<story><title>The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community</title><url>https://www.afterbabel.com/p/the-upstream-cause-of-the-youth-mental</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vishnugupta</author><text>One big change I&amp;#x27;ve noticed between growing up in a small town and now where I&amp;#x27;m in my mid 40s in a big metro city in India is increased &amp;quot;transactional&amp;quot; nature of interactions of my daily life.&lt;p&gt;Back then we had a deeper ties with all those who served us by which I mean vegetable vendor, carpenter, doctor, knife sharpener, cloth shop, grocer, baker and so on. Whenever we interacted with them it would be a small chit-chat, exchange small updates (how&amp;#x27;s your son doing, is he married yet?) and then finally do the actual purchase.&lt;p&gt;It was to an extent that the carpenter would come by and just hand over a big dining table just because he thought our house deserved&amp;#x2F;needed it. He wouldn&amp;#x27;t ask for immediate payment either and also in instalments. Some other times he would come by and borrow some money.&lt;p&gt;All of that is now gone. Every single interaction I have now with vendors is 100% transactional. I don&amp;#x27;t even know their names nor they mine.&lt;p&gt;It means that I&amp;#x27;m now connected only with my immediate family, that&amp;#x27;s it. It also means that the generation now growing up know only transactional way of interaction with non family&amp;#x2F;friends. I guess these things eventually add up to the loss of community.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Nextgrid</author><text>Everyone is under more pressure thanks to cost of living and Western society being a property-indexed Ponzi scheme which requires endless growth just to keep up. Back when rent&amp;#x2F;home ownership was affordable and everyone had more &amp;quot;slack&amp;quot; it&amp;#x27;s easy to add humanity to transactions - you can spare the small opportunity cost even though you&amp;#x27;d make more money &lt;i&gt;short-term&lt;/i&gt; ignoring humanity and focusing purely on transactionality.&lt;p&gt;Nowadays when everyone&amp;#x27;s busy trying to make as much money as possible to be able to make rent or survive in ever-increasing inflation, an extra dining table they didn&amp;#x27;t give away is one they can sell for money. Similarly, borrowing money is harder&amp;#x2F;less acceptable because everyone &lt;i&gt;else&lt;/i&gt; too is under pressure and is less likely to be able to help (or at least it would cause them more hardship).</text></comment>
<story><title>The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community</title><url>https://www.afterbabel.com/p/the-upstream-cause-of-the-youth-mental</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vishnugupta</author><text>One big change I&amp;#x27;ve noticed between growing up in a small town and now where I&amp;#x27;m in my mid 40s in a big metro city in India is increased &amp;quot;transactional&amp;quot; nature of interactions of my daily life.&lt;p&gt;Back then we had a deeper ties with all those who served us by which I mean vegetable vendor, carpenter, doctor, knife sharpener, cloth shop, grocer, baker and so on. Whenever we interacted with them it would be a small chit-chat, exchange small updates (how&amp;#x27;s your son doing, is he married yet?) and then finally do the actual purchase.&lt;p&gt;It was to an extent that the carpenter would come by and just hand over a big dining table just because he thought our house deserved&amp;#x2F;needed it. He wouldn&amp;#x27;t ask for immediate payment either and also in instalments. Some other times he would come by and borrow some money.&lt;p&gt;All of that is now gone. Every single interaction I have now with vendors is 100% transactional. I don&amp;#x27;t even know their names nor they mine.&lt;p&gt;It means that I&amp;#x27;m now connected only with my immediate family, that&amp;#x27;s it. It also means that the generation now growing up know only transactional way of interaction with non family&amp;#x2F;friends. I guess these things eventually add up to the loss of community.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ricardo81</author><text>Not too different to myself in my mid forties in Scotland though in my case it&amp;#x27;s still the small town I was born in, the pleasures of working from home.&lt;p&gt;There used to be local vendors as you describe (what comes to mind is a local shop, an ice cream van, milk man, a fizzy drinks vendor, a butcher&amp;#x2F;baker), but they&amp;#x27;ve all been replaced by economies of scale (supermarkets and now online).&lt;p&gt;So now there are no local shops, no weekly vans with their specialist goods. And those half a dozen well known local faces aren&amp;#x27;t doing their rounds.&lt;p&gt;A local shop serves as a meeting place where conversations can take place. Even in the 80s in the UK when TV was at its peak, people could have conversations the next day on what they watched last night out of the 4 channels available.&lt;p&gt;I guess the local social cohesion can be thought of as a necessity when you&amp;#x27;re going to deal with lots of local people and with recent trends said in the article it&amp;#x27;s considered optional.</text></comment>