<story><title>The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere</title><url>https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/international-mental-illness-part-one</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>obscurette</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a father of teen kids, teacher and educator. I don&amp;#x27;t think that there is a single reason here. All mentioned things contribute – social media pressure, climate problems, economical crisis etc. But I&amp;#x27;d like to add another one – declining quality of education. I see increasing number of teens depressed because they don&amp;#x27;t have teachers and their education isn&amp;#x27;t good enough for jobs they&amp;#x27;d like to get in future. And at least some of them are certainly right: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=32539424&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=32539424&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lsllc</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not sure you can blame problems such as climate change, economic issues -- every generation had its own existential crisis:  WW2, Korea, Vietnam, numerous recessions and until 1990, recent generations lived under the specter of the atom bomb.&lt;p&gt;I think it&amp;#x27;s social media, that&amp;#x27;s what&amp;#x27;s really changed:  Every single teenager is now comparing themselves against every other kid in the world instead of just their local peers (and maybe a few grainy MTV stars over 525 scan lines).  And of course the &amp;quot;popular&amp;quot; ones they&amp;#x27;re comparing to are the most successful, most good-looking, most privileged i.e. the most &amp;quot;perfect&amp;quot; ones (because that&amp;#x27;s how they got to be the most popular).  It&amp;#x27;s a terrible yardstick for &lt;i&gt;anyone&lt;/i&gt; to measure themselves against, let along impressionable young minds.</text></comment>
<story><title>The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere</title><url>https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/international-mental-illness-part-one</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>obscurette</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a father of teen kids, teacher and educator. I don&amp;#x27;t think that there is a single reason here. All mentioned things contribute – social media pressure, climate problems, economical crisis etc. But I&amp;#x27;d like to add another one – declining quality of education. I see increasing number of teens depressed because they don&amp;#x27;t have teachers and their education isn&amp;#x27;t good enough for jobs they&amp;#x27;d like to get in future. And at least some of them are certainly right: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=32539424&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=32539424&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>WalterBright</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s also been a corresponding dramatic drop in the number of teens who have had any sort of job. Not many things are as fulfilling as doing a job and getting paid for it.&lt;p&gt;I remember when I realized I was making enough money that I could pay all my bills and no longer needed anything from my dad. It felt really good. For me that was the dividing line between being a child and an adult.</text></comment>