<story><title>CDC warns of a steep decline in teen mental health</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/03/31/student-mental-health-decline-cdc/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sva_</author><text>There was a discussion on here, about how the Covid pandemic may have been one of the, or even &lt;i&gt;the&lt;/i&gt; biggest transfers of wealth from &amp;quot;the poor&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;the rich&amp;quot; in the history of our civilization. Somebody remarked, that it has also been the biggest transfer of lifetime from the young to the old, as the lockdowns were mostly to protect the old. The measures taken against the pandemic undoubtedly had a huge impact on young people&amp;#x27;s mental health, but the effects of it will only really unfold in the coming years, and are probably not measurable. People who deny this must be willfully ignorant.</text></item><item><author>lumb63</author><text>It astonishes me to see people defending the idea that the pandemic is not a notable component of this. I agree that social media, internet porn, competitive school environment, economic conditions, etc., are all negative influences on teenage mental health. However, to propose that forcing (or, at the least, very strongly encouraging) an entire populace into self-isolation would not have negative impacts for a group in one of the most social and formative times of life, is absurd.&lt;p&gt;Imagine you spent half the time you were in high school, alone. I cannot imagine any rational person is capable of believing this to not be a major factor to their mental health.&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, I am a reasonably strong introvert, and I switched teams at my job during the pandemic after nine months of work from home because it did not feel healthy to my mental state to not have interacted with anyone in so long. I felt that my social abilities had atrophied, and that I had lost sight of a lot of the important things in life that derive from social interaction. I can only imagine that the impact is far greater to someone who can&amp;#x27;t choose to change their life to obtain the social interaction they are missing, and who (I am generalizing a bit here) probably requires mental&amp;#x2F;emotional guidance and support from their peers, elders, etc.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lumb63</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s certainly a difficult cost&amp;#x2F;benefit analysis, preserving the lives of the elderly, at the expense of quality of life for a younger generation, versus the opposite. The effects are, as you said, probably not measurable, and so the calculus is near-impossible. However, the answer has seemingly been to not even try, and to &amp;quot;stop covid&amp;quot; at all costs, laying waste to any holistic arguments that perhaps prioritizing societal wellbeing was a better route than declaring war against a virus.&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the vast majority of the world lost its cool in the pandemic, and in our panic, we may have made mistakes. Or maybe not. The long term results remain to be seen. Certainly, however, we as a society did not act with a level head and think things through rationally before acting.</text></comment>
<story><title>CDC warns of a steep decline in teen mental health</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/03/31/student-mental-health-decline-cdc/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sva_</author><text>There was a discussion on here, about how the Covid pandemic may have been one of the, or even &lt;i&gt;the&lt;/i&gt; biggest transfers of wealth from &amp;quot;the poor&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;the rich&amp;quot; in the history of our civilization. Somebody remarked, that it has also been the biggest transfer of lifetime from the young to the old, as the lockdowns were mostly to protect the old. The measures taken against the pandemic undoubtedly had a huge impact on young people&amp;#x27;s mental health, but the effects of it will only really unfold in the coming years, and are probably not measurable. People who deny this must be willfully ignorant.</text></item><item><author>lumb63</author><text>It astonishes me to see people defending the idea that the pandemic is not a notable component of this. I agree that social media, internet porn, competitive school environment, economic conditions, etc., are all negative influences on teenage mental health. However, to propose that forcing (or, at the least, very strongly encouraging) an entire populace into self-isolation would not have negative impacts for a group in one of the most social and formative times of life, is absurd.&lt;p&gt;Imagine you spent half the time you were in high school, alone. I cannot imagine any rational person is capable of believing this to not be a major factor to their mental health.&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, I am a reasonably strong introvert, and I switched teams at my job during the pandemic after nine months of work from home because it did not feel healthy to my mental state to not have interacted with anyone in so long. I felt that my social abilities had atrophied, and that I had lost sight of a lot of the important things in life that derive from social interaction. I can only imagine that the impact is far greater to someone who can&amp;#x27;t choose to change their life to obtain the social interaction they are missing, and who (I am generalizing a bit here) probably requires mental&amp;#x2F;emotional guidance and support from their peers, elders, etc.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>radicalbyte</author><text>If we didn&amp;#x27;t do the lockdowns then we would have seen a huge increase in mortality over all age groups as hospitals where overwhelmed.&lt;p&gt;Also, Long Covid is very much a thing.&lt;p&gt;I get it though: teenagers are growing up during a once in a century pandemic in the middle of an existential climate crisis which the old leaders (all 70+ in the US!) are not addressing.</text></comment>