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There are so many candidates for causes here. Thinking about and watching climate change can't be good for, say, a teenager imagining their future. Of course, t
by joe_the_user 2y ago
There are so many candidates for causes here. Thinking about and watching climate change can't be good for, say, a teenager imagining their future. Of course, that teenager is also watching the world not coming together to solve this problem so you could say the situation is connected to "loss of community" in a way.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoI wonder if there's any useful parallels to children and teenagers growing up during the Cold War - that feels somewhat analogous, at least in the terms of a looming threat that could be solved by more cooperation.
- realce 2y agoI'm reminded of Hypernormalization's portrayal of teens in the USSR. It's not just the impending doom, it's the dissolution of facts and the implicit knowledge that your leaders are super-predators with goals antithesis to your well-being. I know it's hyperbole, but anywhere you look it feels like nobody is really invested in the future - that everyone's just trying to cash out ASAP and run away to the "safe place" of a gated community or something.
- pavel_lishin 2y ago> it's the dissolution of facts and the implicit knowledge that your leaders are super-predators with goals antithesis to your well-being. Boy, that sounds vaguely familiar.
- greenavocado 2y ago[flagged]
- tivert 2y ago> Thinking about and watching climate change can't be good for, say, a teenager imagining their future. That doesn't make sense. Kids in previous generations had to grow up with things like the omnipresent threat of nuclear annihilation, which had greatly faded into the background until very recently. Also (at least in the 80s) destruction of the environment was a an issue kids were made very aware of. At least when it comes to this teen mental health crisis, the 70s and 80s are often understood to have been far better. I think pointing to climate change as a cause of the teen mental health crisis is a good illustration of how issue activists can twist and distort perceptions.
- ericmay 2y agoI don’t disagree completely but I think one could argue that while we had that threat, the government and people were in agreement that it was a problem to be addressed. The equivalent today would probably be the United States having a few token nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union stockpiling nuclear weapons, and 30% of the country largely in charge denying that the Soviet Union even exists. The latter scenario is probably more hopeless and frustrating.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Miraste 2y agoI don't think increasingly poor mental health has much to do with climate change, but the threat of nuclear war is a bad comparison. Bombs either fall or don't. Climate change is a creeping, progressive issue that's visibly worse every few years, and the government has effectively said that that there will be no intervention.
- tivert 2y agoI don't think I can disagree strongly enough. Creeping changes are something you can adapt to and get used to. Nuclear war was (and still is to an extent) a looming boogeyman whose simultaneous distance and nearness, slowness and quickness makes it a literal nightmare horror-show. I mean, it's a literal sword of Damocles. > and the government has effectively said that that there will be no intervention. The government said that about nuclear war, too. No one has ever seriously considered getting rid of the bombs.
- maxdoop 2y agoMajority of kids and teens do not care about that, as much as we’d assume. They are aware, but their day to day is what is important to them. Friends, relationships, drama — they are kids.
- TylerE 2y agoIt’s so much more than that. It’s the continually enshittification of literally everything. It's a hypercapitalist hellscape.
- ponector 2y agoThat is not true. Many things are much better now than 20 years ago. Not mentioning even poor western people are living life in better conditions than the richest people lived 300+ years ago.
- ponector 2y agoI would say the biggest cause is the endless feed of bad news(good news does not sell well) coupled with unrealistically high expectations social media gives to the people.
- MaxikCZ 2y agoIm not a teenager, but really climate change is not _the_ concern I have about world that makes me disilusioned about our society. Its more the world-scope corruption and everpresent dog-eat-dog mentality thats keeping me disinterested from improving anything.
- joe_the_user 2y agoI don't understand why one wouldn't see inaction on climate change as part and parcel of world-scope corruption and everpresent dog-eat-dog mentality.
- llm_trw 2y agoWorrying about nuclear war was probably worse for mental health since you'd die quite quickly (if you were lucky), rather than some nebulous future were something's going to happen.
- silverquiet 2y agoI'd rather be atomized by a nuke than die of heat-stroke in a wet bulb event after my air conditioning fails. I mean, I'd rather not die at all but given the options... I don't know about the kids these days; I'm not one of them, but I'm personally rather terrified of the future that we are careening into in regards to climate change.
- llm_trw 2y agoLet me tell you about fall out and how the majority of people who die in a nuclear attack will feel the meat peel off their bones over two weeks of unimaginable agony with nothing that can be done for them.