This bit strikes me as rather stuck in the past and oblivious to 2026:
"the internet offers an escape from solitude for those rejected in the real world, allowing weirdos, nerds, and the painfully shy to make social connections in ways that would have been impossible for their counterparts in earlier decade."
That statement might have been true in 1995-2012 about forums, IRC, early social media, and Tumblr. It is not really true for the average young internet user today: the corporate platforms centered around phone apps seek to maximize engagement, not provide community.
It is a small number of people who will ever step outside the walled gardens and explore other spaces, but they might find even those other spaces unfulfilling as a sense of community. The fediverse has copied a lot of pathologies from corporate social media. Forums are ever fewer and with a graying demographic that won't necessary give a young person a feeling of connection with peers. Discord does offer some of the close-knitness of old-school IRC, but discoverability is a challenge.
I think that this is true to some extent, but that people often underestimate how much Discord and group chats get used compared to "traditional" (feels weird calling it that, in this context) social media.
The article intentionally is giving an overly optimistic view of the modern day, when giving the argument that "kids these days" are better off, and it's quickly contrasted with a pessimistic view:
> children and adolescents are more likely to spend their time alone; they devote hours each day to staring at their phones; they play less, sleep less, and read less for pleasure.... Our children are living in a time of crisis
Yes it's stated less technically proficient than your version, but the point remains that you can look at the current internet as a blessing or a curse, and is mostly just an intro to the rest of the article
I think this is the first time on HN when I've been one of those people who didn't adequately look at the linked article before commenting, and boy is my face red.
One observation I made when I was a teacher was that the more we did to help students (as a cohort) with their mental health, the worse it became. My theory is that teenagers are experimenting with different identities, so when you give them a seminar on anxiety and depression, some of them try those on for size. Moral of the story: trying to pre-emptively solve a problem can cause the problem or cause a different problem.
The author discusses at length how the conclusions we reach about social media are strongly tied to our personal values and what we consider “good” or “bad” outcomes.
Don't know about the research, but I've always assumed that drinking has some correlation with psychological pathology. I drink myself, and would self-diagnose myself as being happy. However, drinking, particularly heavy drinking seems correlated to problems.
I assume because the author believes that when they join him in the glorious sexless, single-bedroom only abundance living capsule hotel they will fit in with the rest of the drones.
That's a strange characterization of an article that spends the bulk of the text referencing studies and talking about research practices in psychology. As far as I can tell, all but one of the images is a graph or table of mental health statistics or polling data.
Mad stuff, especially when he reached the “top problems in school” graphic. Does the author really think that kids weren’t doing terrible things back then? It just wasn’t dealt with, victims were blamed, problems ignored.
It’s like racism around the world, the countries that least acknowledge it as a problem are the biggest offenders.
I'm pretty sure the point of the graphic was literally "look, people said the same thing a generation ago about the generation before!"
In fact, the sentences around the graphic reinforce this reading:
> in the 80s, people were complaining that things had gone to hell. Here’s a popular list (the facts are totally fabricated, by the way) distributed at the time
> None of this means that the worriers are mistaken or that we are in the grip of a moral panic (though I might make this argument in another post). But it does suggest that the popularity of despair can’t be taken as good evidence that this despair is warranted.
It seems uncontroversial to say that young people now, and for the last 25 years, have access to cheaper travel than previous generations. The network of budget airlines in Europe, Asia, and MENA is extensive; I can often find a WizzAir flight for as little as 10€ if I'm willing to fly with just a smaller carry-on. As for long-distance bus travel, FlixBus in Europe sucks in so many ways and has a monopoly over whole countries, but its tickets (if you purchase well in advance) are often cheaper than the local operators that one had to use before.
When was the last time you met somebody who only walked all thier life? Never rode a horse because only the rich could afford such things.
When was the last time you had no food? Starvation used to be a real problem. I'm not taking about running short at the end of the month, I'm talking about there isn't food for even the wealthy people.
Food today is safer than ever. You talk about poison, but that is pure lie, it might not be the best, but it isn't moldy because you have a fridge.
I think it's fairly well accepted that the high obesity rates are caused by the shifting American diet. Yes it's more available than the 1950s (although I suspect not terribly so), but the effect it has on public health has been a nightmare.
You can just as readily find correlation with behavioral changes linked to a sedentary lifestyle driven by a firehouse of entertainment that first became available with cable television. That doesn't satisfy the orthorexic cause, so isn't discussed much.
I specifically do not want kids because it feels like I would be shortchanging them. I imagine all generations think it was better in their day. But you are right. Owning a car is absurdly expensive, public transit is pretty grim in the US and definitely not cheap, plus our food supply is literal slop. Even the cheap stuff is expensive now.
It is truly depressing. I can’t imagine being a kid who has to navigate all that on top of social media and constant agitprop.
