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I'm not denying that those issues all contribute to the problem. However, teenagers had a terrible, rotten time during WWII - bombs on cites, constant threat o

I'm not denying that those issues all contribute to the problem. However, teenagers had a terrible, rotten time during WWII - bombs on cites, constant threat of military service, parents and elder brothers killed in war, one's country being invaded, etc. yet on the whole most never suffered these mental health issues. The difference is striking Somehow, they had stamina and resilience that today's teenagers don't have. Many of today's problems I believe go back to over-protection and mollycoddling of kids when they are very young. In the War years a kid was an independent agent by the time he or she was six.

unicornfinder 5y ago
Indeed but I think again information does have a role to play here. Back then everyone around you was going through the same shit and you learned to deal with it. Now you have social media giving a constant reminder that you're not good enough and that you need to achieve more. Conversely I do agree that there is a bit of a "learned helplessness" that I've noticed is a bit more prevalent in the younger generations, and I can't work out if that's a symptom or a cause.
- pmichaud 5y ago
  Any complex system will have a bunch of feedback loops, so it’s likely both a symptom and a cause.
- hilbert42 5y ago
  "I do agree that there is a bit of a "learned helplessness"" It's why I keep coming back to developing resilience in kids at an early age. Challenge them early on and they'll cope better later. As I keep repeating at every opportunity, I cannot overstate the extent to which this has changed for the worse since I was a kid.
caslon 5y ago
Teenagers back then had more to look forward to. You work for some local company for three decades, then you retire, picking up a house somewhere in the process and are able to put your kids in college. Family members die, but who cares? Sure, it'll traumatize you, but it doesn't ruin your future. Not like that hasn't been happening consistently over the past few years with a pandemic. Nowadays, what's anyone got to look forward to? Earlier today my favorite record label announced they were getting purchased by a bigger label, and a few months ago, my favorite way to purchase music got bought by a massive conglomerate that supports concentration camps in China. I am going to die without having seen upward economic mobility (in many ways being significantly poorer than my working-class parent). I avoided going to university since I didn't reasonably have a way to afford it, and was denied advancement in classes despite having test scores that indicated I could have performed well above where I was when I was in schooling. If that's enough to bother me, a person who doesn't use any of these social platforms, what do you think it would do to a child of schooling age? They have nothing to look forward to. Their futures suck. Things kind of just suck. We have surrendered all control of society to a handful of parasitic corporations. People may not be dying of polio, but there's no longer hope to balance out the suffering. There's nothing to look forward to. You're going to die in the same spot as who came before you, if not worse. I think we blame the social media too much and don't blame the fact that society is just miserable these days for any person not born into wealth.
- towaway15463 5y ago
  People who were teens during WW2 would not have known these things. In their era people more often than not died before retirement. Many people had no pension. Most people did not go to college so they would only dream that someday they or their kids would. With their parents having lived through the Great Depression neither housing nor food were guaranteed. The time you’re thinking of is well past the war during the late 50s and 60s and even they had to deal with the threat of nuclear war and actual wars like Korea and Vietnam and yet they didn’t lose hope.
  - hilbert42 5y ago
    "well past the war during the late 50s and 60s and even they had to deal with the threat of nuclear war and actual wars like Korea and Vietnam and yet they didn’t lose hope." Right, I remember that period well (see my comment below).
- BlargMcLarg 5y ago
  Social media can be blamed in the sense of giving people too much choice / competition and such, but yes, the key problem is people trying to tackle this from an angle which seeks to invalidate people's feelings rather than look if things are heading into the wrong direction. Yes, war sucks. Famine sucks. All of that sucks and can make people just as hopeless. The premise is the same as the one now: people don't feel in power of their own future, incapable of getting what they want. A large crowd will immediately retaliate "but your demands are too high!" Really, most people's desires would've been considered pretty normal a few decades ago. Their parents and grandparents had an active role instilling those desires into them. Here's a mental exercise for people. Imagine the following guarantees: A partner who won't leave you as long as you keep your stuff together and will actively support you (and expects the same in return, obviously). A home where you could raise a kid, maybe two, each with a separate, small bed room, a separate kitchen and a living + dining room combo. An average career (average salary, nothing too glorious). Life up to 75 and a retirement by age 60. You can fill in the specifics however you want. Most people in their 20s would be just fine having such a life. The above used to be pretty easily attainable as long as you put in some effort before. Now, the above feels unattainable to a large degree of young adults. Even the ones who did exactly what their parents told them to, are noticeably ahead of their peers in terms of academics and career, and still struggle to get what their parents were able to at the bottom of the ladder, let alone what their gen X / boomer equivalent had. Teenagers are learning these things through both the news and the internet, and want none of it.
