[paperwasp42]

I'm not even a parent, but I've been incredibly distressed by this trend. Several of my good friends have had their daughters attempt suicide (luckily, none have succeeded, although 2 extremely close calls). It's been utterly gut-wrenching to watch these talented, kind, ambitious girls spiral into shells of their former selves.

Luckily, all my friends are fellow techies who are upper-middle class, and can afford medication and therapy (and in one case, out-of-state long-term hospitalization.) But even with insurance, they're looking at many thousands of dollars of treatment.

It makes me sick to my stomach to think of all the lower-class parents who are terrified of their kids killing themselves, but can't afford therapy or psychiatry visits, and can't get pro-bono help (apparently the wait lists are several months long in many cities.)

It's past time the West reckons with our mental health crisis. Why is it that we're the wealthiest nations in the world, yet our kids are more stressed and depressed than kids in third-world countries? I think society will only become more and more unstable until we spend time seriously addressing that question and adjust our culture accordingly.

[tonguez]

The problem with framing this as a mental health crisis is that it implies the solution is in mental health services. Is there a mental health crisis in North Korea? No their lives are just terrible. Therapy isn’t going to help people in North Korea. Similarly the worse material conditions are in the West the more people are going to kill themselves. I think it’s about 200 a day in the US and it has been for many many years. The fact that this is not talked about on the news is an example of one of the negative material conditions in the West that result in worse health outcomes. It is depressing to live in a society where everything is controlled by rich people who torture the population, and the answer is not therapy or drugs.

[skim_milk]

I disagree, the goal of therapy (should) be to make the patient more self-efficacious, NOT about making them happy or instilling the right mental gymnastics to feel OK about their situation. The more self-efficacious a person is, the more likely they are to figure out what is causing them problems and find meaning in their life by rising to the challenge and organizing action with either themselves or within their peer group in order to deal with their situation that causes them and their peers distress. A depressed, non-self-efficacious person will be less capable of figuring out and making plans to deal with situations that cause them distress.

Would a mentally healthy, self-efficacious population be more or less likely realize their problems and organize collective action to correct their situation?

[astrange]

> Is there a mental health crisis in North Korea? No their lives are just terrible.

Do they even have poor mental health there? It's quite likely, but most people throughout history lived in terrible conditions, sometimes resorting to cannibalism way back in the day[1], and probably did not have depression from it. It's all about relative expectations.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_antecessor#Cannibalism

[Dumblydorr]

Are you a mental health professional? Seems you're overconfident that therapy and drugs aren't the solution to mental health problems, given those are the two main treatments used by doctors who are actually experts on the matter.

[kar5pt]

This is circular reasoning. "Only mental health professionals can have an opinion on the matter because mental health professionals say so, and the opinion of mental health professionals is authoritative because it's a mental health issue". Why can't we disagree that it's solely a mental health matter?

[math_denial]

>Seems you're overconfident that therapy and drugs aren't the solution to mental health problems

And seems like mental health professionals are overconfident that their methods work. And the evidence that they do is weak, especially for the talk therapy.

[cultofmetatron]

medication isn't going to fix that. our society is infected at every level. Urban planning is setup so you can't get anywhere without a car so kids are stuck online all day. We don't have public spaces where you aren't expected to spend money. Our food is tainted and industrialized to have less nutrition.

We spent decades digging this grave

[annexrichmond]

I think this take is a little extreme. I grew up in a very small town. You couldn’t get to the city without driving 30 minutes to a bus stop. I didn’t like it very much, and really looked forward to moving to a city.

However, there were a plethora of parks, ponds, baseball and basketball courts, skateboarding parks, and an ice rink nearby that were somewhat walkable.

Yeah I spent a little too much time on the computer but I did have a social life and went outside a lot doing all kinds of fun.

I think you are underestimating how much fun kids can have with not very much. I agree that we have serious cultural problems but I think urban planning is the wrong culprit here.

I think at least some of it is lazy parenting who are content with just giving their kids an iPad or throwing them in front of the TV for entertainment.

You know what my sister did with her friends for “fun”? They wrote and acted out plays. This wasn’t that long ago, it was in the 90s.

[sodality2]

The issue is that it's too easy to forgo all of that and scroll through tiktok for 12+ hours a day, per day (school days included). I'm not exaggerating with that number, either. When you literally have nothing else to do, you'll find something enriching to do. But when there's an easy, lazy outlet, kids will go to that. We literally cannot say the same about kids a few decades ago, either. No one spent every waking moment watching Sunday cartoons or reading the paper, and reading that retort of "well we've ALWAYS done things like that" is so off-putting because it's NEVER been this extreme.

[adnmcq999]

So will adults. We’re here on hn

[sodality2]

That's very true! It's not just kids. However (and maybe this is disingenuous) I believe that HN is both more enriching (I learn new things every single time whereas tiktok is mostly mind-numbing videos that no one will remember in six months) and less addictive (relative to something like tiktok). It's still social media, but it really is nothing like tiktok. Ask your kids for their screentime, or ask which of their friends has the highest. I bet it's at least 10 hours, and the likelihood of it being tiktok or instagram is very high.

