Look around you and observe your friends, family, colleagues, or a significant other, but really: any adults. This is not only affecting "teen girls", and certainly not only US people.
We need more research on this without "teen girls" in the clickbait titles. This affects everyone. It affected the person of my romantic interest and I had to break up at the end.
This affects 30+ year old men too. Don't dismiss it.
Besides research we need solutions. We need advice on how to approach this topic. We need to find a way to be able to help those who want it.
> This affects 30+ year old men too. Don't dismiss it.
Society doesn't fix things unless women are affected
Its routine, right now in popular culture to regard rape as a joke, to make fun of the victims, to trivialise it, to limit discussions about it... Unless it's a female victim.
Same with violence, more men are victims than women, but only females receive the help and support.
Even with these new (dubious) numbers there is no mention that males still outnumber females in terms of suicides.
The USA is currently engaging in widespread active revocation of women's rights.
And, yes, suicide attempts and suicide injuries are included in the report. I suggest you read past the headline. The report does not support your "this affects everybody equally" claims.
Actual death is a more important problem than injury, and yet it's the injury that is getting the attention, not the actual death.
> I suggest you read past the headline. The report does not support your "this affects everybody equally" claims.
Before you jump to conclusions you might want to read up on this particular area of research. The wikipedia page above is a good starting point (follow the link "suicide paradox").
The problem with teen girls is very likely social media. The focus on them is because the problem is pretty stark and takes off nicely coincident with facebook.
But its interesting that you'd use all the redpill tropes that men have been getting fed by social media to passive aggressively point out that men suffer from the same problems too. You're both explicitly and implicitly arguing the point that men suffer as well.
It is just more difficult to track grown men because right wing radio has been making them miserable for decades, so there hasn't been a stark change in the past 15 years or so.
In other words, I agree men are being made miserable by social media, because you sound miserable.
> This affects 30+ year old men too. Don't dismiss it.
Society does not care about male problems. Let's just label them incels or terrorists and be done with it. Also at the same time let's wonder why Andrew Tate and similar are easily getting such a huge following.
Hot take, I know, and sorry in advance. But I'll go so far as to say that what you're saying here is in part caused by technology, the internet and social media. Most reasonable people, and reasonable feminists (which most feminists I've met are) do sympathise with men and their issues as well.
I think social media amplifies the extreme minorities voices that state that they don't care about male problems, that men are incels and far-right terrorists and other unsavory takes. I don't think most people label males as such. But I do think social media is extremely good at bringing up these takes - because they create a lot of engagement (particularly from the opposing side).
I think social media affects 30 year old males in the exact same way as teenage girls get body image problems from looking at "perfect" lives on Instagram. Men get served toxic and outrage based content that shows the extreme outliers - multiple times a week, for multiple years in a row.
I think most people are reasonable. I think most people care about male problems. I think a minority label men as incels or terrorists. I think the internet exaggerates this position greatly, and it's at least partly overblown.
Reasonableness is hard to determine ahead of time, or even to define.
Here's something I've seen happen. A couple of women in a corporate Slack channel says, hey CEO, what are you going to do to celebrate International Women's Day? Some dudes respond and say, cool, good idea but if we do something for that can we also celebrate International Men's Day? The women reply with angry face and eyeroll emojis before saying: no we should not, because "every day is international men's day".
This is the type of casual misandry and anti-male sentiment that is an everyday experience when dealing with feminists. Were these women the "reasonable" type? They weren't literally tweeting #KillAllMen but when it came to the crunch they wanted special privileges for women and justified this sexism with shallow, untrue meme-based kneejerks.
So the OPs point is accurate. Nobody cares about men being depressed or angry, especially not in government, academia or the media. Phrase it in terms of teen girls and the floodgates of tax money open. Let that affect strategy or don't, but that's how it is.
Not celebrating international mens day isn't a problem (although I bet some may disagree with me). It's kind of a political take in the same vein as "Black Lives Matter" vs. the counter "White Lives Matter".
Jumping into these "reactionary" mens rights positions as a counter to feminist issues is the wrong way to do it and understandably makes people a bit angry. Just as in if real life someone is telling you about an issue - countering with a "buuut, group Y has it bad too..." would probably make someone double take a bit. It's unproductive, but normal on social media because it's engaging and creates a hot comment section.
In my opinion some major male problems are related to:
* Mental health, suicide and the lack of services and support for men.
* How the education system works better for females than males.
* How platonic relationships with males have been systemetically decreasing.
* How in rural societies women are more likely to move to the cities and get an education leading to men having way less romantic options.
