“Who is Poppy Adams? After graduating Harvard Business School, Adams was briefly held for serious mental health issues before disappearing without a trace.” – Kingsman: The Golden Circle
Every day I tell my family I’m going out for a jog and then I don’t. It’s my longest running joke.
FYI – minimal humor and memes in today’s post due to subject matter – it just didn’t fit.
We’ve driven the kids nuts.
I don’t necessarily mean you or I, but the change in society has caused a great decline in the mental health of the kids. It really started showing up in 2009 or so, when the emergency room visits for kids started a sharp uptrend. The kids (ages 10-19) were going to the hospital due to self-harm spiked by over 60% in a single decade.
For girls it was worse – it spiked nearly 100% – doubling in that time period. The rates of depression doubled in that time frame as well.
What I’ve seen when I talk to kids is that many, many of them have huge anxiety issues. Many are on psychoactive drugs. Many are visiting therapists regularly.
I look back to when I was that age, and I’m not sure I knew even a single Gen X kid who was seeing a shrink. I’m sure that it wouldn’t have been something they’d have shared, but it was a school, so that would have gotten around. Also, as far as I know, there was only one girl on any medication, and as I recall there had been some significant family tragedy.
Suicide? Only one kid tried it in the decade I spent in that age group. And I knew a lot of kids. But, to be fair, something like 30% of kids with mental health issues drop out of school so I never would have seen them. However, the numbers really do show that this is certainly the most mentally ill generation in the history of the country.
What’s changed?
Luxuries are available today that would have boggled the minds of my generation when we were growing up. Kids today can talk to anyone, anywhere, at any time. Listen to any song. Watch concerts of their favorite bands. Yet, with all the information, connection, and amusement available, something is horribly wrong.
My first guess at a major factor is a simple one – the iPhone™ came out in 2007. Given two years for smart phones to become more or less everywhere among the teen set, that correlates pretty well to the start of the increase in mental issues.
The designers of social media and games aren’t stupid – they absolutely manipulate the way the apps work to make the user addicted. “Someone read my FaceGram© or InstaSpace® and liked it! I’ll go check and see who it was! I Tweeted®, er X’d™. Did someone repost it?” The system is designed to make sure there are small, frequent doses of dopamine kicked out by whatever is in the human brain that kicks out dopamine.
This shorter-term focus, the smaller “bite size” ideas make something that was typical decades ago, like reading a book, seem like forever. Not being able to tune out and relax can’t be good.
Social media also has another insidious function – it is designed so people show off only the glamorous and nice things that happen to them. Who spends a lot of time posting about their pain, and sorrow? In the end, it makes a certain segment of the population feel that everyone is doing great except for them. Me? With my friends we spend as much time talking about the rough bits in our life as we do the great things.
Online friendships are also shallower, so the real bonding that kids get when they’re on adventures is lost. Add in that porn of the vilest types is available to most any kid with a phone? How are they not messed up in ways that no other generation has ever been?
2009 was also the dawn of Obama. Obama started defending traditional marriage and ended in full Pride® mode. Gender confusion wasn’t really something that was very big when I was growing up, except for Dee Snider. Now people are talking about transitioning toddlers, and somehow these people are being taken seriously and not being strung up on telephone poles.
To be sure, not all kids are a mess, but enough are that there’s a very big problem – I’ve seen one statistic that 44% of high school students feel persistent sadness or hopelessness. That’s a big number – I do think that, perhaps, the kids see some of the same things coming that we do – I do know they look at the economy and think, perhaps correctly, that they’ll never do as well as their parents.
I’m not sure how to fix those millions of kids that have already passed through their teens and are now in their 20s. From the outside, the one thing I’ve seen with most psychiatrists/psychologists is that they never really cure their patients, they just keep coming back, week after week to pay for the therapist’s BMW®. And I’m exceptionally skeptical of many psychoactive drugs. Yes, I know that some of them work very, very well for certain conditions with a physical cause.
What now?
The solutions to preventing a lot of these issues in the first place are fairly simple, but a big step for many:
- Religion gives life a greater meaning. I’m pretty sure it’s not a coincidence that as church attendance declines, mental health problems increase.