sobkas 5y ago
> I'm not denying that those issues all contribute to the problem. > However, teenagers had a terrible, rotten time during WWII - bombs on cites, constant threat of military service, parents and elder brothers killed in war, one's country being invaded, etc. yet on the whole most never suffered these mental health issues. The difference is striking > Somehow, they had stamina and resilience that today's teenagers don't have. Many of today's problems I believe go back to over-protection and mollycoddling of kids when they are very young. In the War years a kid was an independent agent by the time he or she was six. There is a small problem. A survivor bias. You are only counting people that survived WW2. There were plenty of people that didn't survived, that didn't have stamina to do it, that were mentally ill(by itself was a reason for forced euthanasia). People that couldn't deal with the situation, couldn't do anything and just died, one way or another. And yes people committed suicides during WW2. Now we have something called suicide by cops. Just think how much easier it was when you were explicitly hunted.vOr people that outright killed themselves. In the end you only count bullet holes on planes that did return, not ones that failed to do so.
- hilbert42 5y ago
  I don't deny any of that either. These matters are complex and I cannot reasonably argue them here without discussing other factors in detail such as changes in life expectancy over the past century, the more fatalistic approach to life pre-war (big families meant survival insurance, pre-penicillin times meant many more [expected] deaths in childhood, harder times financially, etc. etc. The whole social milieu was different. Let me say just this: when I was growing up in the 1950s and '60s what I said above wasn't quite 'dead' yet as my childhood was pretty much similar to that—and it was often damn hard times back then (moreover, from where I came from it was so for many of the kids my age, I was no exception). Several weeks ago I gave an account of my own childhood on the HN story Old Enough: the Japanese TV show that abandons toddlers on public transport and there's no doubt that by age six I was an independent agent— that is, walking miles to school across busy roads by myself at that age and so on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30951723#30953588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30951723#30953588. We had to be more resilient just to survive—and we were. The fact is I'm old enough to have witnessed these changes firsthand. Leaving aside the reasons (which, no doubt, will be argued about for years to come), there is no doubt that mental health issues among the young have increased substantially in recent decades. Edit: Incidentally, during my teenage years I cannot ever recall any mention of childhood or teenage suicide. No doubt it happened, but even the concept thereof would have been anathema to us kids back then.
7952 5y ago
I think WWII could actually be quite a fun time to be alive for young people on the home front in the UK (and maybe N America). They had much more social freedom, often worked in groups with other young people, and had a sense of purpose, unity and camaraderie. The future was uncertain, but their own role was much clearer. And rationing even meant that people were getting fed properly. The modern world is brilliant at creating a constant sense of insecurity. That is often artificial but feels real. Your place is society and in the group is always insecure and shifting. Maybe kids are mollycoddled, but you have to wonder why people are driven to do that. Why do the richest most stable countries feels so insecure?
- hilbert42 5y ago
  " Why do the richest most stable countries feels so insecure?" This is the question I keep asking myself. There seems to any number of answers but I'm not sure we've any definitive ones as yet. If we had then we ought to be able to do something about it. Perhaps the uncertainty of not knowing is the cause.
  - medvezhenok 5y ago
    I think it’s partially unresolved cognitive dissonance between rhetoric and reality - “you can do / be anything you want” (which is true in theory, but not so much in practice). The “happiest” societies - the Nordics - are rated that way because they start out with low expectations. Happiness is a measure of the delta between expectation and reality. When that delta is negative, mental health crises ensue.
    - hilbert42 5y ago
      "I think it’s partially unresolved cognitive dissonance between rhetoric and reality..." I'm almost certain you're right, cognitive dissonance is a key disrupting factor in many of our lives. Not only is there so much more information for people to process these days but much of it conflicted in ways that doesn't allow one to come to definitive conclusions. As you say, 'happiness is a measure of the delta between expectation and reality' and in this regard we've seen better outcomes in societies where expectations are low. I remain pessimistic about us being able to resolve this in the modern world as everything around us conspires to make one's expectations as high as possible. Essentially, our whole economic system is geared to making us believe that the more stuff and junk we accumulate the happier we'll be. I see no easy or practical way of breaking this circular problem. Year by year, advertising and commercialism gets more intense and the problem only gets worse - moreover, technologies such as the internet have only made matters worse. Promoting these high expectations is now of itself a huge part of the economy that if undone would alone cause hardships. One only has to look at Google and Amazon to realize that. It's really all very depressing.

