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> Eric Levitz points out that life in the U.S. is much better, in terms of material standards, than it used to be back in the days when teen suicide rates were

> Eric Levitz points out that life in the U.S. is much better, in terms of material standards, than it used to be back in the days when teen suicide rates were much lower. In fact, if anything, wealth seems to make teens less happy; This point was followed about liberal politics, before diving into why it was the phone. Couldn't there be more of an effort to find what teens care about beyond money and politics ? I'd also give an alternative take: the state of society is horrible and teens care about the world they'll be living in. Sure phones make these issues more apparent, info flows faster, further. School shootings don't stay local news. Olympics Committee corruption is not burtied in the 20h news. Instagram pushes our esthetics stronger than previous media. Then can't the issue be that we're horrible and it's way more exposed than before ? The conclusion could have been to fix the world one step at a time, instead of going for the "close your eyes, shut your ears, hold your nose and you won't be bothered by the place you stand."

cnity 4y ago
I hear you, but the solution to a flawed world isn't to push a negatively biased narrative (because let's admit it) down teen's throats until they are committing suicide. The article does go into this and doesn't assert what you say it does. In fact it suggests cultivating a sense of "optimistic determination" in response to the challenges we face in the world, which is clearly not the vibe one gets when doomscrolling.
- jpgvm 4y ago
  Probably because the actions of those that have any power to change anything aren't exactly "optimistically determined". We have some of the most powerful men in the world attempting to start either another Cold War or at worst WW3. Existential challenges facing humanity aren't given the time of day compared to "hurrr durrr spy balloon!1!". Mass shootings go by and all anyone sees is some variation of "thoughts and prayers" yet nothing changes. When the people with the power show no willingness to improve a world which is on a downhill slope from the perspective of many young people I am not surprised that doomscrolling merely reflects reality back at you. Optimism needs to start with leaders that have the power to actually change things.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  I’d argue having people vocal about changing the narratives to discuss our issues would have a bigger impact than “optimistic determination”. I’m thinking about for instance what happened during #metoo. The narrative wasn’t about optimism, but sharing that many understand the victims’ struggle, they aren’t alone, and can come to the front to tell their stories. The same way telling people to not follow instagram has probably less impact than explaining how these photoshoots work, the money flow, the production staff behind, the eating disorders coming with these body styles etc. I’m basically thinking that fighting poisonous narratives with “don’t look at them” or “be optimistic anyway” isn’t the best approach when facing kids who don’t have enough background to understand why the these narratives are wrong in the first place.
  - cnity 4y ago
    It's possible we're interpreting the phrase differently. To me, "having people vocal about changing the narratives to discuss our issues" _is_ optimistic determination, because it indicates both a desire to make things better and a belief that they can. Because I agree with pretty much everything you're saying.
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  High school kids are only a few years away from being able to vote. Some of them already can. There's tremendous pressure on them to pick a tribe that will identify them politically and increasingly and sadly, limit their social interactions. For those who are trying to get near-future voters into their tribe, destroying teens isn't something that matters to them, they just want the teen's allegiance, hopefully lifelong. If some commit suicide, that's a lost vote, but all of the other votes the tribe gains is worth that death. Afterall, there's no consequence to the tribe itself beyond the lost potential voter.
tgv 4y ago
> the state of society is horrible and teens care about the world they'll be living in. I grew up with (the after effects of) an oil crisis, an economic crisis and a cold war. If you needed more doom, you could read the The Limits to Growth by the Club of Rome. We were called "the lost generation" because of the high unemployment rate. And I'd argue there have been situations which were considerably worse to grow up in. I've heard first-hand stories about growing up in the final days of the Soviet Union, which were tough to even listen to. So no, that's not a change that can account for the effect.
- BoxOfRain 4y ago
  I was on a course last year and one of my fellow pupils was a Russian man who'd moved to the UK a decade or so prior. When we were in the pub after one of the day's sessions he told me something that's stuck with me since: > People in the UK vote like their lives couldn't get any worse, but as someone who lived through the fall of the Soviet Union and Russia in the 1990s things can get so much worse than you realise.
- whstl 4y ago
  Half of my friends were born inside a city walled by a Warsaw-Pact state. I myself was born in a military dictatorship and we knew some houses were locked because the people there "disappeared" a few years before. The more I think about it, the more it feels like the 90s were an anomaly in history.
- arp242 4y ago
  I remember a (Dutch) programme about teens in the 80s; the motto among the youth was "no future". Programme in question (in Dutch only): https://anderetijden.nl/aflevering/286/No-Future https://anderetijden.nl/aflevering/286/No-Future TraumaZone ("What It Felt Like to Live Through The Collapse of Communism and Democracy") is a pretty good film about the final days of the USSR and 90s Russia by the way.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  Didn't these dark period also come with a pretty significant amount of diagnozed or not mental health issues, teen bullying and suicide, and overall deep impact on people ? I also have elder relatives who lived a decent part of their life in a third world country during the cold war and their stories are sprinkled with people dying early. I think that yes, the current generation probably doesn't have it the absolute worse (depending on where they live), but it's also not a contest. Which generation had it worse doesn't really matter much IMHO.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
The author fundamentally misunderstands depression. "You have it so great so why are you depressed?" Depression is almost always future-oriented - you get depressed because you don't see anything good happening to you in the future. Most depressed people will say that they can't even imagine the future, let alone imagine something good happening to them. If young people are depressed today, it likely means that they don't imagine good things - better jobs, family, health, relationships - coming their way in the future.
piaste 4y ago
> Sure phones make these issues more apparent, info flows faster, further. School shootings don't stay local news. Olympics Committee corruption is not burtied in the 20h news. Instagram pushes our esthetics stronger than previous media. > Then can't the issue be that we're horrible and it's way more exposed than before? Just because those problems are real, doesn't mean it's good or useful to have an endless stream of negativity and global problems mixed in with your everyday life. Either for you or for the world. Learning, at some point, that the Olympics are a profoundly corrupt institution is a good thing to be aware of. Having every latest scandal slammed in your face by your Twitter feed at 7 AM and ruining your morning poop is not. > The conclusion could have been to fix the world one step at a time, instead of going for the "close your eyes, shut your ears, hold your nose and you won't be bothered by the place you stand." False dichotomy. Problems can be real and in need of fixing, and yet blasting them out 24/7 to everyone can be harmful. Especially since we're talking about teenagers here.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  We're in agreement 24/7 manufactured outrage is a problem. My point is that we should address that problem, and potentially create/help teens find content that is more nutritious than that, and guide them to the better places instead of telling them to lock their ohone because they're too young for the internet. I'm basically advocating for better surfacing of the good parts of the net, and better moderation/flagging of the worst parts.
  - piaste 4y ago
    Ah, I thought your previous post meant "we should make the world less awful so that teenagers won't be exposed to that". Apologies. > My point is that we should address that problem, and potentially create/help teens find content that is more nutritious than that, and guide them to the better places instead of telling them to lock their ohone because they're too young for the internet. Those are just two ways of saying "teenagers shouldn't be given a raw twitter/reddit/tiktok feed, and should be spending their time on something more mentally healthy", aren't they? Whether that requires active restrictions or not depends on whether you believe you can make the mentally healthy activities more captivating than the doomscrolling.
fleddr 4y ago
We're not that horrible. The chronically online character overconsumes news, which is almost always bad news, as that grabs the attention. Complemented by hysterical, pessimistic social media grifters. When you almost exclusively consume the above, your world view will be deeply corrupted.