- Be involved.
- Technology control (i.e., limit the damn phones), especially for young girls who seem to be more impacted.
- Remove the gender confusion – homeschooling or a decent religious school would be good options.
- Make sure they learn skills that allow them to be useful. Start small, and build up. Don’t coddle them or walk them through every step. Make them work for it.
- Make sure the boys are involved in sports, especially if they don’t want to be. Get girls involved in something like 4-H or the church youth club.
The Zoomers (Gen Z) have had a tough time of it, and this will be another factor (along with their horribly messed up dating and sex lives) that is already impacting the economy.
Let’s not screw up another generation.
Glad you brought up a distrust of drugs for psychiatric care. I didn’t consider until recently brought to my attention that these are the only drugs prescribed based on a doctor’s feelings about what the patient is feeling. There is no meaningful test to indicate that treatment is necessary or effective.
Great point. And yet billions are spent on them.
Sir,
I was struck in particular by this:
“To be sure, not all kids are a mess, but enough are that there’s a very big problem – I’ve seen one statistic that 44% of high school students feel persistent sadness or hopelessness. That’s a big number – I do think that, perhaps, the kids see some of the same things coming that we do – I do know they look at the economy and think, perhaps correctly, that they’ll never do as well as their parents.”
Since children are much, much more sensitive to minute and subtle things, especially changes in their personal circumstances on a variety of levels, it would make sense that children would be noticing the unbelievable scenario now unfolding around them in ways adults are/do not. Being children, they are of course trying to address something for which they are neither prepared nor equipped, and so I shall refer to the result rather mildly as ‘confusion’.
To be sure, they must be wondering, at a most basic level, why their parents are so stressed all the time, if it is their fault, and if there is anything they can do to help…
This echoes my own fear, occasionally expressed, that I shall be unable to adequately explain these matters to my own children when they ask me for some kind of context for the things they will shortly be subjected to. They are just old enough that they will certainly notice the difference between ‘how things were’ and ‘how things are now’, whatever that will look like, and I suspect we will have to provide some kind of commentary.
I read somewhere that if the kids are suffering, you know things are in a serious way. That holds true regardless of species.
Just another brick in the wall.
Mike, we haven’t helped them – the society around them is very suboptimal. But, Weak Men, Hard Times.
There was an interesting post along this line on theburningplatform.com yesterday, where a 7th grade teacher stated that most of her students only read on a 4th grade level, some on a 1st-2nd grade level, they had a 3 minute attention span at the best, then had zero retention of that vid’s content, she would tell them their assignment, but they had zero understanding of what she just said, et al, ad nauseum.
She didn’t mention their predominant race, but that can be assumed. We’re screwed.
We are. Aesop talks a little later about Eloi. He’s not wrong.
It’s not a secret that most of the drugs being prescibed to “treat” these young skulls full of mush are not suitable for brains younger than 25 years. It’s probably why there was a marked uptick in school shootings. In any case, we have a medical system that thrives on malpractise.
And many of them do the opposite of what they’re supposed to do . . .
No such thing as ‘mental illness’. Or depression.
Depression means you’ve got too much time to dwell on yourself, and you permit yourself the (quite feminine) luxury of moping. No Christian ever is depressed. Sad yes, grief-stricken of course. But to make a habit of mood is vanity.
All ‘psychological’ problems are spiritual problems. Therapy is a racket — it’s just more Women’s Way of Healing. Pharmacologic intervention, especially when forced on little boys, is piling ignorant evil upon ignorant evil.
And what is Women’s Way of Healing? Endless jabbering, yammering, and fainting-couch obsession with one’s life. Which is what therapy is. When people have real lives, with real demands and dangers, they don’t waste time or money on therapists. That is strictly for navel-gazing, gynocentric generations.
I don’t recall Christ or Scripture advocating that we patronize therapists. In His day there were many such mercantilists, as there are today. Back then they often were called philosophers. Philo = love and sophia = goddess/wisdom. So, false love and idolatry reside within the very word. Philo-Sophia, along the lines of Lucy-fer. That’s what your therapy really is. Where’s my $200?