unicornfinder 5y ago

Indeed but I think again information does have a role to play here. Back then everyone around you was going through the same shit and you learned to deal with it. Now you have social media giving a constant reminder that you're not good enough and that you need to achieve more. Conversely I do agree that there is a bit of a "learned helplessness" that I've noticed is a bit more prevalent in the younger generations, and I can't work out if that's a symptom or a cause.

pmichaud 5y ago
Any complex system will have a bunch of feedback loops, so it’s likely both a symptom and a cause.
hilbert42 5y ago
"I do agree that there is a bit of a "learned helplessness"" It's why I keep coming back to developing resilience in kids at an early age. Challenge them early on and they'll cope better later. As I keep repeating at every opportunity, I cannot overstate the extent to which this has changed for the worse since I was a kid.

caslon 5y ago

Teenagers back then had more to look forward to. You work for some local company for three decades, then you retire, picking up a house somewhere in the process and are able to put your kids in college. Family members die, but who cares? Sure, it'll traumatize you, but it doesn't ruin your future. Not like that hasn't been happening consistently over the past few years with a pandemic. Nowadays, what's anyone got to look forward to? Earlier today my favorite record label announced they were getting purchased by a bigger label, and a few months ago, my favorite way to purchase music got bought by a massive conglomerate that supports concentration camps in China. I am going to die without having seen upward economic mobility (in many ways being significantly poorer than my working-class parent). I avoided going to university since I didn't reasonably have a way to afford it, and was denied advancement in classes despite having test scores that indicated I could have performed well above where I was when I was in schooling. If that's enough to bother me, a person who doesn't use any of these social platforms, what do you think it would do to a child of schooling age? They have nothing to look forward to. Their futures suck. Things kind of just suck. We have surrendered all control of society to a handful of parasitic corporations. People may not be dying of polio, but there's no longer hope to balance out the suffering. There's nothing to look forward to. You're going to die in the same spot as who came before you, if not worse. I think we blame the social media too much and don't blame the fact that society is just miserable these days for any person not born into wealth.

towaway15463 5y ago
People who were teens during WW2 would not have known these things. In their era people more often than not died before retirement. Many people had no pension. Most people did not go to college so they would only dream that someday they or their kids would. With their parents having lived through the Great Depression neither housing nor food were guaranteed. The time you’re thinking of is well past the war during the late 50s and 60s and even they had to deal with the threat of nuclear war and actual wars like Korea and Vietnam and yet they didn’t lose hope.
- hilbert42 5y ago
  "well past the war during the late 50s and 60s and even they had to deal with the threat of nuclear war and actual wars like Korea and Vietnam and yet they didn’t lose hope." Right, I remember that period well (see my comment below).
BlargMcLarg 5y ago
Social media can be blamed in the sense of giving people too much choice / competition and such, but yes, the key problem is people trying to tackle this from an angle which seeks to invalidate people's feelings rather than look if things are heading into the wrong direction. Yes, war sucks. Famine sucks. All of that sucks and can make people just as hopeless. The premise is the same as the one now: people don't feel in power of their own future, incapable of getting what they want. A large crowd will immediately retaliate "but your demands are too high!" Really, most people's desires would've been considered pretty normal a few decades ago. Their parents and grandparents had an active role instilling those desires into them. Here's a mental exercise for people. Imagine the following guarantees: A partner who won't leave you as long as you keep your stuff together and will actively support you (and expects the same in return, obviously). A home where you could raise a kid, maybe two, each with a separate, small bed room, a separate kitchen and a living + dining room combo. An average career (average salary, nothing too glorious). Life up to 75 and a retirement by age 60. You can fill in the specifics however you want. Most people in their 20s would be just fine having such a life. The above used to be pretty easily attainable as long as you put in some effort before. Now, the above feels unattainable to a large degree of young adults. Even the ones who did exactly what their parents told them to, are noticeably ahead of their peers in terms of academics and career, and still struggle to get what their parents were able to at the bottom of the ladder, let alone what their gen X / boomer equivalent had. Teenagers are learning these things through both the news and the internet, and want none of it.

