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D.A.R.E. to Keep Kids Off Social Media Wages stagnated since 1980. Rents doubling every decade. Dead-end service jobs. Unpayable student loans. Social Security

D.A.R.E. to Keep Kids Off Social Media Wages stagnated since 1980. Rents doubling every decade. Dead-end service jobs. Unpayable student loans. Social Security payments going to IOUs instead of retirements. Lying politicians and chief corporate officers making bank on the backs of the working poor. 30% credit card interest. Delaying childbirth to make rent until it's too late. GMO and processed foods poisoning giving an obese population autoimmune disease. Republicans gerrymandering elections. Democrats supporting neoliberal colonialism. A burning natural world set to end between 2050 and 2100. The list of threats to anyone younger than 50 is so infinite and growing so rapidly that social media is the new drugs in the endless war on youth culture. You know, the one that inconveniently lists the problems and solutions only to be told over and over again to sacrifice their dreams and get serious and study and get a job, that it's all in their heads.

ajsnigrutin 3y ago
Yep, this is how you get violent revolutions... people look at the average rent and an average paycheck/pension, realize they literally have nothing left to lose, and once they realize who's to blame, things (sometimes literally) explode. Luckily (/s) we have social media to shift blame off of politicians to other groups of people, to fight eachother instead of the ones who profit from all this.
- adversaryIdiot 3y ago
  Luckily we have social media to divide and conqueror us. and more media and junk food to keep us in our homes. Only thing in question now is the home.
  - 93po 3y ago
    Also social media that cracks down violently on dissenting opinions and negativity of any sort. Try to find a non-mainstream political subreddit - they've all been banned.
- KoftaBob 3y ago
  > once they realize who's to blame You mean the NIMBYs in their metro area that try to slow down new housing production as much as possible?
  - ajsnigrutin 3y ago
    There's a tiny percentage of those, compared to people either paying too much for housing, having adults "kids" at home, trying to get a bigger place, or get rid of roommates. There are a few large investors in housing markets though, who have a lot more political power than a few karens in mcmansions.
- boondoggle16 3y ago
  Who does profit from all this? I know that all of the mainstream media corporations (NBC, Comcast, Disney, etc) are all owned by a small number of parent corps, with a small group of trusted leadership that hires each other. What about other industries? Do leaders and founders of all these influential industries have anything in common? Tech, banking, media, the industries that influence our youth?
- soulofmischief 3y ago
  Unfortunately, most of our population in the US at least is not fit for sustained insurgence. I also doubt their willingness/capability to be trained. Most of the action will probably follow a power law. It may very well be that the most motivated folk will be those with something to lose.
wetmore 3y ago
I'm with you that these are major issues, and ones that impact my mental health as someone in my 30s, but I sort of doubt these problems are the main contributors to the mental health crises among young people. Social media and phones have had a huge negative impact on the amount of time young people spend together in person and have amplified the stakes of one's social life. Maybe I'm forgetting what it was like to be young but I'd guess these impacts are a lot more relevant to the mental health of children and teenagers.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > Social media and phones have had a huge negative impact on the amount of time young people spend together in person and have amplified the stakes of one's social life Social media and phones are what youth had left, after adults systemically wiped out every inch of their development environment. I'm an early genx; the last generation to grow up free of constant supervision. I went everywhere by myself and learned countless critical self-sufficiency and social skills - skill building that was utterly and thoroughly denied to my own kids. That is, my kids risked their parents being charged if they were capably on their own. My kids had nowhere to go if they tried to be independent. Were my kids to risk having some ambition, they also risked adult-sized punishments for kid-sized transgressions. We couldn't have designed a more stunting experience, short of tossing kids in forced-labor gulags.
  - badpun 3y ago
    > That is, my kids risked their parents being charged if they were capably on their own. My kids had nowhere to go if they tried to be independent. Were my kids to risk having some ambition, they also risked adult-sized punishments for kid-sized transgressions. I'm not from the US, so my question is sincere. Is the situation the same across all states? You'd think the states self-describing as "freedom loving" wouldn't interfere with parenthood as much.
    - cmh89 3y ago
      Generally conservative states are going to have the government more involved with how kids are raised as a method of social control. I'm in a liberal part of the country and I see kids walking/biking around all the time, while the conservative state I grew up in would almost certainly have the police at least stop them and probably take them home. The 'parental freedom' stuff is really just the 'you're free to not ensure your children are educated'.
jl6 3y ago
> A burning natural world set to end between 2050 and 2100 What exactly are you thinking will constitute the end of the world?
- arbitrary_name 3y ago
  The ocean no longer is able to provide calories for the billion+ who friend in it as their primary source. Other food sources are impacted by drought, supply chain disruptions, flooding etc. Large scale migration triggers political instability, revolutions. Raw materials and inputs fundamental to our way of life become more expensive to obtain due to supply chain disruptions, driving living costs up and creating political tension. While i don't think the world or civilization to end, i think a lot of people discount how much line can get worse and more uncomfortable for billions, especially in the wealthier parts of the world. This is major first world problems but: good prices are higher due to droughts and then flooding. Housing prices have risen in part due to reduction in housing inventory and supply due to flooding, wildfires and increasing fire insurance costs. My recreation options are limited due to so many parks being closed to due to landslides, storm damage, fire damage or fire risk. Taxes are increasing in my area due to the increasing cost of maintaining infrastructure due to both flooding and fire damage, storm surges and other sources. In California, one of the wealthiest places in the world, climate change is already gently and subtly eroding our quality of life. Things can get much much worse in the next few decades, and likely will.
  - jl6 3y ago
    I’m totally on board with the idea that drastic action is needed, but the motte-and-bailey[0] argumentation on display here is counterproductive - it makes people distrustful of the action plan, or worse, feel hopeless and apathetic. [0] The headline says the world is ending, the smallprint clarifies that no, actually, it’s not.
KoftaBob 3y ago
