13 ms·

The article has a point, but there's no proof for cause & effect. A completely different explanation could be that our societies are so advanced by now that we

The article has a point, but there's no proof for cause & effect. A completely different explanation could be that our societies are so advanced by now that we can finally listen to mental illnesses and take them seriously - while in the past people just had to 'function', no matter what.

extasia 4y ago
That wouldn't explain such a drastic rise in one demographic (teenagers)
- TylerE 4y ago
  Everything has changed. You can’t look at one thing in isolation. Todays teens are not the teens of the Boomer generation. Was t that long enough that many were married by the time they hit 20.
- PuppyTailWags 4y ago
  It might, since "teenager" is about a decade, and the opening paragraph cites... about a decade ago.
  - loup-vaillant 4y ago
    Your argument also applies to toddlers (1-10), Young students & workers (20-30), established workers (30-40)… pretty much any decade actually. So no. It might not. Not for the reason you say at least. Improvements in diagnosis, self awareness and hospitalisation rates would have to happen specifically to teenagers, and unless someone can cite a specific reason why this is the case I just don't believe it. The increase is real.
    - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
      Not necessarily; teenagers are 1) still under parental health insurance and therefore can get medical care, 2) broadly have adults looking out for them in a way adults don't look out for other adults, 3) are capable of self-introspection and increased communication capacity as well as self-identification in a way children are not, 4) have the agency to advocate for their mental health needs in a way children cannot.. Broadly if we are going to respect mental health more, the one cohort that is broadly capable of receiving mental health assessment medically, has enough agency to introspect to their own mental health, and still generally have adults responsible for their wellbeing, aka teenagers, are most likely to reveal this.
      - loup-vaillant 4y ago
        I guess it makes sense… the difference in how much other people are affected however is so stark that this does suggest a generational thing. And then there are the hospitalisation rates. Did we lower the seriousness threshold to get our kids to the hospital? Unless they were talking about psychiatry hospitals that doesn't seem likely.
        PuppyTailWags 4y ago
        Frankly it might just be that children's desire to kill themselves wasn't considered something to hospitalize for in the past. I knew when I was a teenager I participated in all sorts of nonsense and said all sorts of shit to adults around me, and most of the adults just told me to man up and stop being a pussy about it. Now that I'm an adult, I can see times where I definitely should've been considered to evaluation as a suicide risk.
- ilammy 4y ago
  Explains it rather well: older people dismiss their symptoms as “not real illness” because that’s what society taught them when they were kids.
  - loup-vaillant 4y ago
    Would a decrease in such dismissal would also explain the increase in hospitalisation rates for self harm? I personally doubt it. (Edit: and whoever downvoted me would help a great deal by explaining how exactly an increase in hospitalisation rates are an indication that we take this stuff more seriously. A wound remains a wound.)
    - kbelder 4y ago
      I think it might. I firmly believe that mental issues can be compounded by too much empathy and care. Too much 'awareness'. Sometimes sucking it up is, psychologically, the right answer, and results in a more resilient individual. (Not all the time, perhaps not most of the time. But sometimes.)
  - Mordisquitos 4y ago
    To me that seems like a purely post-hoc argument with no evidence to justify it. For instance, imagine that the data were showing the opposite effect, that is, adults having a significantly greater increase in depression and anxiety than teenagers. If that were the case, one could just as easily argue that it fits with the "our societies are so advanced that we can listen to mental illnesses" hypothesis quite well, because adults have the autonomy, resources, and maturity to get the attention they need to tackle their issues and symptoms. Teenagers don't, on the other hand, as they depend on their teachers and guardians and older adults often dismiss kids' symptoms as “not real illness” and just angst and moodiness.
    - frumper 4y ago
      In my experience, adults seem just as quick to dismiss other adults issues as "not real problems"
- izzydata 4y ago
  Teenagers are yet to be broken in adults who accept things aren't going to change.
- onos 4y ago
  Nor the sudden increase among this demographic.
- bluescrn 4y ago
  Take away the social media, and I suspect the teens would have far fewer mental health problems.
  - tenebrisalietum 4y ago
    or would they just be less visible and less talked about?
    - ripsawridge 4y ago
      Since social contagion is part of the problem, that would already be an improvement.
Forgeties79 4y ago
Just like divorce rates in some ways. It’s because it wasn’t really an option for many (typically women) until recently. The social and financial repercussions were too severe.
cornholio 4y ago
While I agree there is no statistical proof in the article, it's a very strong hypothesis: we somehow only 'listen' to the mental problems of female teens, who see geometric increases in self harm, suicide and various disorders, twice or three times the pre-social media levels. Yet other categories see linear or token increases. Could it be just a coincidence that young females are exactly the demographic that is constrained by a gender role where aesthetic appeal and social interactions are the most valuable assets? And those are exactly the type of things that social networks exploited, monetized and massively gamified in the last decade? What's more likely: a rapid change of the cultural norms and roles associated with growing up as a woman or of those related to recognizing and treating mental health issues (all in a single decade!); OR: a purely technical revolution that put interactive screens in the hands of each kid and made the former much more effective in harming their development and leading to the latter? At least for the young female demographic, I think there is a massive burden of proof for anyone claiming the epidemics is not social-media induced.
