Eh. I think fluff. A lot of nostalgia pieces point to one specific thing and try to imply that everything used to be as good as that one thing. Wilder’s Wonka

Eh. I think fluff. A lot of nostalgia pieces point to one specific thing and try to imply that everything used to be as good as that one thing. Wilder’s Wonka was great. But psychedelic weirdness was never the norm. Children’s shows have pretty much always been largely moralized. The TV of today has a lot more content that is genuinely good and not just a constant ad for sugar and toys. This line also bothered me > Many experts believe that one of the causes of the mental health crisis among children stems from their lack of comfort with having dark or complicated feelings. When they do experience this, they often jump to believing that something is wrong with them and may go on to identify with a clinical diagnosis, which can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead of believing themselves to be sad or scared because life is a hot mess and hard and dark feelings are to be expected, they see themselves as having depression or anxiety and begin to filter all of their experiences through that lens. I struggle to see the nuance between this and telling kids to suck it up. We are not in the 80s anymore where the general social narrative is rapid growth. Being a kid has a much more dismal perspective than the 80s provided.