sobkas 5y ago

> I'm not denying that those issues all contribute to the problem. > However, teenagers had a terrible, rotten time during WWII - bombs on cites, constant threat of military service, parents and elder brothers killed in war, one's country being invaded, etc. yet on the whole most never suffered these mental health issues. The difference is striking > Somehow, they had stamina and resilience that today's teenagers don't have. Many of today's problems I believe go back to over-protection and mollycoddling of kids when they are very young. In the War years a kid was an independent agent by the time he or she was six. There is a small problem. A survivor bias. You are only counting people that survived WW2. There were plenty of people that didn't survived, that didn't have stamina to do it, that were mentally ill(by itself was a reason for forced euthanasia). People that couldn't deal with the situation, couldn't do anything and just died, one way or another. And yes people committed suicides during WW2. Now we have something called suicide by cops. Just think how much easier it was when you were explicitly hunted.vOr people that outright killed themselves. In the end you only count bullet holes on planes that did return, not ones that failed to do so.

hilbert42 5y ago
I don't deny any of that either. These matters are complex and I cannot reasonably argue them here without discussing other factors in detail such as changes in life expectancy over the past century, the more fatalistic approach to life pre-war (big families meant survival insurance, pre-penicillin times meant many more [expected] deaths in childhood, harder times financially, etc. etc. The whole social milieu was different. Let me say just this: when I was growing up in the 1950s and '60s what I said above wasn't quite 'dead' yet as my childhood was pretty much similar to that—and it was often damn hard times back then (moreover, from where I came from it was so for many of the kids my age, I was no exception). Several weeks ago I gave an account of my own childhood on the HN story Old Enough: the Japanese TV show that abandons toddlers on public transport and there's no doubt that by age six I was an independent agent— that is, walking miles to school across busy roads by myself at that age and so on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30951723#30953588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30951723#30953588. We had to be more resilient just to survive—and we were. The fact is I'm old enough to have witnessed these changes firsthand. Leaving aside the reasons (which, no doubt, will be argued about for years to come), there is no doubt that mental health issues among the young have increased substantially in recent decades. Edit: Incidentally, during my teenage years I cannot ever recall any mention of childhood or teenage suicide. No doubt it happened, but even the concept thereof would have been anathema to us kids back then.

7952 5y ago

I think WWII could actually be quite a fun time to be alive for young people on the home front in the UK (and maybe N America). They had much more social freedom, often worked in groups with other young people, and had a sense of purpose, unity and camaraderie. The future was uncertain, but their own role was much clearer. And rationing even meant that people were getting fed properly. The modern world is brilliant at creating a constant sense of insecurity. That is often artificial but feels real. Your place is society and in the group is always insecure and shifting. Maybe kids are mollycoddled, but you have to wonder why people are driven to do that. Why do the richest most stable countries feels so insecure?

hilbert42 5y ago
" Why do the richest most stable countries feels so insecure?" This is the question I keep asking myself. There seems to any number of answers but I'm not sure we've any definitive ones as yet. If we had then we ought to be able to do something about it. Perhaps the uncertainty of not knowing is the cause.
- medvezhenok 5y ago
  I think it’s partially unresolved cognitive dissonance between rhetoric and reality - “you can do / be anything you want” (which is true in theory, but not so much in practice). The “happiest” societies - the Nordics - are rated that way because they start out with low expectations. Happiness is a measure of the delta between expectation and reality. When that delta is negative, mental health crises ensue.
  - hilbert42 5y ago
    "I think it’s partially unresolved cognitive dissonance between rhetoric and reality..." I'm almost certain you're right, cognitive dissonance is a key disrupting factor in many of our lives. Not only is there so much more information for people to process these days but much of it conflicted in ways that doesn't allow one to come to definitive conclusions. As you say, 'happiness is a measure of the delta between expectation and reality' and in this regard we've seen better outcomes in societies where expectations are low. I remain pessimistic about us being able to resolve this in the modern world as everything around us conspires to make one's expectations as high as possible. Essentially, our whole economic system is geared to making us believe that the more stuff and junk we accumulate the happier we'll be. I see no easy or practical way of breaking this circular problem. Year by year, advertising and commercialism gets more intense and the problem only gets worse - moreover, technologies such as the internet have only made matters worse. Promoting these high expectations is now of itself a huge part of the economy that if undone would alone cause hardships. One only has to look at Google and Amazon to realize that. It's really all very depressing.