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> when I speak with friends in urban areas they are mortified that we let our son play football This is the crux of the issue. Behavior – including emotional r

> when I speak with friends in urban areas they are mortified that we let our son play football This is the crux of the issue. Behavior – including emotional responses – is learned. And what American youth are being taught is that there is danger around every corner and everything is doomed. The irony, of course, is that the deliberate indoctrination into anxiety only makes danger more prevalent. Sheltered young people never learn to cope with challenges they may face. I think breathless doomsaying about climate change is a brilliant example. The overwhelming zeitgeist is one of learned helplessness. But the more people feel that global disaster is both imminent and inevitable, the fewer people will be motivated to work on the problem.

bigbillheck 4y ago
> Sheltered young people never learn to cope with challenges they may face You can't 'cope' with chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
- Ancalagon 4y ago
  Yeah I don't understand this post. There's large amounts of evidence that contact sports, especially football, even in middle school & high school can cause long lasting brain damage. I'm all for team sports and free-range kids but not at the expense of my kid's neurological function. Let them choose literally any other sport.
  - poulsbohemian 4y ago
    I hesitated to mention football in my original post, because I know it is controversial here on HN. I'm not ignorant to the risks. The key things that I think are relevant to this discussion on teens are: -- Playing sports or other group participative activities is so good for them on every level. As the article points out, declining participation is a concern. -- Every activity has risk. Helping kids learn to assess that risk and not be afraid of the world is important in their emotional and mental growth, IE: learning to overcome fears and take calculated risks.
- honkycat 4y ago
  Lol I picked this out as well. Classic "well city folk just don't get it. Here in the country..." People from the country have this bizarre narcissistic need to prove the superiority of the town vs the city, and nothing you tell them about the city can be positive. This for example! City people hate football?? News to me! Better tell the Bears and the Giants to pack it in, the liberal city slickers aren't interested. And I spent the first 20 years of my life in a town of less than 2k people, 5 hours away from the nearest large city, so I say this from experience.
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    This is just the level of quality to expect from arguments here now.
  - poulsbohemian 4y ago
    I initiated that conversation because I notice that there are differences between kids raised in urban vs rural areas. I did not intend to insinuate that there is a "better" or "worse" so much as that if we are going to have a discussion on teen mental health, we should do so with an eye toward environmental conditions that create significant differences in outcomes.
- torstenvl 4y ago
  Mild cases of CTE (like those found in high school football players), if and when they are symptomatic, typically cause symptoms like... anxiety and depression. Which is worse: a risk of anxiety and depression among ~20% of the subset of young people who choose to play football, or fully realized anxiety and depression among ~44% of all young people? Safetyism is a cure that is literally worse than the disease.
  - honkycat 4y ago
    So you are arguing that if football doesn't exist, 44% of all young people will be depressed? And that is why safetyism is bad? To be clear: they are talking about american football, not world football.
    - torstenvl 4y ago
      > From 2009 to 2021, the share of American high-school students who say they feel “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” rose from 26 percent to 44 percent, according to a new CDC study. It's literally in the first paragraph of the OP. It is a fact that anxiety and depression are increasing, not decreasing, as adults become more overprotective about things like letting kids play football.
      - blep_ 4y ago
        It is a fact that anxiety and depression are increasing, not decreasing, as the number of emoji in Unicode increases. Clearly we should ban emoji.
poulsbohemian 4y ago
Mostly agree. I see this in my own kids. One of them is heavily influenced by my ex. She's scared, timid, immature, socially awkward, because she's allowed her mother's insecurities and anxieties turn her into the same type of person - everything is scary, stay away from everything! My other two have spent more time with myself and my partner, and are practically Gen-X kids because we've raised them much more like we were raised.
- random_hacker 4y ago
- honkycat 4y ago
  yeah this sounds like a super healthy attitude to have towards your child. Judge them because they seem like your ex. You seem lovely in general.
  - poulsbohemian 4y ago
    Same thing I told the poster above: You should apologize immediately and reconsider how you treat strangers when you know nothing of their story. If you knew anything about my story or my kid's stories, you'd be ashamed of yourself.
    - honkycat 4y ago
      We are on an internet forum meant for discussion. I don't owe you a positive reaction to your comments. I've had a hard life too. Most of us have. It doesn't make you special. Two different people called it out as a red flag for the exact same reason. Because it was a mean thing to say about someone who relies on you and under your care. Deal with it. You probably are a fine person, but maybe you should be a bit more introspective and acknowledge that saying your daughter is a "scared, timid, immature, socially awkward" person, just like your ex-wife, is comically transparent in its resentment towards both of them. Also funny how their personality is everyone else's fault (society, your ex-wife's, the boogyman) but has left out one key player who participated in raising them.
Glawen 4y ago
>I think breathless doomsaying about climate change is a brilliant example. The overwhelming zeitgeist is one of learned helplessness. But the more people feel that global disaster is both imminent and inevitable, the fewer people will be motivated to work on the problem. I'm not living in the US, but this one buggers me a lot. In my country school they are "educating" children about climate change and pollution. My child, who is worrying about everything, is freaking out about the planet future and animals. This summer at the beach, he freaked out about microplastics in the sea and made sure I put the rubbish in the bin. The trouble is that all these pollution speech are always about disasters, they give no hope for future generations. This is the main issue in my opinion, there is no dream to look forward at the moment. Where are the dreams about flying cars and great cities? Robots serving us while we spend our lives at the beach?
- antifa 4y ago
  > Where are the dreams about flying cars and great cities? Robots serving us while we spend our lives at the beach? I'm surprised you're more upset about your kids knowing they have no future than that somebody sold your kids future.
  - Glawen 4y ago
    Your comment is exactly what I complain about with school, it gives only a vision of global disaster and the culprits are us and our parents. We have no idea how it will turn out in the future, what global events are going to happen or whatnot. The only thing I'm sure: we are going to die someday and Earth will survive us. If humanity manages to kill itself by destroying the environment, so be it and we deserve to die. As for that somebody who sold my kids future, it always happened. Remember endless wars? The current 80 years without wars in Europe is an anomaly in history.
    - antifa 4y ago
      > and the culprits are us and our parents. That seems like a strawman, unless you own some oil derricks or personally moved some factory jobs to China.
welshwelsh 4y ago
If people were actually worried about climate change, they would do something about it. Like instituting a carbon tax, or banning private gas-powered vehicles. We should have don't that 30 years ago. There is nothing to "work on" here- we can solve climate change by simply voting to solve climate change. We just need everyone to agree that it's a problem and we should prioritize solving it. The problem is that tons of people either don't believe in climate change or don't care. There are still people who vote for conservatives in 2022, as ridiculous as that is. Until that changes, we need to talk MORE, not less, about climate change until the problem is solved. As for football - endangering one's health by playing American football is idiotic. It's a crappy game anyway, nothing is lost by spending that time riding a bicycle or playing videogames instead.
- chung8123 4y ago
  Even the people that believe in climate change do not change their habits. It is simple to not eat meat. Very few actually practice it.