> Wages stagnated since 1980 Not sure how you're defining "stagnated", but Real Weekly Wages have continuously gone up since 1980: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q > Rents doubling every decade. Nope, the average increase per decade is 42%, not 100%: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUR0000SEHA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUR0000SEHA > 30% credit card interest Nope, the latest rate is ~20%, and that only comes into play if you don't pay your credit card bill in full, and I'm not about to get into the topic of financial responsibility: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TERMCBCCALLNS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TERMCBCCALLNS > Delaying childbirth to make rent until it's too late. "In 1960, the group of women with the largest share of first births was 20 to 24 years old (43%). In 2018, first births among women occurred most often between ages 25 to 29 (29%)." 25 to 29 is nowhere near "too late". > A burning natural world set to end between 2050 and 2100. I don't even know where to begin with this one
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  > Not sure how you're defining "stagnated", but Real Weekly Wages have continuously gone up since 1980: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q Wages definitely stagnated in 1980 (your chart shows $319 for both 1980 and 1998, for example, and it's visibly pretty flat for those two decades), and they've continued to be decoupled from productivity and corporate profits. "Trickle-down" turned out to be mostly pee. https://www.epi.org/blog/growing-inequalities-reflecting-growing-employer-power-have-generated-a-productivity-pay-gap-since-1979-productivity-has-grown-3-5-times-as-much-as-pay-for-the-typical-worker/ https://www.epi.org/blog/growing-inequalities-reflecting-gro...
  - KoftaBob 3y ago
    The gap between productivity and wages has indeed grown, but that doesn't mean the same thing as Real Wages (adjusted for inflation) stagnating, as they have not done that.
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
moneycantbuy 3y ago
i agree except for the GMO part. modern diet is pretty ill though. some of your points are slightly exaggerated but not by much. as someone now in their 40’s, affordable housing has been the biggest one. worked my whole life but still had to live with housemates and couldn’t save much if any money. finally got a higher paying job at a pharma company in the bay area a few years ago, still can’t afford to buy a house or have kids.
Calvin02 3y ago
You forgot music videos and magazines!! I remember a time when music videos and magazines were the leading causes of teen mental health decline. Also, what is social media? My nieces and nephews spend more time on messaging than they do on TT or IG. Let’s say we get rid of TT and IG, do we think that all the issues surrounding YA mental health will go away?
thatfrenchguy 3y ago
> A burning natural world set to end between 2050 and 2100 Eh, climate change is a really big problem but you can't go around saying "the world is set to end between 2050 and 2100", it's obviously untrue and demotivating.
- runarberg 3y ago
  Most recent IPCC report stated that we are very likely to hit 1.5° in the next five years. If all our current policies hold, and we don’t continue to increase our annual emissions we will likely be looking at 2.7° - 3.2° at the end of this century. At 3° the oceans die. I think it is safe to say that the world as we know it is very likely coming to an end between 2050 and 2100. We will be living in a far more inhospitable planet in 2050.
  - interroboink 3y ago
    > At 3° the oceans die. I appreciate that it's hard to communicate fuzzy concepts with lots of unknowns succinctly, but this seems overly-alarmist and simplistic to me. Or maybe I'm wrong; do you have some reputable sources? Here's one of mine[1], indicating (paraphrased) "5° by 2100 would result in a mass extinction in the next 300 years." And I'd note that even mass extinction is not the same as "the oceans die." Agreed about big changes to "the world as we know it", though. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-warn-of-looming-mass-ocean-extinction/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-warn-o...
    - uoaei 3y ago
      * sharks and bat rays in the SF bay were dying of a brain fungus that resulted from decreased salinity from the excessive rain we got a couple months ago * the size and severity of algal blooms are increasing across the world * this year's crab season was delayed (initially predicted to be nonexistent) because the ocean currents and especially the depth of cold waters changed so drastically from last year etc., etc. These examples are only from this year. We could also point to starfish dissolving, coral bleaching, etc. which have been going on longer. Temperature is only an indicator, but there are many other nth-order effects which result from the changes to the climate that also severely disrupt life processes. We can be sure that the ocean won't "die", but if biodiversity continues to tank the way it has been, we will see an accelerating rate of decline in the health of the oceans and consequently the people whose lives and livelihoods depend on the ocean (somewhere around 1 billion people). Knock-on effects are hard to conceptualize but well worth fully exploring.
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lbrito 3y ago
Slightly off-topic, but coming from a country where credit card interest rates are around 15% _per month_, I was amused to find people complaining about 22% _per year_ interests in North America.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  I imagine rates are determined largely by the general state of the economy (if you currently have a job, how likely are you to lose it?), the amount of data the creditor can gather on potential debtors (what are your wages and current debts?), and the credit card company's ability to efficiently collect on debts. I wouldn't be surprised if the collections process is easier in the US than in other countries. The economy is not great right now, but credit card companies can also limit your credit to make sure that you don't borrow more than they expect to be able to collect later. And they can see what your existing debts and monthly payments look like, which allows them to de-risk their lending.
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    I would guess that consumer credit is much looser in USA than many other places. Like I had changed a job and couldn't get a credit card with 1000€ limit. Automated system simply blocked it. This looseness is great boost for economy, but on other side it also means credit risk and thus the interest levels must be higher to in general to cover those losses.
    - gnicholas 3y ago
      > This looseness is great boost for economy, but on other side it also means credit risk and thus the interest levels must be higher to in general to cover those losses. But it sounds like US interest rates are lower than some other places, based on GP's comment.
    - rightbyte 3y ago
      > This looseness is great boost for economy Is it? People get like one month worth of 'wage after rent, fuel and food' with a CC. Only once.
Aunche 3y ago
If you look at literally any point in history, you're going to see what seems like "infinite problems". Even if you're 100% right that we face an unprecedented number of problems, this take still doesn't make any sense. You acknowledge that we have a lot of "real problems" that can occur simultaneously, but when it comes to social media, that is somehow a fake problem? The solutions proposed by controlling social media are very mild such as prohibiting phone use in class, and they aren't very popular. Yet somehow this is akin to the War on Drugs, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people in several countries?