If you bring these topics up with women they'll probably sympathise and maybe also agree that these are issues that our society should be assisting with solving. How it should be "solved" may be up for debate. But framing it as a counter position to the feminist movement isn't the right way to do it. But very normalised online, which feeds into my point of the internet exaggerating issues as most debates you see online is controversial by design of the algorithms and content creators trying to get engagement.
Disclaimer: I'm from Norway, which gives some context. But I think these issues are pretty common across the westernized world.
You're conceding the point, right? The OP asks why is the focus only on teen girls? Why not on everyone who is getting sadder? The answer is: society and especially academia is systematically biased against men for political and ideological reasons. So you respond, when men ask for equally good treatment to women that is a "political" demand that is "reactionary" and "understandably makes people a bit angry". It's a restatement of the original claim, rephrased because you seem to agree with this anti-male bias, but that doesn't change what it is.
I'm not conceding any point. I am trying to say that the way the internet works inherently filters information to us based on how emotionally engaging content is. Maybe you aren't exposed to the counter points because they aren't that engaging but there's tons of research being done on men as well. Incels and Japanese Hikikomori, conspiracy theories and online extremism is more male oriented. Also, objectively there's tons of studies of the mental health effects on males online but the consensus seems to be that gaming doesn't have as a negative effect on boys as social media has for women - which a lot of boys screen time revolves around. But boys are also affected by this.
The focus only being on teen girls is objectively false. We literally have no idea what this technology is doing to us, and the research communities are scrambling to figure out the effects of social media and technology on all of us. But these are extremely time consuming and hard things to do conclusive studies on.
I do concede that girls were the first group to be broadly reported though. Probably because that age and gender group is especially vulnerable to the damages caused by social media and signs clearly starting showing up in 2012-2017 in a greater degree than boys of the same age group. Also it doesn't surprise me that a group who is constantly monitored by authority (parents and schools) are the first to be reported on. Males aged 20-60 are more likely to isolate themselves and not reach out creating far greater "dark cases".
My original point is that the internet exaggerates and selectively filters for engagement. If your knowledge on this topic is primarily from online sources optimised for engagement you have an incomplete view on the area. I'm not trying to change your mind on this topic in particular. I'm just saying that the internet inherently exaggerates and removes nuance (and I've felt a bit of that lack of nuance in your comments) and that this affects everyone and every single topic online today. Including me.
This thread is getting quite confusing. OK, your argument is that only a tiny minority of people are engaged in misandry like constantly talking about incels, and they are exaggerated by the internet, and most of society actually cares a lot about problems that affect men. Is that right?
I gotta ask because you seem to be disagreeing with the thesis of this thread, but then it appears like you keep rephrasing the points:
TheLoafOfBread says: "Society does not care about male problems. Let's just label them incels or terrorists and be done with it."
Your response: "there's tons of research being done on men as well. Incels and Japanese Hikikomori, conspiracy theories and online extremism is more male oriented"
Yes that's what he said?? Academics research girls to solve their problems, they research men as problems. Put another way, if this is really the view of only a tiny minority that is exaggerated by social media engagement optimization, how can there also be "tons of research" on these things?
Research is being done on both girls and boys, adults and children. There are rational explanations for why you mostly hear about the girls (the numbers there are insane, and more likely to bubble up into your feed).
But the comment thread here seems to take the stance that men are being profiled and biased by this research through a political and an ideological stance. There is no/little research being done on men or boys - and the research that is being done is attributed to ideological and political reasons and to suppress boys and men through stamping them as "extremists, incels and such".
Women don't care about men. #killallmen. This is absolutely absurd and doesn't mirror real life in the slightest. It's an extreme position you've been fed through the information you consume online. It's a position based on vicitimisation and outrage. Your talking points lack nuance.
The reason you haven't heard about research is not because it doesn't exist - but because the information sources you consume online doesn't filter it up to you. There are rational explanations for why boys and men are underreported in this research, you just aren't picking it up, and you're attributing it to malice and conspiracies.
This is what the internet does. It polarizes people.
But it seems like this thread was removed from HN. I won't be returning.
It's not so much that "academia is systematically biased against men for political and ideological reasons" as much as men themselves (as a generalized group, exceptions exist) are resistant to admitting that any of these issues are a significant problem, and asking for or seeking help for them if they were.
It's the old standard of not wanting to appear weak or needy. This is a real thing with men (as a generalized group, exceptions exist) and also plays a powerful role is shaping how society treats men's versus women's problems in this context.
this is the hardest of all. When it comes to men's day, indeed all day is celebration of 20% higher salaries that men receive in average.
