Clear and statistically significant trends among young males:
* Younger generations have significantly better communication skills and ability to express themselves.
* More mental problems are reported and they cause more releases, but they are not necessarily increasing. Doctors are better trained to specially seek mental problems and take them more seriously. Other studies support this theory.
* On average young men are 7 kg heavier than in the 90's. Aerobic fitness is in rapid decline. Muscle strength has declined but only a little.
* IQ peaked in 1997 and has been decline but decline seems to plateau. Negative Flynn effect has ben observed in other countries as well (Norway, Denmark,Australia, Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands).
It might well be, depending on the reason. We'd also probably see those effects if there was mass depression. Or if we simply locked up all teens at all times. What other "teen stuff" aren't they doing? Socializing (in person)? Exercising?
If people were more depressed, we would normally expect to see MORE of these risk-taking behaviours, not less.
- pollution
- economic stagnation
- inflation
- antibiotics failing
- global warming
- debt
- automation and artifical intelligence
- politics failing to tackle those issues (its a circus in some countries)
- issues like Brexit
- natural disasters
- hard manipulation via mass-media
- addiction algorithms in modern games/medias/programs
- goverments cutting expenses on healthcare and education
And many more. Im surprised young ppl still have hope, thats very brave of them.
Isn't this supposed to be good for us and make people's lives better? If that's not the case, then it's really something to be worried about.
We will probably reach a point the industry doesn't improve its survival ability by feeding and serving people. If that happens we will have reached a point where we do not have the ability to extract resources on our own since machines do all the critical parts of the job and we won't have the know how/or the access to resources.
Specifically:
- mining, farming and transportation is in the process of being automated away, as is manufacturing.
- in a world dominated by renewable energy, the cost of energy will depend on local weather. To optimize the logistic operations, we'll have to integrate weather predictions and adapt the flux of goods. Humans won't be able to compete with machines for that task, and logistics will also be automated away.
Once that part of the industry can work without human input, we'll be in deep trouble. The rest of the human economy is the result of accidental complexity due to the fact that meatware stems from biology.
This is the natural consequence of optimization and growth seeking. The only way to optimize human labor fast enough to be competitive is to optimize it away. If we're not economically competitive we will not survive. We are in the process of making ourselves redundant, and magic thinking makes us believe that it will end nicely.
At some point those changes will need to happen, as you say, but it would be better if we didn't reach the point of needing a revolution to get there.
Maybe if you only consider the first three bullet points. The rest of the list (maybe minus brexit) is decidedly more problematic today than it was 40 years ago.
Even then, it's arguable about "pollution". Sure, we've cut pollution greatly, but we're still learning how bad we actually screwed <strike>up our environment</strike> ourselves over and how difficult it is going to be to clean up.
And as dollar value influences pretty much whole world, it can be applied the same way in other countries.
Source: http://www.in2013dollars.com/1860-dollars-in-2017?amount=1
In comparison to what, exactly? Compared to another currency? Compared to itself?
If another currency, then great! We can sell them more stuff because our stuff is cheaper then their own stuff.
If compared to itself: so what? Inflation is a stated policy of the Federal Reserve. My dollars may be worth less, but I make more. This isn't a problem unless you issue loans and failed to charge enough interest.
The commentary in this thread just blows my mind. I'm astounded in an era of regular travel just how sheltered people in the West are.
The process itself would be a range of options. From removing undue leverage that make people buy things they can't (or don't want to) really afford so they are reliant on rising property values, to absolute government intervention. Of course the most likely would be somewhere in between. Where the government by allocating resource (whether that is building permits, land or directly with construction) competes with the market.
And this isn't really the market not functioning as such. The market is accurately pricing things like housing high because of its importance. The problem is that eventually the market will also reflect the decreased competitiveness of important things being expensive.
Anyone who gets depressed because of Brexit is just looking for a reason to be depressed. It is the lowest-stakes political crisis I could imagine.
Maybe people are getting depressed about those issues; but the solution is read less news and need to get better at filtering out things they can't control. If you consider all the things that can go wrong there never has and never will be an era that isn't depressing.
The only things on the list that are problems are antibiotics, global warming and healthcare - all of which are risks of falling out of the golden age of the last century back towards something that could be considered the normal human condition through most of history. They are also all completely solvable problems.
And that's another thing, we shouldn't need social media to feel validated or to compare, people should feel accomplishment in solace of their hobby. Sometimes the expectations of having a huge following online can even have a negative effect on the mental health of online artists. I see many talk about their own struggles and the pressures of being creative (especially the ones who start to make a living off it).
You probably should be, because there are objective markers that don't depend on communication:
https://twitter.com/JonHaidt/status/1083015453151318016
> The article identifies that today's teenagers: get in less car accidents, have less risky sex, have a lower rate of teenage pregnancy, ingest less risky substances, are generally less violent - and presents this all as bad because it is different than what came before.
If teens are avoiding risk-seeking behaviour due to an increase in underlying anxieties, then yes, it quite literally is a problem and not just because it's different. Maybe you should give the psychologist who wrote the article the benefit of the doubt.
The graph of suicide rates linked goes back to 1999.
Suicide rate often tracks economic cycles - for example, the suicide rate was 50% higher in the 1920s than it is now.
Certainly among adults, but suicides among adolescents and teens tracking economic cycles? I'm skeptical.
These are positive changes. All of them. These were literally something bad about older generation. All these things have negative consequences on not just risk accepting person, but also to other people around.
If you are more anxious but less violent, then it is a good trade off.
For instance, are you going to suggest people should become more psychopathic because it's correlated with success?
Are you going to suggest all men take testosterone suppressants because that would reduce violence, risk taking and teenage pregnancy? If the outcome is all that matters, then why not right?