- giantg2 4y ago
  "that is constrained by a gender role where aesthetic appeal and social interactions are the most valuable assets?" In theory we should have seen a spike and then slow decline as gender norms and roles continue to become less segregating. "Yet other categories see linear or token increases." Yeah, because other categories may manifest their problems differently. Such as young men turning to violence and drugs more than intentional self-harm (almost the inverse of young women). That doesn't mean it's not the problem, just that it's not such a great proof.
  - cornholio 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
      > And it's no coincidence young female teens are by far the most susceptible to transition to the opposite role: social media tells them "they were born in the wrong bodies". Um, statistically, trans women are more common than trans men.
giantg2 4y ago
One possible contributing explaination that I don't see addressed is that our lifestyles and opportunities have peaked in prior generations and are backsliding. Technology and politics are so invasive that you can't necessarily get a fresh start somewhere else. Young people realize this and figure "why even try". The difference in boys and girls with the graphs are that boys tend to act out and girls tend to self harm. Who knows if this is a possibile contributor or not. Would be interesting to look into.
artificialLimbs 4y ago
Maybe we should look at ways to get back to 'just functioning'.
- brabel 4y ago
  I may be old fashioned, but learning to "just function" instead of constantly crying and expecting the world to listen to me and be the way I want it to be is just called growing up.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    My life would be so much easier if someone I know would just grow up.
    - artificialLimbs 4y ago
      You could try taking as much responsibility for this person as you can instead of casting yourself as a victim of them. Alternatively, sometimes one has to cut people out of their life because one is insufficiently advanced to accomodate the others' deficiencies.
      - giantg2 4y ago
        "You could try taking as much responsibility for this person as you can instead of casting yourself as a victim of them." Taking that extra responsibility is what makes life difficult.
- vore 4y ago
  It's easy to say this when you're not on the wrong end.
  - artificialLimbs 4y ago
    You expect the people who are 'on the wrong end' to say it? What is your alternative? Non functioning is what we should strive for or promote?
scythe 4y ago
>A completely different explanation could be that [...] we can finally listen The article references massive increases in ER admits for self-harm, among similar data. That isn't a matter of "listening". Haidt continually publishes detailed analyses and meets with retorts like this that obviously didn't engage at all with the content.
- WeylandYutani 4y ago
  Statistics like that don't always make sense. Prior to the 1960s you will barely find incest in any official report because society wasn't ready to talk about it.
paganel 4y ago
> A completely different explanation could be that our societies are so advanced by now that we can finally listen to mental illnesses and take them seriously I lived in the Eastern Europe of the 1980s and the 1990s, not the best of times, economically speaking. I used to play football with Rroma children that were walking strange, at least that's how it looked to child-me, only later to find out that most probably they had been afflicted by polio in the past. All this to say that things were tough. Even so, as a kid back then I had no acquaintances of my age who were harming themselves or, the worst of all, who were off-ing themselves. We would have known, kids used to know this sort of stuff because we were almost always outside, playing together. Suffice is to say that things are now totally different. I've heard of kids harming themselves at 11-12 years of age and I know of a young lady who took her own life (at 16 or 17). Again, that was unimaginable 30 to 40 years ago.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  Is it at least partly a case of getting what you incentivize? I was a teen in the 1980s, never knew of anyone who harmed himself other than accidentally. But we also didn't have doctors and counselors incessantly asking if we were depressed, or thinking of hurting ourselves. A kid today who says "yes" to either of those questions is going to find he's getting heaps of attention all of a sudden. I have been thinking about this because I was at an orthopedist this week for an orthopedic isssue and I had to answer their "depression screening" questions. Trying to decide if these are being pushed by big pharma to get more people on antidepression meds or where else this might be coming from. The whole time I'm jsut thinking "you people aren't mental health specialists, or even general practioners, why are you asking me these irrelevant questions"
nradov 4y ago
To some extent just functioning no matter what is protective against certain mental illnesses. Exhibiting the overt symptoms of a mental illness can sometimes cause the illness to become more severe in a feedback loop. Cognitive behavioral therapy has been proven effective in treating many mental illnesses and works in part by giving patients the mental tools they need to just function.
julosflb 4y ago
I would think this would equally affect both boys and girls.
lordnacho 4y ago
The issue with that explanation is the synchronous timing. Why would it happen over the last 10 years or so, across a bunch of countries?
Tiktaalik 4y ago
It could be that yes we're finally just now listening, but that doesn't explain the crazy spike in self harm

extasia 4y ago

That wouldn't explain such a drastic rise in one demographic (teenagers)