armchairhacker 3y ago
Okok but I think kids just use social media to connect with each other, because it’s easier and more common than meeting up in-person, especially today. Plenty of other things to distract yourself from existential dread (video games, movies, streams and shows, actual drugs) and learn about that stuff (the news).
ericmcer 3y ago
People aren’t generally affected by issues that are out of sight like those you list. A classmate saying something critical about an teenagers appearance will be 100x more impactful than the rainforests imminent disappearance.
- dr_orpheus 3y ago
  Mark Zuckerburg's quote: "a squirrel dying in your front yard may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa"
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - goodpoint 3y ago
    That says a lot about Zuckerburg. Unsurprisingly.
- Loquebantur 3y ago
  They aren't generally not affected either? People care about things relevant to subjects they have an emotional connection to already. This system of inference is different between individuals of course. The relevant question should be, why do so many people care about ultimately meaningless stuff? That's what GP was on about in my opinion, people telling children authoritatively what is or isn't important while being obviously wrong about it.
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  Things like pollution, food price inflation, and craptastic government policies are far from out of sight because they impact families directly, even if teens don't fully appreciate all the ramifications.
somethingreen 3y ago
The idea that any of these would normally worry an average young teen is hilarious to me. I grew up during cold war, USSR collapse, multiple wars in the region. At no point was I (or any of my peers to my knowledge) gravely concerned for our future. Because none of us yet had any idea what our normal future is supposed to look like. The only way these mild horrors get into children heads is, again, through social media.
- demindiro 3y ago
  We have a hot war right now on the border of the EU that likely will escalate further. I'm sure China has plans too.
  - marcusverus 3y ago
    Why would China have plans? China is well on their way to becoming the unrivaled military power of the world in the next couple of decades. All they have to do is wait and let the current trends play out. The only possible way to derail their ascent is a premature war--economic or otherwise--with the west.
    - arbitrary_name 3y ago
      I do not think this is necessarily the case. Their population is ageing rapidly, with due consequences for the company between citizens and the CCP. Internal tendons between the rich coastal regions, attracting all the labor, and the hollowed out interior could cause issues. I don't think their ascendancy is necessity assured.
  - HaZeust 3y ago
    I mean, barring legitimacy on 2023 doom-and-gloom rhetoric, those who grew up during the Cold War do have this generation beat when it comes to warmongery worries. Problem is, there was not nearly as much domestic disarray back then - and there was still a sense of unity.
    - 3y ago
BeetleB 3y ago
Now can you also list the ways things are better than in 1980? Perspective, and context are relevant. People in countries that have always been worse off than the US is today are not as depressed.[1] [1] Well, not until they all got cable TV and social media, that is.
badpun 3y ago
You could have a similar or worse list of grievances about every period of human history.
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nullc 3y ago
Have you considered licensing these lyrics to Billy Joel for his next hit?
listenallyall 3y ago
There's a certain kind of privilege embodied in your post, not sure the name, that allows one to think that he/she has had it worse than all prior generations. Ignorance of history for sure, but it's combined with a closed-minded and selfish attitude as well.
CalRobert 3y ago
I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is: 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'
- molteanu 3y ago
  I have to re-watch that movie.
est31 3y ago
The report is more about school age children while your points, while relevant, are more about late teenagers / young adults. Better reasons for why school age children are so addicted to social media are more car centric suburbian developments and the general attitude shift to not let children play outside without supervision. This isn't for cultural reasons only, it's also caused by the increased homeless population and the drug epidemic: in many places, streets are indeed more dangerous than they used to be 40 years ago.
29athrowaway 3y ago
And there is an explanation for all that, partner. It's called: carrying capacity. Nobody wants to see it but it is there. Things are hard because they need to be hard, otherwise we would multiply out of control and devour the planet in no time. If you give every person a house, lifetime supply of food, free education, guaranteed job, a vehicle, you would see the population going to 30 billion in 20 years. Then we would all perish.
noelsusman 3y ago
The fact that you and many, many others believe all of these things to be 100% true is exactly the problem. Social media has poisoned your brain.
winternett 3y ago
The worst part is that social media is dangled as if it is an obtainable successful career for most as creators.. But everyone often has to work years before even making a dime FOR FREE. People invest heavily in rapidly depreciating startup equipment like ring lights, PCs, Cameras, Microphones, only to find out that every site is rigged like a casino, and few people truly win (most get predatory contract offers), and now they're actually charging all creators for visibility while shrinking natural post reach, and inventing and fostering scams of all kinds (Crypto/NFTs) while child exploitation is rampant. Social media is pretty much essential to growing a business now, but the problem is that it's under siege by opportunists that give little care about the toxic wide-scale emotional, mental, and financial manipulation that they now perpetuate and promote for profit. I don't know how or if it's ever going to be reigned in.
BigCryo 3y ago
our elites are desperate to maintain the Monopoly they have had for many years on the ability to insert ideas into the minds of young people, which they have done for decades through the educational curriculum... now that social media is so ubiquitous and older people are getting onto it, there is now another stream of ideas being fed into Young minds.. and the elites have nothing to do with it, which tears them up.. the elites understand something that normal people do not, which is that young people are shaped and molded by the ideas put in their heads.. the the child is the father of the adult, as the saying goes, and Proverbs 22:6 tells us, if you show a child the way that he is to go, when he is old he will not depart from it.. so that is how the elites transformed society, and divided society among the different factions and thus maintained control... by changing society via educational propaganda fed into Young minds... the elites have long had a monopoly on shaping society by shaping Young minds.. the elites fear that ordinary people will soon wake up to the power and potential in social media for older people to feed their ideas into the minds of younger people and thereby put a stop to The divided society the elites have created
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ajsnigrutin 3y ago