cnity 4y ago

I hear you, but the solution to a flawed world isn't to push a negatively biased narrative (because let's admit it) down teen's throats until they are committing suicide. The article does go into this and doesn't assert what you say it does. In fact it suggests cultivating a sense of "optimistic determination" in response to the challenges we face in the world, which is clearly not the vibe one gets when doomscrolling.

jpgvm 4y ago
Probably because the actions of those that have any power to change anything aren't exactly "optimistically determined". We have some of the most powerful men in the world attempting to start either another Cold War or at worst WW3. Existential challenges facing humanity aren't given the time of day compared to "hurrr durrr spy balloon!1!". Mass shootings go by and all anyone sees is some variation of "thoughts and prayers" yet nothing changes. When the people with the power show no willingness to improve a world which is on a downhill slope from the perspective of many young people I am not surprised that doomscrolling merely reflects reality back at you. Optimism needs to start with leaders that have the power to actually change things.
makeitdouble 4y ago
I’d argue having people vocal about changing the narratives to discuss our issues would have a bigger impact than “optimistic determination”. I’m thinking about for instance what happened during #metoo. The narrative wasn’t about optimism, but sharing that many understand the victims’ struggle, they aren’t alone, and can come to the front to tell their stories. The same way telling people to not follow instagram has probably less impact than explaining how these photoshoots work, the money flow, the production staff behind, the eating disorders coming with these body styles etc. I’m basically thinking that fighting poisonous narratives with “don’t look at them” or “be optimistic anyway” isn’t the best approach when facing kids who don’t have enough background to understand why the these narratives are wrong in the first place.
- cnity 4y ago
  It's possible we're interpreting the phrase differently. To me, "having people vocal about changing the narratives to discuss our issues" _is_ optimistic determination, because it indicates both a desire to make things better and a belief that they can. Because I agree with pretty much everything you're saying.
Mountain_Skies 4y ago
High school kids are only a few years away from being able to vote. Some of them already can. There's tremendous pressure on them to pick a tribe that will identify them politically and increasingly and sadly, limit their social interactions. For those who are trying to get near-future voters into their tribe, destroying teens isn't something that matters to them, they just want the teen's allegiance, hopefully lifelong. If some commit suicide, that's a lost vote, but all of the other votes the tribe gains is worth that death. Afterall, there's no consequence to the tribe itself beyond the lost potential voter.