You take paypal?
Highest ideals:
Body=discipline
Mind=wisdom
Spirit=virtue
Can’t work toward one without improving the other 2.
All problems are not spiritual and it is a silly, extreme thing to suggest it. Go to these kids. Tell ’em about Jesus, and they will laugh you out of the room. 2/3 of their problems are physical and mental.
An archaic eastern religion that is so extreme it consigns these kids to hell when they reject your utter bullshit is of no help whatsoever.
Love of wisdom is bad. Rightttt… They crave it desperately, but none is to be found. Of course the solution to this complete upheaval and generational technohaulocost is more judgement and utterly insane jewish messianic propoganda brainwashing.
Good grief these kids are screwed.
Yup, nobody in the football huddle is depressed. Did we do our job, or not?
I can’t help but wonder if there is a significant environmental factor in all of this. The young just seem particularly…weak. Emotionally and physically frail, as if some sturdiness gene is no longer being expressed. We oldsters forever point out that our mothers (Dad was at work, natch) kicked us out of the house every morning and told us not to be seen until the next mealtime. And, of course, we all walked uphill, three miles each way, in the snow, to summer school, where Sgt. Slaughter made us do push-ups til we grew chest hair.
Apocryphal, of course, and even somewhat exaggerated. But kids were genuinely ‘tougher’ in the before times. Even the girls skipped rope, hopped scotch (heh), rode bikes. Some tomboys (remember those, before gender dysphoria?) even played stickball with us guys. But now? Who among the girls or the boys even knows what stickball is?
Yes, technology has certainly had a serious debilitating impact. Social media, gaming and porn in particular keep the kiddies locked up in their bedrooms when they might otherwise be outside torturing worms and getting skewered by lawn darts. Weakness used to be frowned upon, if not actively bullied, but today the kids vie for the highest spot on the dysfunction totem pole.
Microplastics, 5G radiation, estrogens and psychotropics in the water supply, goose-stepping feminism, bike helmets, helicopter moms, Taylor Swift and two years of suffocating behind a useless mask. Yeah, the kids are definitely effed. Young men don’t shoot whiskey anymore, and this, moreso than anything else, is a sure sign of the decline of civilization.
I’ve tried to make mine independent, and it’s working. They may be tired, but not depressed. There may be merit to the chemicals . . . which would be at highest concentrations at the coasts.
I was speaking to a couple of cops recently and they said 80% of the random shooting are initiated by social media. ” I doin her” gets a party shot up.
Not surprising. Social media isn’t helping.
“No Christian ever is depressed.”
That’s pretty stupid.
But kicking God out of the classroom was a pretty bad idea.
So was kicking out philosophy and replacing it with religeon stripped of practical wisdom, logic, and reason.
Oh, you mean Marxism.
Jesus saves. Marx kills.
Sorry JW, but you’re looking through the wrong end of the telescope here.
“44% of high school students feel persistent sadness or hopelessness”
So, have you talked with current high school students?
That only 44% feel persistent sadness or hopelessness tells me that at least another 40% have a vastly inflated opinion of themselves and their abilities.
They can’t read a note in cursive. They can’t tell time on a dial-face timepiece. They don’t know their own phone number. They can’t make exact change for a $10 order without taking off their shoes, and calling two of their lifelines.
For F–K SAKE man, I see this Every. Single. Day!
This is simple sh*t we were taught to do by 1st grade, and these are high school juniors and seniors. Or for that matter, freshmen and sophomores in college, AKA 13th and 14th grade.
They can’t write a book report, can’t construct a coherent paragraph, can’t multiply to 12×12 without a TI-84 and seven lectures on higher mathematics, and they treat the ability to sit through a 90-minute movie without talking or checking their phones like it’s a freaking Jedi Masterclass.
They can tell you what Taylor Swift wore to the Video Music Awards, but they couldn’t pick Venus de Milo, Mona Lisa, or the Parthenon out of a line-up.