Yep, this is how you get violent revolutions... people look at the average rent and an average paycheck/pension, realize they literally have nothing left to lose, and once they realize who's to blame, things (sometimes literally) explode. Luckily (/s) we have social media to shift blame off of politicians to other groups of people, to fight eachother instead of the ones who profit from all this.

adversaryIdiot 3y ago
Luckily we have social media to divide and conqueror us. and more media and junk food to keep us in our homes. Only thing in question now is the home.
- 93po 3y ago
  Also social media that cracks down violently on dissenting opinions and negativity of any sort. Try to find a non-mainstream political subreddit - they've all been banned.
KoftaBob 3y ago
> once they realize who's to blame You mean the NIMBYs in their metro area that try to slow down new housing production as much as possible?
- ajsnigrutin 3y ago
  There's a tiny percentage of those, compared to people either paying too much for housing, having adults "kids" at home, trying to get a bigger place, or get rid of roommates. There are a few large investors in housing markets though, who have a lot more political power than a few karens in mcmansions.
boondoggle16 3y ago
Who does profit from all this? I know that all of the mainstream media corporations (NBC, Comcast, Disney, etc) are all owned by a small number of parent corps, with a small group of trusted leadership that hires each other. What about other industries? Do leaders and founders of all these influential industries have anything in common? Tech, banking, media, the industries that influence our youth?
soulofmischief 3y ago
Unfortunately, most of our population in the US at least is not fit for sustained insurgence. I also doubt their willingness/capability to be trained. Most of the action will probably follow a power law. It may very well be that the most motivated folk will be those with something to lose.