TylerE 4y ago
Everything has changed. You can’t look at one thing in isolation. Todays teens are not the teens of the Boomer generation. Was t that long enough that many were married by the time they hit 20.
PuppyTailWags 4y ago
It might, since "teenager" is about a decade, and the opening paragraph cites... about a decade ago.
- loup-vaillant 4y ago
  Your argument also applies to toddlers (1-10), Young students & workers (20-30), established workers (30-40)… pretty much any decade actually. So no. It might not. Not for the reason you say at least. Improvements in diagnosis, self awareness and hospitalisation rates would have to happen specifically to teenagers, and unless someone can cite a specific reason why this is the case I just don't believe it. The increase is real.
  - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
    Not necessarily; teenagers are 1) still under parental health insurance and therefore can get medical care, 2) broadly have adults looking out for them in a way adults don't look out for other adults, 3) are capable of self-introspection and increased communication capacity as well as self-identification in a way children are not, 4) have the agency to advocate for their mental health needs in a way children cannot.. Broadly if we are going to respect mental health more, the one cohort that is broadly capable of receiving mental health assessment medically, has enough agency to introspect to their own mental health, and still generally have adults responsible for their wellbeing, aka teenagers, are most likely to reveal this.
    - loup-vaillant 4y ago
      I guess it makes sense… the difference in how much other people are affected however is so stark that this does suggest a generational thing. And then there are the hospitalisation rates. Did we lower the seriousness threshold to get our kids to the hospital? Unless they were talking about psychiatry hospitals that doesn't seem likely.
      - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
        Frankly it might just be that children's desire to kill themselves wasn't considered something to hospitalize for in the past. I knew when I was a teenager I participated in all sorts of nonsense and said all sorts of shit to adults around me, and most of the adults just told me to man up and stop being a pussy about it. Now that I'm an adult, I can see times where I definitely should've been considered to evaluation as a suicide risk.
ilammy 4y ago
Explains it rather well: older people dismiss their symptoms as “not real illness” because that’s what society taught them when they were kids.
- loup-vaillant 4y ago
  Would a decrease in such dismissal would also explain the increase in hospitalisation rates for self harm? I personally doubt it. (Edit: and whoever downvoted me would help a great deal by explaining how exactly an increase in hospitalisation rates are an indication that we take this stuff more seriously. A wound remains a wound.)
  - kbelder 4y ago
    I think it might. I firmly believe that mental issues can be compounded by too much empathy and care. Too much 'awareness'. Sometimes sucking it up is, psychologically, the right answer, and results in a more resilient individual. (Not all the time, perhaps not most of the time. But sometimes.)
- Mordisquitos 4y ago
  To me that seems like a purely post-hoc argument with no evidence to justify it. For instance, imagine that the data were showing the opposite effect, that is, adults having a significantly greater increase in depression and anxiety than teenagers. If that were the case, one could just as easily argue that it fits with the "our societies are so advanced that we can listen to mental illnesses" hypothesis quite well, because adults have the autonomy, resources, and maturity to get the attention they need to tackle their issues and symptoms. Teenagers don't, on the other hand, as they depend on their teachers and guardians and older adults often dismiss kids' symptoms as “not real illness” and just angst and moodiness.
  - frumper 4y ago
    In my experience, adults seem just as quick to dismiss other adults issues as "not real problems"
izzydata 4y ago
Teenagers are yet to be broken in adults who accept things aren't going to change.
onos 4y ago
Nor the sudden increase among this demographic.
bluescrn 4y ago
Take away the social media, and I suspect the teens would have far fewer mental health problems.
- tenebrisalietum 4y ago
  or would they just be less visible and less talked about?
  - ripsawridge 4y ago
    Since social contagion is part of the problem, that would already be an improvement.

Forgeties79 4y ago

Just like divorce rates in some ways. It’s because it wasn’t really an option for many (typically women) until recently. The social and financial repercussions were too severe.

cornholio 4y ago

While I agree there is no statistical proof in the article, it's a very strong hypothesis: we somehow only 'listen' to the mental problems of female teens, who see geometric increases in self harm, suicide and various disorders, twice or three times the pre-social media levels. Yet other categories see linear or token increases. Could it be just a coincidence that young females are exactly the demographic that is constrained by a gender role where aesthetic appeal and social interactions are the most valuable assets? And those are exactly the type of things that social networks exploited, monetized and massively gamified in the last decade? What's more likely: a rapid change of the cultural norms and roles associated with growing up as a woman or of those related to recognizing and treating mental health issues (all in a single decade!); OR: a purely technical revolution that put interactive screens in the hands of each kid and made the former much more effective in harming their development and leading to the latter? At least for the young female demographic, I think there is a massive burden of proof for anyone claiming the epidemics is not social-media induced.