They can’t put any three basic major historical events in order, find any city, state, or country on a globe (even if you spot them a hint of which continent it’s on), or in most cases, find their own asses with both hands, an anatomical chart, and a rear-view mirror.
If you stranded them 5 miles into the desert between a rotary dial phonebooth and a stack of change, and a gassed-up car with a stick shift and the key in the ignition, 99% of them would die right there of starvation and exposure.
They should all be flunked back to kindergarten at their high school graduations, and then retry each level until they attain mastery at an 80% score. About 1% would be done in a week. For the rest, they’d be there seven days a week from 6AM to noon. Then they’d be given not a diploma, but a pair of stout leather work gloves, to dig ditches, shovel shit, and sort garbage at the dump from noon until 8PM, to earn room and board – in a tent, fed the same menu prison inmates get – to take them permanently out of mommy and daddy’s tender embraces. No cell phones. No calculators. For anyone not advancing any grade level after two tries, the daily beatings would commence. Every fall they’d replace migrant workers picking vegetables in the fields until they graduated fair and square. In the winter they’d shovel snow on the roads by hand, and in summer they’d be spreading tar and filling potholes, until they finally graduated. Then and only then would they be granted the full privileges of citizenship. They could escape only upon graduation, or by enlistment in the military (the Air Force wouldn’t count, and they don’t take non-h.s. grads anyways). Those choosing the military option would not be allowed out of the military until they’d earned at least a GED.
When they finally graduated from one or the other for real, they’d have something about which to feel happy and proud, probably for the first time in their lives. Universities and community colleges would cease to offer remedial primary and secondary school education, and go back to teaching actual college subjects full-time.
Until something close to that happens, most high school students should be told they’re the exact idiots they are 24/7/365 until they can disprove it, with a properly-footnoted 20-page hand-written research paper, and deliver a defense of that thesis before the faculty of the local high school.
The numbers you speak of come from the most mollycoddled bunch of unskilled lackwits in the history of the world. (We can talk about the mass floggings and/or tar-and-featherings of the teachers and administrators who helped create them at some point in the future.)
Fans of science fiction know these kids as H.G. Wells’ Eloi.
Anything which makes them feel like exactly the oxygen thieves they are is a good thing.
Anything which whips and beats them towards the finish line of improving that situation and becoming functional human beings is even better.
Every word true, but this was also enabled and done to them.
I remember flying hawks in the army in early 2000s and along came Falconview (early air force google maps) flight planning software and electronic performance planning.
All the old guys were demanding everyone still do it manually by hand (huge errors) and with folded map books. Now it is done with a usb and digitally loaded. Point is, tech makes things too convenient, then obsolete. Who writes in cursive anymore?
If the systems go down, the battles stop. These kids don’t need to know all that stuff to function in daily life. Knowledge will be lost of course, and sometime in the future it will all need to be relearned.
But to be fair, I can’t build a computer, code, make/edit videos, create digital comics or any of the other stuff that they can do. I could learn. They probably can too, but only by necessity.
They can’t this, they can’t that … hardly any of us were born able to do much of anything. Kids have to be brought up. Raised. If they’re not, they don’t grow up. “Lookit them damn kids, can’t do squat.” Okay, and that’s not good. Who didn’t raise them? Were they supposed to be self-raising? Like a short-cut flour?
True, but.
I’m not damning kindergarteners here.
I’m damning nominal adults who, knowing they can’t do anything useful, nor function at 1/10th the level of their generational peers at similar ages, make absolutely no effort whatsoever to improve their own lot, nor even acknowledge that it’s a problem in the first place.
You can blame Adam for original sin, but every generation ratifies that with their own choices, and/or apathy and inertia.
So too with the uneducated lackwits of modern times.
They own their shortcomings most resolutely, and even strive to maintain and expand upon them.
I like the Eloi analogy. But Gen Z males are showing some stiff upper lip, and turning Right quickly.
Gen Z (AKA the Doomers) are split into Generation Zyklon and Generation Zanax.
Yup. I know which one I’d put my money on.