wetmore 3y ago

I'm with you that these are major issues, and ones that impact my mental health as someone in my 30s, but I sort of doubt these problems are the main contributors to the mental health crises among young people. Social media and phones have had a huge negative impact on the amount of time young people spend together in person and have amplified the stakes of one's social life. Maybe I'm forgetting what it was like to be young but I'd guess these impacts are a lot more relevant to the mental health of children and teenagers.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> Social media and phones have had a huge negative impact on the amount of time young people spend together in person and have amplified the stakes of one's social life Social media and phones are what youth had left, after adults systemically wiped out every inch of their development environment. I'm an early genx; the last generation to grow up free of constant supervision. I went everywhere by myself and learned countless critical self-sufficiency and social skills - skill building that was utterly and thoroughly denied to my own kids. That is, my kids risked their parents being charged if they were capably on their own. My kids had nowhere to go if they tried to be independent. Were my kids to risk having some ambition, they also risked adult-sized punishments for kid-sized transgressions. We couldn't have designed a more stunting experience, short of tossing kids in forced-labor gulags.
- badpun 3y ago
  > That is, my kids risked their parents being charged if they were capably on their own. My kids had nowhere to go if they tried to be independent. Were my kids to risk having some ambition, they also risked adult-sized punishments for kid-sized transgressions. I'm not from the US, so my question is sincere. Is the situation the same across all states? You'd think the states self-describing as "freedom loving" wouldn't interfere with parenthood as much.
  - cmh89 3y ago
    Generally conservative states are going to have the government more involved with how kids are raised as a method of social control. I'm in a liberal part of the country and I see kids walking/biking around all the time, while the conservative state I grew up in would almost certainly have the police at least stop them and probably take them home. The 'parental freedom' stuff is really just the 'you're free to not ensure your children are educated'.

jl6 3y ago

> A burning natural world set to end between 2050 and 2100 What exactly are you thinking will constitute the end of the world?