bigbillheck 4y ago

> Sheltered young people never learn to cope with challenges they may face You can't 'cope' with chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

Ancalagon 4y ago
Yeah I don't understand this post. There's large amounts of evidence that contact sports, especially football, even in middle school & high school can cause long lasting brain damage. I'm all for team sports and free-range kids but not at the expense of my kid's neurological function. Let them choose literally any other sport.
- poulsbohemian 4y ago
  I hesitated to mention football in my original post, because I know it is controversial here on HN. I'm not ignorant to the risks. The key things that I think are relevant to this discussion on teens are: -- Playing sports or other group participative activities is so good for them on every level. As the article points out, declining participation is a concern. -- Every activity has risk. Helping kids learn to assess that risk and not be afraid of the world is important in their emotional and mental growth, IE: learning to overcome fears and take calculated risks.
honkycat 4y ago
Lol I picked this out as well. Classic "well city folk just don't get it. Here in the country..." People from the country have this bizarre narcissistic need to prove the superiority of the town vs the city, and nothing you tell them about the city can be positive. This for example! City people hate football?? News to me! Better tell the Bears and the Giants to pack it in, the liberal city slickers aren't interested. And I spent the first 20 years of my life in a town of less than 2k people, 5 hours away from the nearest large city, so I say this from experience.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  This is just the level of quality to expect from arguments here now.
- poulsbohemian 4y ago
  I initiated that conversation because I notice that there are differences between kids raised in urban vs rural areas. I did not intend to insinuate that there is a "better" or "worse" so much as that if we are going to have a discussion on teen mental health, we should do so with an eye toward environmental conditions that create significant differences in outcomes.
torstenvl 4y ago
Mild cases of CTE (like those found in high school football players), if and when they are symptomatic, typically cause symptoms like... anxiety and depression. Which is worse: a risk of anxiety and depression among ~20% of the subset of young people who choose to play football, or fully realized anxiety and depression among ~44% of all young people? Safetyism is a cure that is literally worse than the disease.
- honkycat 4y ago
  So you are arguing that if football doesn't exist, 44% of all young people will be depressed? And that is why safetyism is bad? To be clear: they are talking about american football, not world football.
  - torstenvl 4y ago
    > From 2009 to 2021, the share of American high-school students who say they feel “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” rose from 26 percent to 44 percent, according to a new CDC study. It's literally in the first paragraph of the OP. It is a fact that anxiety and depression are increasing, not decreasing, as adults become more overprotective about things like letting kids play football.
    - blep_ 4y ago
      It is a fact that anxiety and depression are increasing, not decreasing, as the number of emoji in Unicode increases. Clearly we should ban emoji.

