social media that makes that they are either too aware of it or simply mention it more often. Then I wouldn't really say it's social media failure.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

'Don't try to downplay the role of internet, mobile devices and social media' Exhibit A people: we have impeding total collapse of the ecosystem, and they blame 'too many phones'. Have you spoken to a teenager lately? All my younger colleagues are convinced they are the ones that will have to deal with the mess, and they are probably right

antisinguIarity 5y ago
It's funny how people don't associate the endless stream of shiny gadgets they own, that are stuffed full with the latest and greatest in rare minerals, with the destruction of the ecosystem. Just to pick a recent-ish story at random: https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/nickel-deforestation https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/nickel-deforestation
- adrianN 5y ago
  Buying a smartphone every year or two absolutely pales in comparison with having to rent a poorly insulated flat that is heated with oil in a city that forces you to own a car to get to work in a country that mostly burns coal and gas for electricity. Individual choices can only save a small part of your emissions. Blaming individuals for problems that need state policy is an effective tool of fossil fuel interest groups.
  - antisinguIarity 5y ago
    Ah so I'm a shill for the fossil fuel industry, because I believe in the power of individual choices? Fantastic. FWIW I had made no mention of emissions - I was talking purely about destruction of the ecosystem (which was the phrase used in the parent comment). I believe that (in some cases, deliberately) ignoring those impacts of our consumer habits makes us in the West the greatest force for planetary destruction. It won't matter if the planet is a few degrees warmer in a few decades, if there are no trees left. The embodied energy of a person's collection of tech absolutely does sit in the same ballpark as heating and transportation energy costs. Once you've added up your smartwatch, phone, laptop, tv, monitors, etc, I wouldn't be surprised if it was about the same energy as that required to heat your home for a year. PS. Move. There are plenty of places.

mschuster91 5y ago

> Perhaps it's social media that makes that they are either too aware of it or simply mention it more often. Or rather, they see how historically threats were dealt with: lead was banned, CFCs were banned, sulphur in fuel was banned - in short, environmental threats were met with decisive action. And then they see how scientists have warned for decades now about climate change and they can clearly see that nothing happens except a lot of useless bla-bla. Children, even as young as ten, are not dumb. They can see and understand what is going on, and to recognize inaction and corruption in politics is not rocket science.

snikeris 5y ago
Perhaps the threats that were met with decisive action were better understood. What decisive actions should be taken in this case?
- adrianN 5y ago
  https://www.drawdown.org/solutions https://www.drawdown.org/solutions for example
- lupire 5y ago
  > What decisive actions should be taken in this case? Putting humanity in the environment could be banned. But we're seeing a trend in the other direction.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  There are a lot of decisive action ideas to combat climate change (and a host of other issues). Right now out of the top of my head: - impose a maximum limit on size, weight and fuel consumption of cars, ban SUVs and pickup trucks (and no, a tax won't work because the rich will simply buy their "freedom"). Exceptions only upon proof of need (e.g. commercial or farming usage). - ban all inner-country flights of less than 2 hours duration (this one is not that applicable to the US but more towards Europe) - improve passenger high speed rail networks in accessibility, affordability and speed - improve (or, in some places, create) usable public transport systems to reduce the need for cars - entirely ban naval cruise ships unless fueled by renewable fuel - construct immense amounts of solar and wind electricity generation, invest into storage mechanisms and power-to-gas - impose bans or limitations on concrete for construction (8% of global CO2 emissions result out of the manufacturing of concrete!) - ban "fast fashion", impose durability requirements on clothing - force all manufacturers to provide spare parts, 3D designs and tooling needed for repairs, no matter what kind of thing - impose per-capita meat consumption quotas. Yes, this is communism-style, but we cannot sustainably continue with mass animal farming at the scale we are at.

n4r9 5y ago

Are you claiming that the event referred to as the "Great Recession" and described by the IMF as "the most severe economic and financial meltdown since the Great Depression" wasn't really major?

LightG 5y ago

I absolutely believe that much of social media is a cess pit at the behest of the advertising industry. For some it will be liberation and an incredible tool to leverage but for many it will be just a waste of their life and even, for some, the end of their lives. I left Facebook years ago and recently left Twitter for higher quality sources. But ... your "One." is distasteful ... The GFC caused a decade of austerity and quiet unseen cuts in support and public service. If we agree there should, in fact, be some form of safety net, they had had many holes cut in that net in the last 15 years. Where I am, I was one of the last who had their Uni tuition paid for, I had a relatively fun time growing up, my wife and I bought a property when they had gone through multiple incredible price increases, we have just paid off a mortgage, no matter what happens next short of a world war, we'll be ok. I cannot imagine how we would have done that in today's enviroment ... look beyond this forum and your own experience. I feel absolutely gutted for the continuous squeeze the generation that followed me have endured. And, considering the outlook, the next recession seems on its way just to compound things at a time when exogenous inflation is all the rage. It's a mess. So, please hold both factors in mind. Social media is the cesspit that has amplified just an incredible economics and political mess of the last 15 years.

devwastaken 5y ago

Their parents experienced multiple, poverty is the actual trickle down economics. Middle class is the new living paycheck to paycheck having to do without insurance and requiring two individuals to do anything. Yet government thinks it's too much money and won't cover education costs and even if they did universities are ever more irrelevant and filled with money and politics just the same as Congress.

to11mtm 5y ago

> The 80s weren't a happy time, and there are no signs that that had such an impact on teen mental health Are we sure about that? The fun thing with a lot of childhood trauma can take years to surface, let alone figure out. I personally wonder whether it has contributed to our race towards a kleptocratic society. I can say that personally, while I was born in the early 80s, the recession had an impact on my family. Essentially, my parents chose to focus their efforts on making sure we could get as many college grants/scholarships as possible. An insanely intense focus on education and being able to sustain oneself. Didn't quite work out how they hoped.

tgv 5y ago
> The fun thing with a lot of childhood trauma can take years to surface In that case, the recession can't be the cause for the spike in mental health issues.