[kzrdude]

"more enriching" is how we fool ourselves to continue diverting our attention - speaking for myself - it's just math on youtube, it's just stackoverflow/programming, etc. Unfortunately the cycle of infinite information needs to be throttled I think.

[kzrdude]

And it's not great. The loss of attention in general.

[nosianu]

Funny thing is I just had to scroll back to the top to remind myself of what the subject of this discussion actually is. Because I was looking at a Discord chat in between reading comments here. Ahem...

[watwut]

Issue here, imo is also the supervision requirement. The kids are not allowed to go outside independently without parent until they are basically teenagers.

Parents have stuff to do and also nothing to do on playground. So they stop taking kids there once those are over toddler age and won't destroy house put of sheer energy. Playgrouds are boring and 9-11 years old truly have nothing to do there without friends group.

So 6-10 years old kids are rarely outside. They know how to have fun at home and school, but they have no community in park and don't know games. Then they are 14-16 and everyone is like "why don't they go outside? there is basketball court". But shooting balls alone is fun for like two days and they don't known to have fun there.

[cabalamat]

> The issue is that it's too easy to forgo all of that and scroll through tiktok for 12+ hours a day

That's because social media is deliberately designed to be addictive. Zuckerberg et al know this, but don't care, because all they care about is their proftis.

[Wiseacre]

How close to you did those friends live? Did you need to drive in order to spend time with them?

[annexrichmond]

Had many friends in my neighborhood who either went to the same school or played the same sport that were walking distance. But yeah there were a few friends who lived on the other side of town where I’d need a ride to get to

[refurb]

Similar experience. Grew up in the suburbs. Was outside every with friends.

[AussieWog93]

You state this with a lot of confidence!

>Urban planning is setup so you can't get anywhere without a car so kids are stuck online all day.

This wasn't a problem in the 70s and 80s. Kids would just ride their bikes everywhere.

>We don't have public spaces where you aren't expected to spend money.

Apart from playgrounds, parks, libraries, community groups, all kinds of events... I don't think we've ever had more free public services than in the 21st century.

>Our food is tainted and industrialized to have less nutrition.

This is true for processed food, but we still have less malnutrition (macro and micro) today compared to any point in the 20th century.

I think it's really easy to pick the popular talking points from one's tribe and pose them as the problem/solution in any particular situation. If the goal is to actually identify/solve the problem, though, this more often than not is ineffective.

[diordiderot]

In many places in the US they'll take your kids into protective custody if you leave them unsupervised.

[sethammons]

Happened to a friend at work. Quiet neighborhood, the park is literally on the other side of the lazy street. He was watching his kid from his window when another parent called the police for an unsupervised child. Cue a real legal battle where they could have lost custody of their kid.

[giantg2]

Just curious, how old were they?

[sethammons]

Kindergarten age.

Edit, looked it up: https://frontporchne.com/article/parents-threatened-jail-fre...

[makeitdouble]

About what changed between the 70s and now regarding letting your kids roam free:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/communi...

https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/04/neighbors-of-free-r...

This also answers your questions about public spaces they can use without you.

[bcassedy]

It isn't just processed food. Fruits and vegetables are declining in nutritional value as well.

[dsrees]

For some context, in the book Omnivores Dilemma, author Michael Pollan states that an orange that our grandparents ate as kids had 5x the nutritional value as an orange today.

Amazing book, everyone should go read it.

[watwut]

The bike everywhere thing requires housing density and infrastructure. And society that won't call CPS on 9-10 years old without supervision.

There are wast suburban areas without public parks and libraries. They are meant for living only, so if you live there, you really need car

[giantg2]

On that nutrition comment... it affects nonprocessed foods too.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-aN...

[bpodgursky]

> Urban planning is setup so you can't get anywhere without a car so kids are stuck online all day

The reason kids were stuck online all day over the past two years is not urban planning; it is because kids were not allowed to go to school or socialize.

You can make claims against the base rate this way, but not against the increase over the past two years.

(also, I have no reason to think that urban kids are in a better mental state than suburban ones this pandemic, and have anecdotal reasons to think the opposite).

[usrusr]

Kids did quite a bit of reduced quantity (in terms of heads, not hours) in-person socialising in places that #1 still have places where kids can hang out without it being some form of formal kids entertainment establishment that always ends up borderline factory farming when seen through a pandemic filter and #2 kept their infection waves in check with early quick nuanced NPI instead of waiting until only the big hammer could help.

[bpodgursky]

OK, but the urban centers were the places where playgrounds were taped off, malls were closed, coffeeshops were takeout-only and there's no other good place for kids to aggregate.

Suburban areas with yards and neighborhood playgrounds not owned by the city are were kids actually could and did socialize during the pandemic.