giantg2 4y ago
"that is constrained by a gender role where aesthetic appeal and social interactions are the most valuable assets?" In theory we should have seen a spike and then slow decline as gender norms and roles continue to become less segregating. "Yet other categories see linear or token increases." Yeah, because other categories may manifest their problems differently. Such as young men turning to violence and drugs more than intentional self-harm (almost the inverse of young women). That doesn't mean it's not the problem, just that it's not such a great proof.
- cornholio 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
    > And it's no coincidence young female teens are by far the most susceptible to transition to the opposite role: social media tells them "they were born in the wrong bodies". Um, statistically, trans women are more common than trans men.

giantg2 4y ago

One possible contributing explaination that I don't see addressed is that our lifestyles and opportunities have peaked in prior generations and are backsliding. Technology and politics are so invasive that you can't necessarily get a fresh start somewhere else. Young people realize this and figure "why even try". The difference in boys and girls with the graphs are that boys tend to act out and girls tend to self harm. Who knows if this is a possibile contributor or not. Would be interesting to look into.

artificialLimbs 4y ago

Maybe we should look at ways to get back to 'just functioning'.

brabel 4y ago
I may be old fashioned, but learning to "just function" instead of constantly crying and expecting the world to listen to me and be the way I want it to be is just called growing up.
- giantg2 4y ago
  My life would be so much easier if someone I know would just grow up.
  - artificialLimbs 4y ago
    You could try taking as much responsibility for this person as you can instead of casting yourself as a victim of them. Alternatively, sometimes one has to cut people out of their life because one is insufficiently advanced to accomodate the others' deficiencies.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      "You could try taking as much responsibility for this person as you can instead of casting yourself as a victim of them." Taking that extra responsibility is what makes life difficult.
vore 4y ago
It's easy to say this when you're not on the wrong end.
- artificialLimbs 4y ago
  You expect the people who are 'on the wrong end' to say it? What is your alternative? Non functioning is what we should strive for or promote?

scythe 4y ago

>A completely different explanation could be that [...] we can finally listen The article references massive increases in ER admits for self-harm, among similar data. That isn't a matter of "listening". Haidt continually publishes detailed analyses and meets with retorts like this that obviously didn't engage at all with the content.

WeylandYutani 4y ago
Statistics like that don't always make sense. Prior to the 1960s you will barely find incest in any official report because society wasn't ready to talk about it.

paganel 4y ago

> A completely different explanation could be that our societies are so advanced by now that we can finally listen to mental illnesses and take them seriously I lived in the Eastern Europe of the 1980s and the 1990s, not the best of times, economically speaking. I used to play football with Rroma children that were walking strange, at least that's how it looked to child-me, only later to find out that most probably they had been afflicted by polio in the past. All this to say that things were tough. Even so, as a kid back then I had no acquaintances of my age who were harming themselves or, the worst of all, who were off-ing themselves. We would have known, kids used to know this sort of stuff because we were almost always outside, playing together. Suffice is to say that things are now totally different. I've heard of kids harming themselves at 11-12 years of age and I know of a young lady who took her own life (at 16 or 17). Again, that was unimaginable 30 to 40 years ago.

SoftTalker 4y ago
Is it at least partly a case of getting what you incentivize? I was a teen in the 1980s, never knew of anyone who harmed himself other than accidentally. But we also didn't have doctors and counselors incessantly asking if we were depressed, or thinking of hurting ourselves. A kid today who says "yes" to either of those questions is going to find he's getting heaps of attention all of a sudden. I have been thinking about this because I was at an orthopedist this week for an orthopedic isssue and I had to answer their "depression screening" questions. Trying to decide if these are being pushed by big pharma to get more people on antidepression meds or where else this might be coming from. The whole time I'm jsut thinking "you people aren't mental health specialists, or even general practioners, why are you asking me these irrelevant questions"

nradov 4y ago

To some extent just functioning no matter what is protective against certain mental illnesses. Exhibiting the overt symptoms of a mental illness can sometimes cause the illness to become more severe in a feedback loop. Cognitive behavioral therapy has been proven effective in treating many mental illnesses and works in part by giving patients the mental tools they need to just function.

julosflb 4y ago

I would think this would equally affect both boys and girls.

lordnacho 4y ago

The issue with that explanation is the synchronous timing. Why would it happen over the last 10 years or so, across a bunch of countries?

Tiktaalik 4y ago

It could be that yes we're finally just now listening, but that doesn't explain the crazy spike in self harm