poulsbohemian 4y ago

Mostly agree. I see this in my own kids. One of them is heavily influenced by my ex. She's scared, timid, immature, socially awkward, because she's allowed her mother's insecurities and anxieties turn her into the same type of person - everything is scary, stay away from everything! My other two have spent more time with myself and my partner, and are practically Gen-X kids because we've raised them much more like we were raised.

random_hacker 4y ago
honkycat 4y ago
yeah this sounds like a super healthy attitude to have towards your child. Judge them because they seem like your ex. You seem lovely in general.
- poulsbohemian 4y ago
  Same thing I told the poster above: You should apologize immediately and reconsider how you treat strangers when you know nothing of their story. If you knew anything about my story or my kid's stories, you'd be ashamed of yourself.
  - honkycat 4y ago
    We are on an internet forum meant for discussion. I don't owe you a positive reaction to your comments. I've had a hard life too. Most of us have. It doesn't make you special. Two different people called it out as a red flag for the exact same reason. Because it was a mean thing to say about someone who relies on you and under your care. Deal with it. You probably are a fine person, but maybe you should be a bit more introspective and acknowledge that saying your daughter is a "scared, timid, immature, socially awkward" person, just like your ex-wife, is comically transparent in its resentment towards both of them. Also funny how their personality is everyone else's fault (society, your ex-wife's, the boogyman) but has left out one key player who participated in raising them.

Glawen 4y ago

>I think breathless doomsaying about climate change is a brilliant example. The overwhelming zeitgeist is one of learned helplessness. But the more people feel that global disaster is both imminent and inevitable, the fewer people will be motivated to work on the problem. I'm not living in the US, but this one buggers me a lot. In my country school they are "educating" children about climate change and pollution. My child, who is worrying about everything, is freaking out about the planet future and animals. This summer at the beach, he freaked out about microplastics in the sea and made sure I put the rubbish in the bin. The trouble is that all these pollution speech are always about disasters, they give no hope for future generations. This is the main issue in my opinion, there is no dream to look forward at the moment. Where are the dreams about flying cars and great cities? Robots serving us while we spend our lives at the beach?

antifa 4y ago
> Where are the dreams about flying cars and great cities? Robots serving us while we spend our lives at the beach? I'm surprised you're more upset about your kids knowing they have no future than that somebody sold your kids future.
- Glawen 4y ago
  Your comment is exactly what I complain about with school, it gives only a vision of global disaster and the culprits are us and our parents. We have no idea how it will turn out in the future, what global events are going to happen or whatnot. The only thing I'm sure: we are going to die someday and Earth will survive us. If humanity manages to kill itself by destroying the environment, so be it and we deserve to die. As for that somebody who sold my kids future, it always happened. Remember endless wars? The current 80 years without wars in Europe is an anomaly in history.
  - antifa 4y ago
    > and the culprits are us and our parents. That seems like a strawman, unless you own some oil derricks or personally moved some factory jobs to China.

welshwelsh 4y ago

If people were actually worried about climate change, they would do something about it. Like instituting a carbon tax, or banning private gas-powered vehicles. We should have don't that 30 years ago. There is nothing to "work on" here- we can solve climate change by simply voting to solve climate change. We just need everyone to agree that it's a problem and we should prioritize solving it. The problem is that tons of people either don't believe in climate change or don't care. There are still people who vote for conservatives in 2022, as ridiculous as that is. Until that changes, we need to talk MORE, not less, about climate change until the problem is solved. As for football - endangering one's health by playing American football is idiotic. It's a crappy game anyway, nothing is lost by spending that time riding a bicycle or playing videogames instead.

chung8123 4y ago
Even the people that believe in climate change do not change their habits. It is simple to not eat meat. Very few actually practice it.