> #2 kept their infection waves in check with early quick nuanced NPI instead of waiting until only the big hammer could help

No place succeeded at this, other than small island nations. This is a fake narrative.

[usrusr]

Urban centers used to have kids congregating in non-purpose built places all the time, before that was all stratified away. That's precisely what GP was saying I think.

#2 wasn't about suppressing the virus to zero (true, no place succeeded at, not even China), it as about avoiding long stretches of strong countermeasures by applying lighter countermeasures earlier. They still required some escalation for maybe a few weeks but that's far from what people had who had to dig themselves out from underneath a massive wave they ran into at full speed.

[bpodgursky]

I understand what you are claiming, but it's a narrative not based on what actually happened.

The places that locked down earlier stayed locked down, and the places that locked down later re-opened earlier. No state stayed locked down to "dig themselves out of a hole"; that's not how any of the waves played out.

[elil17]

To me this is honestly more depressing than climate change and just as depressing as global poverty. We can make sure civilization keeps existing, we can stop exploiting the global south, but even then the best-off people in the world will still often feel that life is not worth living.

I’m glad there are people for whom medication and therapy works. I hope more people can get access to medication. I’m also sad that there isn’t more being done to address root causes.

[e40]

I partially agree.

The other big thing that caused kids to go inside was fear of abduction. 24/7 cable news, starting in the 80s, was constantly stoking fear of this.

In the 80's I remember watching an Oprah (while sick at home, watching TV was the way to get well, because it I hated it so much) on Adam Walsh's murder. His body was found near were I lived a few years before. I believe this was the beginning of the "your kids will be kidnapped and murdered" hysteria.

Parents reacted to this pulling their kids closer to home and when video games became a thing, it wasn't even hard to keep them inside anymore. Now, with cell phones, the battle is completely lost. These devices give kids (and everyone that uses them) little squirts of pleasure all day long.

I've been an avid walker for 26 years. Not until the pandemic did I ever see people outside (kids or adults), except people walking a dog to let it crap somewhere. I guess that's one good side effect of it.

[adnmcq999]

This take is not extreme at all. Everyone with an ounce of intuition knows it. The only people who could be happy in this society are narcissists or autists (nothing against the latter). Even if you are lucky enough to find what you love you’d have to be even luckier to have it be able to make enough to keep up with all the rentiness of it all. I guess you might also find who you love and have someone to suffer with.

[silisili]

> It's past time the West reckons with our mental health crisis.

OK. But doing so would admit that our entire system is broken.

It's not that more kids born today want to off themselves, it's that our system makes everyone unhappy.

We need to fix the system, not give kids pills.

[Levitz]

>OK. But doing so would admit that our entire system is broken.

I don't think this can even be argued against at this point. A truckload of societies in the west would be facing absolute collapse right now if it wasn't for immigration.

In a version of reality in which we can't afford to just import as much cheap labour as we want, a good part of western culture would be facing extreme turmoil and our hegemony would most probably end. Hell we are pretty much assuming China will explode from inner conflict at some point because otherwise that hegemony is lost either way.

[encryptluks2]

It isn't even a matter of being able to pay for therapy or psychiatric visits. The mental health system has been overwhelmed throughout the pandemic. There simply aren't enough mental health professionals to help the overwhelming need of individuals throughout the pandemic. You could be waiting 3+ months before you can even be seen by someone, especially if on a state or low-income health insurance plan.

[throwawayboise]

It was like that before the pandemic, TBH. We tried to get counseling for one of my kids for suspected depression and it was a complete shitshow. Therapists and psychologists were booked out for months and unless you were actively threatening suicide you could not get anyone to pay attention.

[jaarse]

^ This ^

3 months right now is extremely fast to see someone in a clinic with a social work degree. Was told the actual Psychiatrists or Psychologists are completely full for an indefinite amount of time (As in years on the wait list).

And this is paying out of pocket.

And we were told directly from the clinics themselves, that the pandemic has led to an explosion in the number of clients.

[giantg2]

Are waiting times for telaheath any better?

[ekianjo]

> can afford medication

I'm not sure putting chemicals in one kid's brain (especially since brains are not fully formed till 25) is a very good idea

[giantg2]

Pretty sure things like CHIP cover mental health, but I could be wrong.

[theHIDninja]

>daughters

Was it only daughters that attempted suicide? What about sons?

With this language, you are implying the life of a woman is worth more than a man's. Why?

[Thiez]

I don't think they implied that. I doubt OP meant anything by it; they also refer to their "good" friends, do you also question whether OP is ignoring suicide when it happens to (children of) ordinary friends?

The distiction between sons and daughters is interesting though, because women are statistically much more likely to attempt suicide, whereas men are more likely to succeed at it.

[dang]

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: you've been breaking the site guidelines a ton lately. That's not cool, and will eventually get your account banned. If you'd please review the guidelines and stick to them when posting here, we'd appreciate it.