OTOH, introducing men's day sounds fair as then everyone is treated equally (in this aspect)
I really don't know which side of this particular debate we should support more. What I'm sure is that the topic is more delicate and complicated than having a one-sentence answer to it.
Firstly, every day is clearly not a celebration of men. This is exactly the same lie that the feminists pushed in the Slack channel. A "celebration" has lots of very specific aspects to it, for example they wanted the company doing public announcements, praising female employees (for existing, more or less), talking about how important it is to hire more women and so on.
Secondly, men don't receive higher salaries when controlling for the work done and age. When you control for those things women now earn higher salaries, reflecting feminist biases in hiring. This insistence that work and motherhood should be ignored is also a feminist meme that's been repeatedly debunked since the 1980s. It never goes away because if feminists were to accept this, they'd have to also concede that different choices lead to different outcomes, that men and women make different choices, and therefore that disparate outcomes is not oppression. And that would undermine the whole premise of feminist ideology. So feminists can never be honest about salaries, if they were, they'd no longer be feminists.
There is a "Men's day" where I live and it's not really controversial at all among the vast majority.
In fact, it's a very practical holiday that encourages male bonding and keeping long-term friendships, something lacking these days, so it's not just symbolic.
Other initiatives such as November 19 and Movember also have a lot of practical stuff, related to health.
That is just factually inaccurate. Society cares a lot about male problems. Men have a legitimate complaint that public displays of misandry are tolerated far beyond what is fair, but in terms of on-the-ground outcomes it is hard to point to anything unreasonable going on. At scale anyway, the world is full of local warts.
The main problem men have when it comes to medical outcomes is their absolute refusal to seek help. I can name multiple men I know who died or came close to it because they refused to see a doctor. I intend to go out the same way, for what it is worth. Seems likely that attitude carries over to mental health.
Research on breast cancer is much better funded than prostate cancer. Might this serves as a hard point, in light of the higher fatality of the latter?
And yet it is very easy to lay hands on a study saying that the overall system is over-funding diseases that affect men [0]. It is not very useful to find one data point arguing either way.
Besides, we'd probably expect strictly gendered disease problems to be biased towards spending on women. Men have a prostrate and a penis to keep tabs of, women have an entire reproductive system that looks mighty complex and delicate. Given the amount of money that is hopefully sloshing around to make it safe for women to have kids, maybe some of it spilled over into breast cancer funding. It is a reasonable situation.
Looks like the diseases in question there are diseases that are more prevalent amongst men than women. Not diseases that are exclusively for men over women. Perhaps there is a curve where if its a disease that can affect both genders there is a bias for men, and if it is exclusively to a specific gender then women get the benefit.
You are absolutely right that it is affecting the whole society, but no amount of research will ever discover the things you’re not allowed to notice, let alone solve. Is what makes the censorship and attacks on free speech stop pernicious, because as the attacks are only ramping up, so will the subject situation only get worse, because you cannot solve things you cannot even say out loud.
Yes, personal responsibility™ is the root cause here. Not corporations that have been making hyper addictive applications and maximising engagement for profit.
While I don't blame anyone solely, there's lots of blame to go around - solely blaming the parents doesn't hold up. Kids are ostracized if they don't have a smartphone, don't have TikTok, and don't have YouTube. It's easy to blame the parents, but it's unreasonable to expect them to know how to deal with new technology and how to enforce it with kids.
Probably an unpopular take here, but I think within a decade or so social media and technology will have it's "smoking moment" and be regulated harder. Probably some sort of age limits, protections for minors and enforced parental controls (like whitelisted channels, screentime, and such). As today it's pretty much impossible for a parent to see what kids are doing on these applications, and pretty much impossible for them to enforce it if they aren't in the same room.
I studied Human Geography in my undergrad. Our prof predicted a social media crash would be around 2050 due to declining global population. However, I think this crash is coming quicker than we thought in 2012.
The digital twin isn’t in real time, only near real time with some lag.
> Kids are ostracized if they don't have a smartphone
So?
I was ostracized for being into science, math, and computers in the early 90s. It sucked at the time, but at the end of the day it's better having a solid filter for who are the superficial garbage people, and who are not.
Kids are ostracized in different generations for different things. It's in our nature to be shitty to each other.
Oh, Johnny doesn't think I'm cool because I don't post vapid content on instagram? That's a win, because now I can regard Johnny as the trash that he is.
Do you blame personal responsibility for the obesity epidemic?
Do you blame personal responsibility for a smoker’s lung cancer?
Do you blame personal responsibility for the liver failure of an alcoholic?
Do you blame personal responsibility for the Rohingya genocide?
