this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2024

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Depressive symptoms in US 8th, 10th, and 12th graders (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 124 points 3 months ago (5 children)

People jump on the bandwagon of "social media and smartphones are the problem". Most people are sockpuppets, and just repeat this without thought.

If you mean indirectly, then maybe.

I think the problem is late stage capitalism, the increase in exploitation and cheating just to get money, and the real and encroaching fear of fascism or fascism-lite.

Inflation is increasing. Cost of living, housing, food and essentials are rising. Overtime culture is on the rise. Why would I be happy when the outlook for most of us is shit? I have to work long hours just to survive and there's no escape. Buy a house, go into debt for 30 years with the knowledge that the bank is getting massive amounts of free money in the form of interest, and they provide no service other than allowing you to pay an overpriced principal over thirty fucking years.

Work until I'm 67? What's the point? It's time to die at that point as ill be too old and who gives a shit anyway. I'm supposed to be appreciative of my 3 weeks PTO per year, that's when I can go have fun and enjoy life, after that back to working unpaid overtime for a billionaire investor or CEO or whatever.

Maybe social media and smartphones are helping the young see how shit and hopeless our society is. Unless you can figure out how to be a celebrity, or an investor, or a landlord/landowner, you're stuck working a shit job until you're old and life is gone. Why the shit fuck would people be happy and want to have kids?

[–] [email protected] 72 points 3 months ago (1 children)

And you didn't even mention climate change.

I'm in my early 30s, so I experienced cooler summers, but also the crises in 2007 and the following years (where basically every Eurozone country south of the Alps almost collapsed).

I also experienced the refugee "crisis" in Germany and obviously covid.

What I learned is, that the only thing our governments can do is throwing money at rich people. Literally nothing else. Every single crisis, conflict, bad situation was met with utter incompetence, corruption, and often enough some new way to blame poor people.

I can't speak for other countries, but ask yourself, what actually changed for the better in the last 20 years thanks to any government action? Rents? Still high. Education? Educate yourself. Healthcare? Here's aspirin, good luck.

The young people of today see that our entire society is moving in an extremely dangerous direction of collapse, and they feel like they can do nothing against it. They feel powerless against a system that ostensibly is super open and democratic. That's why so many (not only young people) are voting for extremists. They want to see everything burn.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 months ago (1 children)

My gay uncle can get married now, should he so choose. Thats pretty neat.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Your gay uncle can get married for now. That's still potentially on the chopping block with the current Supreme Court.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

I agree. But there have still been SOME victories, although not enough.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 months ago

I agree with this. Kids, at least middle school to high school, are smarter about this stuff than people give them credit for. I believe this is just kids being given the chance to see how bleak the outlook is for them when before they were not allowed to interact with that part of the world, and when they were, things were better than they are now.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Did things suddenly become worse for those types of things around 2014? If that was the cause, I feel like you'd see a bump up in 2008 with the great recession.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago

These things have a lagging indicator. You don't see these feelings increase when the problems happen - you see them when people lose faith that they're temporary.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

That and the dogshit non-response to covid. Intertwined.

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 3 months ago (1 children)

When quality of life is decreasing for the average person and there is no light at the end of the tunnel, people get depressed. Hypercompetitive society and an ever widening wealth gap does not help.

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Notice how the right wing people saying the lockdowns caused this are wrong. The lockdowns certainly didn’t help, but this problem has been brewing for far longer.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, this is probably a chart showing social isolation and living online. Of course that would increase during lockdowns too, but the trend was already there.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Pretty sure you're just naming another symptom that is correlated but not the cause of the depression. Likely the cause of the depression and the isolation is the destruction of third places and the opportunity for unsupervised and unstructured play. Kids spend all their time online because there's nothing else for them to do. There's nowhere to play outside, and even if there is, they're not allowed to go there without adults micromanaging them.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

That, and the trend is continuing well into 2023, when the bulk of the lockdowns had ended.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 3 months ago

If adults don't think working harder will make your life better, what hope do these kids have?

Working harder to make billionaires richer as the only option is fucking depression inducing.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Came to make a smartass comment like "at least they'll grow out of it when they become adults, right???" but the more I stared at the chart and thought about what it was saying it started to hurt a bit.

I had a bad time largely growing up, and still to this day struggle a lot with depression. I'm front about the happiest time period on this chart.

I went and looked up the study, and there's over 40 pages of charts similar to this one. All the things about depression seem up, and participation in school, activities, and dating/sex/drugs are all down considerably. It doesn't sound like anything is better for kids.

I didn't have children, mostly due to the bad time I had, so I'm curious to go back and read the study, though I didnt see any obvious conclusions skimming through. I feel my perception of if things are bad today is skewed due to my issues, so is the world really worse these days, or is something else going on?