I guess this is just what selection pressure looks like. It’s possible that adults who struggle to navigate social media and agitprop to the extent that they can’t imagine being able to raise kids in the 21st century might actually be right that their offspring would also struggle.
Shortchanging? Do you have any idea what a "typical" middle class lifestyle was like in the 1960s? (Not the romanticized one). Do you think they were eating organic avocados?
Life and technology and healthcare and many other things are objectively better in many, many ways.
>"But it could also mean that depressed girls are more likely to go on social media. Or maybe certain personality traits in girls lead to both depression and social media use, but there is no causal relationship between the two outcomes."
Well there sure is one easy way to find out if there's a link: get rid of the social media. Why do we talk about it like it's some kind of natural disaster forced upon the world that we all just have to live with? This is a tiny handful of trillion dollar companies shoving their proprietary technology into the public sphere for their own gain alone, and yet it's seen as some kind of act of god that cannot be controlled or regulated. Get rid of it. Maybe just for a little while even, and if the data comes back that it wasn't that, then go for it. But it feels so much like people in the '60s talking about cigarettes as if it's just a foregone conclusion that half the population will always smoke.
Kids in europe walk from early to school and can drive by bisycle pretty far alone, without the police almost shoot parents for leaving children 1 hour alone outside.
Walking or riding my bike to school was certainly not an option. I know very few people (no one?) for which those were options. It was difficult to visit my friends as well so I spent a lot of time alone.
"the internet offers an escape from solitude for those rejected in the real world, allowing weirdos, nerds, and the painfully shy to make social connections in ways that would have been impossible for their counterparts in earlier decade."
That statement might have been true in 1995-2012 about forums, IRC, early social media, and Tumblr. It is not really true for the average young internet user today: the corporate platforms centered around phone apps seek to maximize engagement, not provide community.
It is a small number of people who will ever step outside the walled gardens and explore other spaces, but they might find even those other spaces unfulfilling as a sense of community. The fediverse has copied a lot of pathologies from corporate social media. Forums are ever fewer and with a graying demographic that won't necessary give a young person a feeling of connection with peers. Discord does offer some of the close-knitness of old-school IRC, but discoverability is a challenge.
> children and adolescents are more likely to spend their time alone; they devote hours each day to staring at their phones; they play less, sleep less, and read less for pleasure.... Our children are living in a time of crisis
Yes it's stated less technically proficient than your version, but the point remains that you can look at the current internet as a blessing or a curse, and is mostly just an intro to the rest of the article
Why would he put "drink less" is reasons why teens should be happier?
Some of my happiest memories growing up in the late 90's early 2000's involved drinking with a bunch of friends in their basements.
My wife on the other hand drank because she was unhappy.
These things are not the same.
It’s like racism around the world, the countries that least acknowledge it as a problem are the biggest offenders.
In fact, the sentences around the graphic reinforce this reading:
> in the 80s, people were complaining that things had gone to hell. Here’s a popular list (the facts are totally fabricated, by the way) distributed at the time
> None of this means that the worriers are mistaken or that we are in the grip of a moral panic (though I might make this argument in another post). But it does suggest that the popularity of despair can’t be taken as good evidence that this despair is warranted.
What cheap travel? Better food compared to when? Most kids are obese eating poisoned food.
When was the last time you had no food? Starvation used to be a real problem. I'm not taking about running short at the end of the month, I'm talking about there isn't food for even the wealthy people.
Food today is safer than ever. You talk about poison, but that is pure lie, it might not be the best, but it isn't moldy because you have a fridge.
I think it's fairly well accepted that the high obesity rates are caused by the shifting American diet. Yes it's more available than the 1950s (although I suspect not terribly so), but the effect it has on public health has been a nightmare.
https://www.bts.gov/content/annual-us-domestic-average-itine...
It is truly depressing. I can’t imagine being a kid who has to navigate all that on top of social media and constant agitprop.
This might be objectively true these days, considering climate change.
Life and technology and healthcare and many other things are objectively better in many, many ways.
You mean the one where they could have 3 kids, send them to college, and graduate with no debt?
One of my professors went to UC Berkeley in the 60's. Inflation adjusted, his cost was $700 (I forget if this was per semester or per year).
That was done for cost reasons back then but today local and seasonal produce is a staple of high end restaurants.
Well there sure is one easy way to find out if there's a link: get rid of the social media. Why do we talk about it like it's some kind of natural disaster forced upon the world that we all just have to live with? This is a tiny handful of trillion dollar companies shoving their proprietary technology into the public sphere for their own gain alone, and yet it's seen as some kind of act of god that cannot be controlled or regulated. Get rid of it. Maybe just for a little while even, and if the data comes back that it wasn't that, then go for it. But it feels so much like people in the '60s talking about cigarettes as if it's just a foregone conclusion that half the population will always smoke.
The same was true of smoking. A combination of gov regulation and social stigma have managed to reduce smoking rates.