Thank you for this post. I have recently been thinking through my own, personal hypothesis for why teens and youth are increasingly depressed and anxious these days. Full disclosure, I am NOT a psychologist, nor mental health worker, nor youth/teen expert in any way. But I am a mom (of 2 young children) and take a keen interest in trying to ensure my kids are well equipped to function and be healthy in today's increasingly tech-ified world. Any way - I wanted to share my hypothesis in hopes someone with more knowledge than me in this realm has insights. My hypothesis for why teens and youth are increasingly struggling with mental health is because technology has replaced, or nearly replaced, physical interaction and presence, which is something that I think we need on a fundamental, biological level. In 2000, when I was a teen, if I wanted to talk to my best friend I had to find them in the hallway at school, or call them and speak with them, or drive to their house or another meeting place and BE with them. And then once with them, I didn't have a cell phone buzzing and beeping in my pocket to distract me from talking to them and interacting. I do not know for sure, but I imagine that this is less and less the way that teens interact - instead, they text. Or maybe they don't even text, they just interact passively in many cases, with TikTok videos, etc. And often when they are together, at least from my experiences watching teens in public, the don't even talk to each other! They just stare at their phones, next to each other. I'm exaggerating here a bit, as I have seen positive interaction between teens too, but perhaps there is merit to this idea? Are there any studies that show how important being in the physical presence of other humans is for our mental health? And specifically for children and teenagers?
(To those unfamiliar, disclaimer: ACX and its community is a substantial rabbit hole, read with a grain of salt.) Definitely a very hard problem. How do you communicate that one shouldn't feel stigma about one's mental state without giving examples of atypical mental states which are still OK to have?
Thank you for this post. I have recently been thinking through my own, personal hypothesis for why teens and youth are increasingly depressed and anxious these days. Full disclosure, I am NOT a psychologist, nor mental health worker, nor youth/teen expert in any way. But I am a mom (of 2 young children) and take a keen interest in trying to ensure my kids are well equipped to function and be healthy in today's increasingly tech-ified world. Any way - I wanted to share my hypothesis in hopes someone with more knowledge than me in this realm has insights. My hypothesis for why teens and youth are increasingly struggling with mental health is because technology has replaced, or nearly replaced, physical interaction and presence, which is something that I think we need on a fundamental, biological level. In 2000, when I was a teen, if I wanted to talk to my best friend I had to find them in the hallway at school, or call them and speak with them, or drive to their house or another meeting place and BE with them. And then once with them, I didn't have a cell phone buzzing and beeping in my pocket to distract me from talking to them and interacting. I do not know for sure, but I imagine that this is less and less the way that teens interact - instead, they text. Or maybe they don't even text, they just interact passively in many cases, with TikTok videos, etc. And often when they are together, at least from my experiences watching teens in public, the don't even talk to each other! They just stare at their phones, next to each other. I'm exaggerating here a bit, as I have seen positive interaction between teens too, but perhaps there is merit to this idea? Are there any studies that show how important being in the physical presence of other humans is for our mental health? And specifically for children and teenagers?
Thanks again!
Culture-bound mental illness! ACX just wrote about this: https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/book-review-the-geography-of-madness
(To those unfamiliar, disclaimer: ACX and its community is a substantial rabbit hole, read with a grain of salt.) Definitely a very hard problem. How do you communicate that one shouldn't feel stigma about one's mental state without giving examples of atypical mental states which are still OK to have?