[justrealist]

Look this sounds really good on the internet, but this is disconnected from reality.

The kids chronically truant are POOR and have no structural support at home. They are not depressed upper-middle-class-kids. The more-informed (albeit misinformed) demographic you're describing is not the problem.

[bombcar]

This is exactly true. The doomerism might affect a few, and I'd suspect more in college, but at the elementary and high school level there are much simpler and obvious explanations.