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?
Without having pre-teen or teenage children myself, Morgan's lived experience really resonates with me (and Jean Twenge in her book "iGen"). I am not a trained psychologist so I am interested to know what Dr. Nesi thinks. I was looking for her to discuss the idea that mental health has both internal and external components that dynamically intertwine and to the extent that we medicalize the external component (sometimes through awareness), clinicians may make people sick. I agree with everything that Dr. Nesi has written here with one extension to the overinterpretation hypothesis. What if mental health awareness campaigns and social media tell teens that they have depression (which justifies medications et c) instead of empowering them to put down their phones for more authentic relationships with those around them (treating the underlying causes of mental anguish). Yes, this has ramifications for the present moment, but from a life course perspective, what if it also sets them on a detrimental health trajectory leading to chronic illness? For example, they do not develop the capacity to think critically about how their environment impacts their mental health during adolescence and this leads to poor mental health as an adult. If awareness campaigns do not respect this potential externality, might they inadvertently misdirect people from advocating for their rights to stable housing, good schools, parental leave, and many other social determinants of health which are the foundation of so much illness?
PS. Love this blog. Thank you for opening the space.
These are such interesting points! As you might expect, there's a lot of research suggesting positive social relationships are one of the MOST important factors in our mental health across the lifespan. Whether interactions via screens can provide the exact same benefit as in-person interactions is a tough question to answer, but there is certainly some work to suggest that these online interactions aren't always as "rich" as in-person interactions. On the other hand, online relationships can provide a really important outlet for kids who might be struggling socially in their offline lives, so it is tricky! Either way, I think it's really important for us to keep encouraging kids to engage in their "offline" lives and help them build positive social supports outside of social media.
(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!
Without having pre-teen or teenage children myself, Morgan's lived experience really resonates with me (and Jean Twenge in her book "iGen"). I am not a trained psychologist so I am interested to know what Dr. Nesi thinks. I was looking for her to discuss the idea that mental health has both internal and external components that dynamically intertwine and to the extent that we medicalize the external component (sometimes through awareness), clinicians may make people sick. I agree with everything that Dr. Nesi has written here with one extension to the overinterpretation hypothesis. What if mental health awareness campaigns and social media tell teens that they have depression (which justifies medications et c) instead of empowering them to put down their phones for more authentic relationships with those around them (treating the underlying causes of mental anguish). Yes, this has ramifications for the present moment, but from a life course perspective, what if it also sets them on a detrimental health trajectory leading to chronic illness? For example, they do not develop the capacity to think critically about how their environment impacts their mental health during adolescence and this leads to poor mental health as an adult. If awareness campaigns do not respect this potential externality, might they inadvertently misdirect people from advocating for their rights to stable housing, good schools, parental leave, and many other social determinants of health which are the foundation of so much illness?
PS. Love this blog. Thank you for opening the space.
These are such interesting points! As you might expect, there's a lot of research suggesting positive social relationships are one of the MOST important factors in our mental health across the lifespan. Whether interactions via screens can provide the exact same benefit as in-person interactions is a tough question to answer, but there is certainly some work to suggest that these online interactions aren't always as "rich" as in-person interactions. On the other hand, online relationships can provide a really important outlet for kids who might be struggling socially in their offline lives, so it is tricky! Either way, I think it's really important for us to keep encouraging kids to engage in their "offline" lives and help them build positive social supports outside of social media.
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?