My own kids are better than that in almost every respect. It’s taken hard work on our part and not giving in. They both read- physical books as well as electronic. We have family game night and they can sit still. Both do some craft that involves concentration, direction following, and hand eye coordination. Both can express themselves verbally and in writing.
That said, I am noticing some things. They are not very curious. D1 likes Kate Bush, “Runnin’ Up that Hill” but wasn’t interested in hearing any of her other music (I own her complete discography.) They are VERY risk averse. They don’t like to start ANYTHING without knowing it will end well, books, movies, or other activities. They prefer to engage very lightly or peripherally with things and people, having the fallback of music or something on their phone that is a familiar comfort if they need to disengage. And they will just disengage, retreating into media, or physically removing themselves, without warning, permission, or apology.
It’s true that they are easily distracted and easily amused. They will watch movie PREVIEWS for an hour rather than pick one and watch the movie. They have been conditioned to very short periods of attention and very light engagement with material, which we saw start with MTV and the increased use of “jump cuts” in media back in the 80s. Even in long form media (movies) the pace of cuts and changes in camera angle is shocking when compared to older films. Try counting between cuts, it’s rare that you’ll get to 7 seconds on any modern media.
Social media exploits and furthers this, as you’ve noted, but I’ll add that even WE are not immune. Youtube shorts will suck you in and waste hours of your day if you let it, even KNOWING that it will do so.
I’ve also noticed that none of the kids do anything just for fun anymore. The F-ing “educators” with their drive to tie everything to their field have made it so there isn’t anything in the kids’ world that doesn’t explicitly contain an “educational” element or a dual purpose. No one plays sports for fun, they play on a team to “learn teamwork” and “build their resume’ for college”. They don’t play pickup ball because they know they could get hurt and miss out on a school or league game. They play, but most of them don’t really care much about the game. They don’t build models, or make killer robots, they “engage in STEM activities.” Books don’t just tell a compelling story, they “increase awareness” or “help to normalize” or “hold a mirror up to society” or “model behavior”.
When every single thing they do has an ulterior motive, how do the kids learn to trust anything?
Can’t trust the teacher/coach/neighbor because of stranger danger… can’t trust the government (and they don’t), can’t trust their thoughts (they just express their hidden biases and systemic racism), can’t trust their judgement (that guy isn’t a scary criminal, he just dresses and acts that way for cultural reasons) and far too many of them can’t trust their parents, too often because they are pawns in their narcissistic parents’ separate lives.
They KNOW that they are being subjected to doublethink and doublespeak, but the pressure to go along is immense. My kids understood “special” to mean “not like you and me, and not in a good way” at 6 and 8. It was actually hard to explain that a character in an older book, “a special little girl”, was really just a girl who was loved and cherished and not retarded or disabled. They know that they can’t say some things out loud that other kids can say. They know that they are pretending to believe things that just aren’t true. I work with my kids to identify and help them frame those things, but imagine what it must be like to be the kid of a true believer, who sees rioting and crime but is told it was “peaceful protests”. Or the kids in class with the “mainstreamed” kid who can’t learn, or won’t learn, who gets all kinds of accommodation and extra help and resources, but the ‘normal’ kid can’t even get the teacher’s attention.
Take all that, steep it in the music they’re listening to (listen to Sirius/XM’s altnation for a couple hours, but hide the razor and pistol first) and the rest of the cultural influences you’ve already mentioned, and it’s amazing there are ANY kids who are alright.
There are some, btw. Mostly outside of the cities. But even in the cities, you can have pockets of normal. We have an FFA program in our school district. Raising animals and seeing to THEIR needs will cancel a lot of the un-real world influence. Sadly, the kids who would most benefit don’t join that program.
The bigger question is what to do about it. Unless there is a mass extinction event (not gonna rule it out) or population collapse, these kids are literally the future. There has to be a way to help them. And unless we want to live in a cardboard box during our sunset years, we better figure out how.
nick
Nick, that was awesome….
Excellent. Not cheerful, but spot on.
By 16, they’re as hard-formed as rebar-reinforced concrete.
If you want impact, grab the pre-schoolers and kindergarten-aged kids, who can still be molded.
Past 16, it generally takes a life-shattering event to jar them out of complacency.