It’s easy to blame the parents when Meta creates a hyper addictive application with beauty filters for example that amplifies society’s pressure on young girls to be of a certain pre-determined “norm”.
The issues young girls are facing go far beyond the extremely narrow view of “it’s the parent’s fault”.
Yes, I always blame people for the things they do; to themselves, and to others.
There is a time where it's excusable, like when it wasn't clear that smoking causes cancer. But when you should know, then you should know.
I also understand that addiction is extremely difficult to fight, so I don't judge people who are addicted. But it is still their responsibility to solve the problem, or not to. It's the community's responsibility to support people fighting their addictions.
I judge people who pretend that there's no problem, say it isn't their responsibility, and let their children get addicted too.
Meta, and the entire internet, is a shit show. Corporations poison people's minds and addict them to useless content. They ruin lives. But that doesn't mean I'm not disappointed in myself if I give into it.
Difficult when you live like many do in car-centric areas, and rely on others for transport which may also not be affordable or convenient.
See also the perpetual complaints about teenagers ’loitering’ in parks etc, and also sales of those same parks to developers by cash-strapped local authorities in many, many places.
They're likely to bring social media with them into nature, take pictures, make remote places popular, and thus ruin them. I'm sure tourism in world-famous cities is guilty of this, but I specifically recall a sunflower field somewhere in Canada that went viral, and people would come to take pictures and leave litter everywhere.
Complicated problem. Some of the people who read this site, work day in and out to ensure that doesn't happen. When you're pay is connected with not solving a problem it's pretty hard to solve it.
Will only help if the problem is actually social media but the articles Haidt assembled to show that had a lot of problems. Social media might be a confounder or symptom rather than a cause.
In previous cases, the questions regarding rape have been phrased to be incredibly broad, to the point of straining credulity. I can't say where these particular statistics have come from, but prior statistical nonsense here has poisoned the well for me.
Can "forced" in this context be interpreted as "peer pressured" by the person being interviewed?
I'm not here to doubt the statistics. But when I was young peer pressure was a problem when it came to sex.
I don't know if I would consider "I was pressured by my peers to have sex, but I didn't really want to" as rape. Or at least, I don't know who the rapist would be in this case.
And it affects men too. First time I made out with a girl, I really didn't like her (as in I found her boring and not attractive). But my friends were pressuring me towards it. A few shots of vodka later, and I did what I had to do.
1) I think it is also pretty bad, when mental health is concerned. When you (assuming a teenage boy) were verbally forced to have sex with a girl you didn't lose anything but per Christian culture in the US a girl would. It's just a bigger deal.
2) in this case it is "physically forced", see the paper.
I'd like to see the survey question(s) they used to derive this. I recall when the oft touted claim that "1 in 4 college females experience sexual assault" included anyone who answered that they'd had sex under the influence of alcohol.
Good news for you! The very first link in article body goes to a very ctrl-Fable PDF. If you are actually interested, in less than a minute worth of effort you'd find those pieces of info on pages 53 and 82.
I have the lower sex drive in my relationships and experience a concomitant pressure to have sex when I don't want to. I'll often say yes to avoid a fight, avoid upsetting my partner or to stop them from nagging me. This has never seemed like a big deal to me although it is sometimes a nuisance. How does this square with your PoV? Is it rape? Maybe it doesn't count as "real" pressure?
I'm not trying to minimize the issue or trip you up here. There is obviously enough coercive and violent SA taking place for it to be a major social issue no matter how broad the definition is. I'm trying to figure out how pressure as a sufficient condition for rape squares with the lived experience of people like myself who do frequently feel pressure to have sex.
Your partner shouldn't be pressuring you into having sex; that's wrong of them, and you deserve better.
Coerced consent isn't consent [1]; the fact that there are different levels of violence and pressure involved in some cases of coercion doesn't mean that the less-obvious levels are okay.
If I took this attitude then I'd be excluding myself from relationships that are a net positive in my life. Mismatched sex drive is genuinely not a big deal for me. Often we're both on the same page and that's great. But when we're not, it's not a huge deal for me to have sex I don't want just to keep the peace. In my view, it's no different to other forms of compromise and sacrifice in relationships. Furthermore I think this is common in relationships. To maintain a stable relationship, low libido partners often do have to "make an effort" and manage some of the pressure that comes from dating a higher libido partner.
IMO in an ideal world there would never be any pressure or obligation associated with any interaction. But in the real world, "okay" must have a wide enough margin to include situations that aren't ideal but are limited in terms of harm caused and moral responsibility of participants. It can't be that I am a rape victim for not wanting to hurt my partners feelings by sexually rejecting them. Some pressure is surely okay.