arbitrary_name 3y ago
The ocean no longer is able to provide calories for the billion+ who friend in it as their primary source. Other food sources are impacted by drought, supply chain disruptions, flooding etc. Large scale migration triggers political instability, revolutions. Raw materials and inputs fundamental to our way of life become more expensive to obtain due to supply chain disruptions, driving living costs up and creating political tension. While i don't think the world or civilization to end, i think a lot of people discount how much line can get worse and more uncomfortable for billions, especially in the wealthier parts of the world. This is major first world problems but: good prices are higher due to droughts and then flooding. Housing prices have risen in part due to reduction in housing inventory and supply due to flooding, wildfires and increasing fire insurance costs. My recreation options are limited due to so many parks being closed to due to landslides, storm damage, fire damage or fire risk. Taxes are increasing in my area due to the increasing cost of maintaining infrastructure due to both flooding and fire damage, storm surges and other sources. In California, one of the wealthiest places in the world, climate change is already gently and subtly eroding our quality of life. Things can get much much worse in the next few decades, and likely will.
- jl6 3y ago
  I’m totally on board with the idea that drastic action is needed, but the motte-and-bailey[0] argumentation on display here is counterproductive - it makes people distrustful of the action plan, or worse, feel hopeless and apathetic. [0] The headline says the world is ending, the smallprint clarifies that no, actually, it’s not.

KoftaBob 3y ago

> Wages stagnated since 1980 Not sure how you're defining "stagnated", but Real Weekly Wages have continuously gone up since 1980: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q > Rents doubling every decade. Nope, the average increase per decade is 42%, not 100%: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUR0000SEHA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUR0000SEHA > 30% credit card interest Nope, the latest rate is ~20%, and that only comes into play if you don't pay your credit card bill in full, and I'm not about to get into the topic of financial responsibility: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TERMCBCCALLNS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TERMCBCCALLNS > Delaying childbirth to make rent until it's too late. "In 1960, the group of women with the largest share of first births was 20 to 24 years old (43%). In 2018, first births among women occurred most often between ages 25 to 29 (29%)." 25 to 29 is nowhere near "too late". > A burning natural world set to end between 2050 and 2100. I don't even know where to begin with this one

ceejayoz 3y ago
> Not sure how you're defining "stagnated", but Real Weekly Wages have continuously gone up since 1980: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q Wages definitely stagnated in 1980 (your chart shows $319 for both 1980 and 1998, for example, and it's visibly pretty flat for those two decades), and they've continued to be decoupled from productivity and corporate profits. "Trickle-down" turned out to be mostly pee. https://www.epi.org/blog/growing-inequalities-reflecting-growing-employer-power-have-generated-a-productivity-pay-gap-since-1979-productivity-has-grown-3-5-times-as-much-as-pay-for-the-typical-worker/ https://www.epi.org/blog/growing-inequalities-reflecting-gro...
- KoftaBob 3y ago
  The gap between productivity and wages has indeed grown, but that doesn't mean the same thing as Real Wages (adjusted for inflation) stagnating, as they have not done that.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago

moneycantbuy 3y ago

i agree except for the GMO part. modern diet is pretty ill though. some of your points are slightly exaggerated but not by much. as someone now in their 40’s, affordable housing has been the biggest one. worked my whole life but still had to live with housemates and couldn’t save much if any money. finally got a higher paying job at a pharma company in the bay area a few years ago, still can’t afford to buy a house or have kids.

Calvin02 3y ago

You forgot music videos and magazines!! I remember a time when music videos and magazines were the leading causes of teen mental health decline. Also, what is social media? My nieces and nephews spend more time on messaging than they do on TT or IG. Let’s say we get rid of TT and IG, do we think that all the issues surrounding YA mental health will go away?

thatfrenchguy 3y ago

> A burning natural world set to end between 2050 and 2100 Eh, climate change is a really big problem but you can't go around saying "the world is set to end between 2050 and 2100", it's obviously untrue and demotivating.

