Very hard to turn down the volume as an individual actor. It's a social dilemma (sic). I remember a recent poll indicating students would pay for /others/ to use their devices less.
It is no random accident that the Church sees itself as the 'body of Christ'. That body, social fabric in modern parlance, is splintering at accelerating pace, thanks to digital comms -- thanks facebook. Uncharted rough waters for a social species like ourselves.
A good summary on X -- please ignore the tacky username. Similar sentiments in Gabor Mate's 'Hold on to your Kids'.
https://twitter.com/TheBrometheus/status/1725303595908628684
"Most people use therapy the way humans are meant to connect with our 5 safety net systems, which we retained even up to 100 years ago:
Immediate family
Extended family (kin)
Family friend network (kith)
Local community
Religious community
All 5 are now broken."
Allowing kids to be bored.
It’s a very clear change between 20 years ago and today: 20 years ago kids simply didn’t have unlimited unrestricted access to screens and devices that produce instantaneous hits of dopamine on demand.
With TikTok, social media, endless TV streaming… it’s entirely possible for someone to exist for years while never learning to harness or channel boredom in productive ways.
This isn't some new thing that just happened to the kids these days, it's a longer term trend that everyone talking here grew up with, and we should examine it as such.
Obv. A complicated thing but hey.
Plastic additives and softeners have been linked to ADHD – and plastic is virtually omnipresent nowadays. ADHD presents differently in boys and girls. I wonder if there could be a relation.
I don't know what's going to stop this machine. The machine craves GDP and profits. The machine needs problems like "boys struggling" in order to create products and services to reap those profits. The machine owns megaphones that broadcast the solution: buy this product, buy that service.
Can you guys maybe turn down the volume on those megaphones and look inward? Instead of looking outward - coaches, counseling, this, that, maybe you need to seriously recalibrate your culture, because we're increasingly productizing solutions to problems that weren't problems in the past, and we're going broke, and our kids are suffering.
What are some familial-cultural things you think we could do differently that would help us help boys while not having to spend thousands per month just to give our sons the privilege of a normal life?
Remember, these issues simply were not issues in the past. Is there something from the past that we lost along the way that causes these issues? Can we bring that thing back? Similarly, what modern things did we introduce that could be causing these issues? If so, let's focus on removing that, the via negativa.
Perhaps what these people call disorganization and distraction is in fact a good thing, and boys are not meant to fit into the square pegs you're carved out? Let them go out into the desert and explore. They're not going to bring back treasure to enrich the tribe if you try and force them to sit in a chair and listen to you ramble for 8 hours straight. The problem is likely you, not the boys.