[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 months ago (1 children)

There's no hope anymore. Simple as that.

For a pretty long time, probably starting even before WW2 in some countries, there was this hope "tomorrow will be better, my children can have a better life". And that hope was at least somewhat true.

But it's gone now, and the children understand that. What is the positive narrative for a 16 year old child now? They know exactly that they'll have a worse life than their parents in many regards.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 months ago (1 children)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

this. I'm still grieving my lost childhood (extreme trauma) at the same time I'm grieving my lost future. i don't understand the point of going on, but talk like that scares the ones i love. I'm not gonna do anything to myself, but I'm not that worried if something happens to me either..

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago

Capitalism has reached the late stage, so the world really is worse.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

I suspect there is a correlation with tech adoption. This chart isn't the end-all-be-all, but it's a start. (The years aren't consistent on the attached chart, btw.)

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, the upward trend seems to be around the time that teens would have gotten smartphones with data plans.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

It's a known phenomenon.

As it happens, people don't often post their failures on social media, so if you're comparing your life to someone else's, you're at an inherent disadvantage because you only ever see results.

If you hang out with people in person and involved in their lives, then you get to experience the process leading to the results with all the failure baked in. It's the difference between porn and sex.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I also think a lot of "doomer" content on social media can have a significant effect if you're consuming a lot of it.

Imagine you're a teenager and you're constantly reading the most extreme takes about how everything is broken and terrible, the bad guys are always winning, you'll never find love, you'll never find a job, never own a house, never manage to have a family, etc.

An adult may have the life experience and perspective to recognize that the loudest voices aren't always 100% accurate, but a kid might take it at face value and despair.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago

To be fair, my depression started in 3rd grade with an article in the weekly reader about the rain forests being destroyed at a rate of several football fields per day. I knew that couldn't be good or sustainable. Here we are 35 years later...big sad. Worst thing I ever did was get my kids phones :( at the time it seemed right.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago

I mean, Millennials in the US showed the same stress coping mechanisms in high school as active duty military personnel (our gallows humor being one I specifically remember being cited as similar to the sense of humor of survivors from foxholes), and that was in the late 2000s. I think there's a lot more to it than just social media access.

From the increased awareness of worldwide events through smartphones (combined with the 24-hour tragedy news cycle) to the increasing downward pressure on kids to grow up at younger and younger ages and the active removal of third places and public spaces where kids can just meet up in person, there's a lot of things that all make me look at these graphs and go "no shit Sherlock."

Toxic social media usage is just one, and it's partly exacerbated by some of the others.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

The low point in depressive symptoms hit two years after the modern smartphone arrived. Just as parents started handing down their “old” model to their kids.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Turns out a global climate crisis, flirting with fascism, and 24/7 social media aren't great for mental health.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Don't forget the destruction of third places, and the criminalization of unstructured and unsupervised play

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Throw in a little massive income and wealth inequality.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago

hmm could any of this possibly be due to the current state of politics or corporate greed or mass shootings or climate change or sexism or racism or etc etc etc?

no, surely it must be from teaching kids kindness and acceptance

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago

Can we get graphs that start at 0% and end at 100%?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago

Beautiful data? More like depressing data :c

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anxious_Generation

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Does that mean Gen Z has finally gotten its' name?

Can't blame them tbh. Late millennial here and even I'm starting to get anxious about my future with where the economy is going. When times were good, 5 years of experience made you a senior software engineer in a lot of well-paying companies. Now that they're no longer hiring absolutely everyone, it makes you a junior lol

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

The world is catching up to me. :blob-sweat:.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

2012ish is like when Reddit was at its peak, I blame social media

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Especially once they all had solid mobile apps with infinite scroll.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

I hope the 9th graders are doing well

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Interesting that there were dips leading up to the 2001 recession from the dotcom bust, and the 2008 great recession. I wonder what that's about.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

I wonder what cultural changes that kind of majority levels will provide.

I hope we get a new, better system out of it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

Poor kids dealing with social media and all the propaganda, corporate brainwashing, and assorted shitposts before they hit puberty

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The red line concerns me, the blue line depresses me, but the green line? Well, ya, your average high schooler isn't terribly useful. That's kind of the point of being a teenager. Be useless and enjoy life for a bit.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago

The issue here is that kids are being expected to grow up younger and younger. Get a 40 hour a week job at 14 during the summer, and work after school the rest of the year. If you're not working, you should be doing something that'll look good on a college resume, like school sports or volunteer work. There's no room for teenagers to just be teenagers in capitalism anymore.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Wha happened in 2014?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Interesting correlations with presidential election cycles

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

I was a depressed teenager before it was cool...

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