runarberg 3y ago
Most recent IPCC report stated that we are very likely to hit 1.5° in the next five years. If all our current policies hold, and we don’t continue to increase our annual emissions we will likely be looking at 2.7° - 3.2° at the end of this century. At 3° the oceans die. I think it is safe to say that the world as we know it is very likely coming to an end between 2050 and 2100. We will be living in a far more inhospitable planet in 2050.
- interroboink 3y ago
  > At 3° the oceans die. I appreciate that it's hard to communicate fuzzy concepts with lots of unknowns succinctly, but this seems overly-alarmist and simplistic to me. Or maybe I'm wrong; do you have some reputable sources? Here's one of mine[1], indicating (paraphrased) "5° by 2100 would result in a mass extinction in the next 300 years." And I'd note that even mass extinction is not the same as "the oceans die." Agreed about big changes to "the world as we know it", though. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-warn-of-looming-mass-ocean-extinction/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-warn-o...
  - uoaei 3y ago
    * sharks and bat rays in the SF bay were dying of a brain fungus that resulted from decreased salinity from the excessive rain we got a couple months ago * the size and severity of algal blooms are increasing across the world * this year's crab season was delayed (initially predicted to be nonexistent) because the ocean currents and especially the depth of cold waters changed so drastically from last year etc., etc. These examples are only from this year. We could also point to starfish dissolving, coral bleaching, etc. which have been going on longer. Temperature is only an indicator, but there are many other nth-order effects which result from the changes to the climate that also severely disrupt life processes. We can be sure that the ocean won't "die", but if biodiversity continues to tank the way it has been, we will see an accelerating rate of decline in the health of the oceans and consequently the people whose lives and livelihoods depend on the ocean (somewhere around 1 billion people). Knock-on effects are hard to conceptualize but well worth fully exploring.

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lbrito 3y ago

Slightly off-topic, but coming from a country where credit card interest rates are around 15% _per month_, I was amused to find people complaining about 22% _per year_ interests in North America.

gnicholas 3y ago
I imagine rates are determined largely by the general state of the economy (if you currently have a job, how likely are you to lose it?), the amount of data the creditor can gather on potential debtors (what are your wages and current debts?), and the credit card company's ability to efficiently collect on debts. I wouldn't be surprised if the collections process is easier in the US than in other countries. The economy is not great right now, but credit card companies can also limit your credit to make sure that you don't borrow more than they expect to be able to collect later. And they can see what your existing debts and monthly payments look like, which allows them to de-risk their lending.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  I would guess that consumer credit is much looser in USA than many other places. Like I had changed a job and couldn't get a credit card with 1000€ limit. Automated system simply blocked it. This looseness is great boost for economy, but on other side it also means credit risk and thus the interest levels must be higher to in general to cover those losses.
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    > This looseness is great boost for economy, but on other side it also means credit risk and thus the interest levels must be higher to in general to cover those losses. But it sounds like US interest rates are lower than some other places, based on GP's comment.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    > This looseness is great boost for economy Is it? People get like one month worth of 'wage after rent, fuel and food' with a CC. Only once.

Aunche 3y ago

If you look at literally any point in history, you're going to see what seems like "infinite problems". Even if you're 100% right that we face an unprecedented number of problems, this take still doesn't make any sense. You acknowledge that we have a lot of "real problems" that can occur simultaneously, but when it comes to social media, that is somehow a fake problem? The solutions proposed by controlling social media are very mild such as prohibiting phone use in class, and they aren't very popular. Yet somehow this is akin to the War on Drugs, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people in several countries?

armchairhacker 3y ago

Okok but I think kids just use social media to connect with each other, because it’s easier and more common than meeting up in-person, especially today. Plenty of other things to distract yourself from existential dread (video games, movies, streams and shows, actual drugs) and learn about that stuff (the news).

ericmcer 3y ago

People aren’t generally affected by issues that are out of sight like those you list. A classmate saying something critical about an teenagers appearance will be 100x more impactful than the rainforests imminent disappearance.

dr_orpheus 3y ago
Mark Zuckerburg's quote: "a squirrel dying in your front yard may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa"
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- goodpoint 3y ago
  That says a lot about Zuckerburg. Unsurprisingly.
Loquebantur 3y ago
They aren't generally not affected either? People care about things relevant to subjects they have an emotional connection to already. This system of inference is different between individuals of course. The relevant question should be, why do so many people care about ultimately meaningless stuff? That's what GP was on about in my opinion, people telling children authoritatively what is or isn't important while being obviously wrong about it.
anigbrowl 3y ago
Things like pollution, food price inflation, and craptastic government policies are far from out of sight because they impact families directly, even if teens don't fully appreciate all the ramifications.

somethingreen 3y ago

The idea that any of these would normally worry an average young teen is hilarious to me. I grew up during cold war, USSR collapse, multiple wars in the region. At no point was I (or any of my peers to my knowledge) gravely concerned for our future. Because none of us yet had any idea what our normal future is supposed to look like. The only way these mild horrors get into children heads is, again, through social media.