For most of them, that will be jail or prison, and already dependent and habit-ingrained to adopt a go-to response of swimming with the current, they will revert to type, and simply acclimate to their new reality.
Watch The Walking Dead as a metaphor for modern society, (it wasn’t written in a vacuum) and get back to me.
And try to contest the thesis that many, if not most, people should simply receive a digging spike to the brain, and be left where they fall.
The only ones who merit time and attention after that are the natural resistors, who go against the flow.
Those are the 5% who build republics on a barren continent amidst hostile natives.
And who will do so again. Almost certainly, of necessity.
Perfectly said, nick. I wonder if tech is inducing introvert/autism-like behaviors??? Good observation.
Sports isn’t just for boys. Best thing my younger daughter has done to deal with her social anxiety is to join cross country. Kids need activity and lots of it.
My personal take is that the structured play that started back in the 90s was the beginning of the current disaster that is child/teen/young adulthood. Now with zero tolerance policies for every little thing, kids don’t know how to solve conflict. Kids need conflict. Kids need to have fist fights. The skill of winning a fight (physical or not) and allowing the other party to save some face doesn’t exist. Add in that online bullying is so easy and almost risk-free that it can get seriously out of hand in a heartbeat.
Regarding my opening comment about social anxiety – both of my daughters are spectrum kiddos – most likely genetic, as there are subtle and not-so-subtle signs across the prior 3 generations. As higher intelligence people gravitate towards each other to settle down and raise a family, I think we have begun to self-select as a society for increased chances of things like ADHD, autism, etc. It’s just a matter of learning to control/manage it without drugs.
I know sports are good for boys. I’m willing to accept that they might be good for girls, but I’ve seen some negative aspects, too by masculinizing (at least some) females.
Social media also has another insidious function – it is designed so people show off only the glamorous and nice things that happen to them. Who spends a lot of time posting about their pain, and sorrow?
Mr. Wilder, the answer to that one is: The teens. The Pity Me Party (TM) is ongoing, and everyone’s welcome, except those with stable personalities and an internal locus of control. The more damaged, the more dysfunctional the more likes, reposts, and subscribes.
It’s maddening. Girls, and the boys who’ve been emotionally bullied to a fair-thee-well by the malicious mean girl matriarchy are vulnerable to the social contagion. Where parents are functionally absent, and the locus of meaning, love, and affirmation is based on impermanent marginally-functional adults (recent ed-school grads) and other teens, it’s through the roof.
See ya in 2.
Social media also punishes “wrongthink”. Rest of it is right on.
Some of your commenters are very long-winded. Or long-typed.
>they absolutely manipulate the way the apps work to make the user addicted.
Like every game, ever. Or Grandma, organizing a Sunday gathering.
>I’ve seen one statistic that 44% of high school students feel
>persistent sadness or hopelessness.
Every Sunday in the late 70s, I was depressed because there was school tomorrow. I think this stat is meaningless, because there’s no way to establish a ‘resting mental state’ that depression can be measured against. It all depends on self-reporting.
>especially for young girls who seem to be more impacted.
Impacted.
I saw ‘impacted’ go mainstream live on TV in the mid-20teens. Newsies didn’t know when to use (affect|effect), so they just didn’t. Other newsies saw that and jumped on the bandwagon, and that was that.
Good points, yet the numbers actually show increases in all the bad things related to kids mental health. What’s your take on why?
Wait, you’re suggesting that any statistic from anywhere amidst the soft-headed pseudo-sciences is reliable, an accurate representation of reality, or applicable to the real world?
Since when…?
Oh, and I’ll just leave this Point Of Order over here:
When psychologists, with a research grant funded by Big Pharma, tell you more kids are screwed up in the head than ever before, cui bono……?
Just asking.
I note purely in passing that until Uncle Sugar funded a War On Poverty, we never had as many “poor” people as we do today. And the republic staggered along just fine without any homeless advocates or community organizers for nearly 200 years.
I can’t help but feel there must be some vague connection between all those things…
Yup. The only thing Fed.Gov does really well is harm its own citizens.