tgv 4y ago

> the state of society is horrible and teens care about the world they'll be living in. I grew up with (the after effects of) an oil crisis, an economic crisis and a cold war. If you needed more doom, you could read the The Limits to Growth by the Club of Rome. We were called "the lost generation" because of the high unemployment rate. And I'd argue there have been situations which were considerably worse to grow up in. I've heard first-hand stories about growing up in the final days of the Soviet Union, which were tough to even listen to. So no, that's not a change that can account for the effect.

BoxOfRain 4y ago
I was on a course last year and one of my fellow pupils was a Russian man who'd moved to the UK a decade or so prior. When we were in the pub after one of the day's sessions he told me something that's stuck with me since: > People in the UK vote like their lives couldn't get any worse, but as someone who lived through the fall of the Soviet Union and Russia in the 1990s things can get so much worse than you realise.
whstl 4y ago
Half of my friends were born inside a city walled by a Warsaw-Pact state. I myself was born in a military dictatorship and we knew some houses were locked because the people there "disappeared" a few years before. The more I think about it, the more it feels like the 90s were an anomaly in history.
arp242 4y ago
I remember a (Dutch) programme about teens in the 80s; the motto among the youth was "no future". Programme in question (in Dutch only): https://anderetijden.nl/aflevering/286/No-Future https://anderetijden.nl/aflevering/286/No-Future TraumaZone ("What It Felt Like to Live Through The Collapse of Communism and Democracy") is a pretty good film about the final days of the USSR and 90s Russia by the way.
makeitdouble 4y ago
Didn't these dark period also come with a pretty significant amount of diagnozed or not mental health issues, teen bullying and suicide, and overall deep impact on people ? I also have elder relatives who lived a decent part of their life in a third world country during the cold war and their stories are sprinkled with people dying early. I think that yes, the current generation probably doesn't have it the absolute worse (depending on where they live), but it's also not a contest. Which generation had it worse doesn't really matter much IMHO.

spaceman_2020 4y ago

The author fundamentally misunderstands depression. "You have it so great so why are you depressed?" Depression is almost always future-oriented - you get depressed because you don't see anything good happening to you in the future. Most depressed people will say that they can't even imagine the future, let alone imagine something good happening to them. If young people are depressed today, it likely means that they don't imagine good things - better jobs, family, health, relationships - coming their way in the future.

piaste 4y ago

> Sure phones make these issues more apparent, info flows faster, further. School shootings don't stay local news. Olympics Committee corruption is not burtied in the 20h news. Instagram pushes our esthetics stronger than previous media. > Then can't the issue be that we're horrible and it's way more exposed than before? Just because those problems are real, doesn't mean it's good or useful to have an endless stream of negativity and global problems mixed in with your everyday life. Either for you or for the world. Learning, at some point, that the Olympics are a profoundly corrupt institution is a good thing to be aware of. Having every latest scandal slammed in your face by your Twitter feed at 7 AM and ruining your morning poop is not. > The conclusion could have been to fix the world one step at a time, instead of going for the "close your eyes, shut your ears, hold your nose and you won't be bothered by the place you stand." False dichotomy. Problems can be real and in need of fixing, and yet blasting them out 24/7 to everyone can be harmful. Especially since we're talking about teenagers here.

makeitdouble 4y ago
We're in agreement 24/7 manufactured outrage is a problem. My point is that we should address that problem, and potentially create/help teens find content that is more nutritious than that, and guide them to the better places instead of telling them to lock their ohone because they're too young for the internet. I'm basically advocating for better surfacing of the good parts of the net, and better moderation/flagging of the worst parts.
- piaste 4y ago
  Ah, I thought your previous post meant "we should make the world less awful so that teenagers won't be exposed to that". Apologies. > My point is that we should address that problem, and potentially create/help teens find content that is more nutritious than that, and guide them to the better places instead of telling them to lock their ohone because they're too young for the internet. Those are just two ways of saying "teenagers shouldn't be given a raw twitter/reddit/tiktok feed, and should be spending their time on something more mentally healthy", aren't they? Whether that requires active restrictions or not depends on whether you believe you can make the mentally healthy activities more captivating than the doomscrolling.

fleddr 4y ago

We're not that horrible. The chronically online character overconsumes news, which is almost always bad news, as that grabs the attention. Complemented by hysterical, pessimistic social media grifters. When you almost exclusively consume the above, your world view will be deeply corrupted.