If what you need is testosterone suppressant to not hit me, yes I strongly prefer you taking it over me being beaten or me doing things I did not wanted to for fear of your aggression. It is better for you too, assuming cops and courts will do the thing they are supposed to - putting you in prison.
Fortunately, men generally don't need testosterone suppressant to not be violent. Adult men violence is choice and occasionally mental problem.
Teen pregnancy rates are again result largely of sexual education, girls better able to resist pressure to have unprotected sex and boys better knowing it causes problems to them too. There is literally nothing to gain by not using a condom in that situation.
All of these are kids making better choices. That absolutely should count for something.
False equivalency. "More violent" does not mean "violent". Kids rough housing are technically being violent. Are you really worried about that?
> All of these are kids making better choices.
Or it's kids not having natural impulses that are inherent to all human beings. And that would be a serious problem.
Difference against violence of past generation is NOT kids rough housing. It was real fights, real hits, real injuries. Real robbery, real violence toward (say) partners, real knife or real gun. Nice manipulative technique you used. But you know what? If there are less kids bullying other kids, that is good thing too. Because while "rough housing" between two consenting kids is fine, one kid bullying the other is often called rough housing by those who want to pretend every thing is fine.
Keeping control over natural impulse to not use condom, to have random sex, to take heroin, to hit other people is a good thing. We have many natural impulses that are better off to be controlled. All of these harm not just the person who is doing it, but others too.
It's anxiety that drives national-socialists for example. Do we want them to rise again? I don't think so!
Also your example with the psychopath is a very good one. Success and money are not the most important things in the world even when instragram & co are bloated with pictures of "happy", rich, dumb people who have nothing but their looks.
If men wouldn't have taken risks probably they'd never have left Africa in the first place.
They tend to be better at communication with technologies but a lot worse in real face-to-face communication.
They stand some meters apart and rather text each other than standing up in front of a group of other people to just talk to the other person.
I also see greater economic insecurities but I don't understand how this is connected to less or later gains in self-sufficiency. Shouldn't it be reversed? In my time it was so important to get some extra bucks to spend on more/better clubs, booze and gas that we did nearly every shitty job to earn some.
What I think the article got right is the risks involved with this tendency towards less risk taking. Many activities we took part in our youth forced us to deal with unknown situations and people and we learned to cope with things. We spent hours at the riverside, in the forests etc. getting wasted, building stuff and doing nasty things that teenagers do - I think it was for the better of our development and a friend of mine who works with young people professionally supports this hypothesis.
When there are no insecurities and problems to tackle you don't learn to stand on your own feet. Learning to cope with stressful and strange situations and people at least helped me to find ways out of trouble instead of ending my life or get killed.
When we were bullied at school we met the bullies at the yard and beat the sh*t out of them instead of being overwhelmed by pseudo-anonymous groups of people on the net. I think that was easier as a mechanism of coping and at least you could do something about it.
I wouldn't underestimate the psychological stress they have to deal with nowadays and I think I also wouldn't want to switch positions.
I'm happy I grew up before this digital revolution just early enough to know the differences.
Sometimes it blows my mind that even in "educated circles" of the west there's such a blatant lack of perspective on the rest of the world. We still live in a world where 3 million people a year die of diarrhea - and you think economic insecurity is the reason Western kids are depressed?
No, this is not why teenagers are depressed. If that were even remotely true every teenager on Earth not from a G8 or Scandanavian country would be jumping off a ledge by the time they're 14.
That does not make it impossible for rich countries people to be depressed due to economy going down relatively.
They're driving less in the first place: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/05/teen-car-...
> have less risky sex, have a lower rate of teenage pregnancy
They (along with 20-somethings) also have less sex period: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex...
> ingest less risky substances, are generally less violent
Drug use and getting into fights typically happen in social settings. Teens are socializing in person less often: https://qz.com/1320344/americans-are-socializing-less-and-pl...
It makes you wonder, what the heck _are_ they doing with their time?
Well, playing video games, using their phones, and feeling lonely: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/10/01/loneliness-felt-...
As well as reporting more depression and anxiety, and committing suicide in record numbers: http://theconversation.com/the-mental-health-crisis-among-am...
Is it as simple as "phone bad, sunshine good?" No probably not, but there are studies out there linking social media to depression, and many studies linking loneliness to poor mental health.
You claim 'working with teenagers over the last couple of decades' while making the delineation of 'her generation of 47-year olds'.
Even if you began working with teens at 20, 'decades' would put you in your 40's as well? If that is the case, why try and separate your self from the same demographic?
"In earlier eras, kids worked in great numbers, eager to finance their freedom or prodded by their parents to learn the value of a dollar."
You misread the article. Not beside their bed, but in the bed with them.
If they are up in the US it might be another cultural issue.
I'm not convinced by either claim.
In my experience of working with teenagers over the last couple of decades, there is a general trend that they are now better at communicating their emotional needs and emotional state. If teens are more able to clearly and openly express the fact that they are sad, does that mean they are more sad? I think not.
Teenagers face far greater economic insecurity than before, and are more acutely aware of it. What will the workforce look like when they graduate highschool? Jobs that teenagers would have been invited to do are being replaced with automated checkouts and computer vision algorithms. Teenagers are required to go into more debt than ever, to escape this lack of opportunities via education.
The article identifies that today's teenagers: get in less car accidents, have less risky sex, have a lower rate of teenage pregnancy, ingest less risky substances, are generally less violent - and presents this all as bad because it is different than what came before. Is it bad? Would people 20 years ago have thought this was bad?
The author expresses great surprise that people sleep with their phones beside their bed - whereas, it is a great surprise to me that she doesn't. It has an extremely useful function as an alarm clock.
I suspect that she would find that a vast majority of her generation of 47-year olds also sleeps with their phone within an arm's reach.