demindiro 3y ago
We have a hot war right now on the border of the EU that likely will escalate further. I'm sure China has plans too.
- marcusverus 3y ago
  Why would China have plans? China is well on their way to becoming the unrivaled military power of the world in the next couple of decades. All they have to do is wait and let the current trends play out. The only possible way to derail their ascent is a premature war--economic or otherwise--with the west.
  - arbitrary_name 3y ago
    I do not think this is necessarily the case. Their population is ageing rapidly, with due consequences for the company between citizens and the CCP. Internal tendons between the rich coastal regions, attracting all the labor, and the hollowed out interior could cause issues. I don't think their ascendancy is necessity assured.
- HaZeust 3y ago
  I mean, barring legitimacy on 2023 doom-and-gloom rhetoric, those who grew up during the Cold War do have this generation beat when it comes to warmongery worries. Problem is, there was not nearly as much domestic disarray back then - and there was still a sense of unity.
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BeetleB 3y ago

Now can you also list the ways things are better than in 1980? Perspective, and context are relevant. People in countries that have always been worse off than the US is today are not as depressed.[1] [1] Well, not until they all got cable TV and social media, that is.

badpun 3y ago

You could have a similar or worse list of grievances about every period of human history.

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nullc 3y ago

Have you considered licensing these lyrics to Billy Joel for his next hit?

listenallyall 3y ago

There's a certain kind of privilege embodied in your post, not sure the name, that allows one to think that he/she has had it worse than all prior generations. Ignorance of history for sure, but it's combined with a closed-minded and selfish attitude as well.

CalRobert 3y ago

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is: 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'

molteanu 3y ago
I have to re-watch that movie.

est31 3y ago

The report is more about school age children while your points, while relevant, are more about late teenagers / young adults. Better reasons for why school age children are so addicted to social media are more car centric suburbian developments and the general attitude shift to not let children play outside without supervision. This isn't for cultural reasons only, it's also caused by the increased homeless population and the drug epidemic: in many places, streets are indeed more dangerous than they used to be 40 years ago.

29athrowaway 3y ago

And there is an explanation for all that, partner. It's called: carrying capacity. Nobody wants to see it but it is there. Things are hard because they need to be hard, otherwise we would multiply out of control and devour the planet in no time. If you give every person a house, lifetime supply of food, free education, guaranteed job, a vehicle, you would see the population going to 30 billion in 20 years. Then we would all perish.

noelsusman 3y ago

The fact that you and many, many others believe all of these things to be 100% true is exactly the problem. Social media has poisoned your brain.

winternett 3y ago

The worst part is that social media is dangled as if it is an obtainable successful career for most as creators.. But everyone often has to work years before even making a dime FOR FREE. People invest heavily in rapidly depreciating startup equipment like ring lights, PCs, Cameras, Microphones, only to find out that every site is rigged like a casino, and few people truly win (most get predatory contract offers), and now they're actually charging all creators for visibility while shrinking natural post reach, and inventing and fostering scams of all kinds (Crypto/NFTs) while child exploitation is rampant. Social media is pretty much essential to growing a business now, but the problem is that it's under siege by opportunists that give little care about the toxic wide-scale emotional, mental, and financial manipulation that they now perpetuate and promote for profit. I don't know how or if it's ever going to be reigned in.

BigCryo 3y ago

our elites are desperate to maintain the Monopoly they have had for many years on the ability to insert ideas into the minds of young people, which they have done for decades through the educational curriculum... now that social media is so ubiquitous and older people are getting onto it, there is now another stream of ideas being fed into Young minds.. and the elites have nothing to do with it, which tears them up.. the elites understand something that normal people do not, which is that young people are shaped and molded by the ideas put in their heads.. the the child is the father of the adult, as the saying goes, and Proverbs 22:6 tells us, if you show a child the way that he is to go, when he is old he will not depart from it.. so that is how the elites transformed society, and divided society among the different factions and thus maintained control... by changing society via educational propaganda fed into Young minds... the elites have long had a monopoly on shaping society by shaping Young minds.. the elites fear that ordinary people will soon wake up to the power and potential in social media for older people to feed their ideas into the minds of younger people and thereby put a stop to The divided society the elites have created

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