IME this dividing line exists more in theory than practice. Maybe your partner feeling upset or rejected leads to a fight about something unrelated the next day. Or maybe it's easier to rebuff some nagging than to deal with an insecure partner who is good with boundaries but will still feel deeply bad about the rejection.
So-called "duty sex" has been recognized as a complex topic where consent is concerned. Surely this is a continuum rather than yes/no. I can't go around calling an ex-girlfriend a rapist because she nagged me for sex now and then.
Not going to play semantics here. There is definitely a different level of trauma for a person to experience for something they are physically forced or threatened by force to endure than something they are convinced to do even if they would have otherwise not. It's insulting to victims of the former to pretend otherwise.
Sure, there are different levels of trauma in different incidents.
That doesn't make the less-obviously traumatic incidents okay; they're still very bad.
> It's insulting to victims of the former to pretend otherwise.
There's nothing insulting to victims in acknowledging other victims. There is something extremely insulting to victims in refusing to acknowledge any harm to them if it doesn't meet your arbitrary standard for significance.
Holy. damn. It is also up 27% since 2019. I hope US researchers and lawmakers take a long look at this as one of possible causes together with social media.
To the doubters replying to this comment I have to say, anecdotally, those stats check out with the people in my life. It’s a lot more common than you think. And no, I’m not talking about people who have sex and then regret it.
It's probably based on the same flawed study I saw recently, which asked about sexual molesting, grouped "creepy staring" and "unwanted advances" into the same group and then reported it all as rape.
You can find the asked questions in the very first link of the article.
It's way better than just saying "It's probably the same study they've talked about on TV!" and you can really tell "I've done my own research!" without lying.
Report about girls experiencing sadness and violence and comment section here putting the blame on girls themself, facebook, results being affected by wokeness and so on. Kinda ironic
There is much more external reasons for young american females to feel sad right now. Culture wars, politicians becoming extremists, legislations and many other factors. I think people in general feel much less save right now, not only teen girls
> There is much more external reasons for young american females to feel sad right now.
Fully agree. A sci-fi novel from Robert Heinlein [0] was describing end of life as a discontinuity. In this sense, with the very rapid changes of society that we are currently experiencing, we could say that the society is dying to let place to a new society.
As examples of rapid changes, we have social network, climat change, artificial intelligence to cite a few.
From a child point of view it could be harder to project themself in a society changing rapidly. How do you gain recognition for you and your creations using new medias? How do you reach confort and enjoy leisures without causing pollution? Which skills should you learn that won't become obsolete with AI?
It is inevitable that societies change: our current society is very different from the society during middle-age for instance. Yet it is easier to adapt when the changes are slow and continuous than when they are sudden and discontinuous. In the first case, you can learn from your parents and other adults. In the second case, you are on your own. In the history of most countries, recovering from a revolution could take decades.
We have rules and regulation on what we can physically eat (eg. most psychedelics drugs are illegal, maybe rightly so, I'm not contesting the validity of that, but just stating they exists) so why don't we have rules for mental food?
It baffles me that I cannot eat some spices from Asia just because for most local people is kinda indigestible or not good, basically destroying the market for that kind of spice. Yet, we can allow big corps to produce shitty social media apps without any rules.
>Yet, we can allow big corps to produce shitty social media apps without any rules.
They do have rules. They publish the rules. You have to agree to the rules to get an account. On top of that, they're bound by numerous laws and regulations.
It will be interesting to see what happens when Elon turns Twitter into a payment platform.
It's already basically a platform here in Japan for women to advertise their services and arrange encounters with older men... just need to use one's imagination.
All that's left is to monetize the depressed crazies that make up the remainder of the userbase.
It's normal for humans to compare themselves to their peers. That's how we have achieved the level of greatness that we currently enjoy: by competing. Males do it positively and females do it negatively. My theory is that this has gotten out of hand with the boom of Instagram and it shows.
I don't agree that this is Meta's fault. They gave females a window to the world and that made them depressed. Does this mean Meta should just close shop? Are they responsible for the mental health of their users?
I love how everyone here is blaming something different: parents, Meta, advertisement, political divisiveness, urban planning, society, lack of personal responsibility. Soon there will be more reasons, like violence and money. And they're right, sure. All of those are partially responsible.
But I feel we tend to give a pass to the people who are actually producing the content that is damaging a generation and making bank, as if they have no agency or responsibility.
Instagram would probably be great overnight if those people suddenly all disappeared.
It's similar to swengs - before remote work one could be a king of their own place for a lot of money, now swengs need to compete for much cheaper with people from all around the world who might cheat in unimaginable ways to land a job. Like all those plastic-perfect pseudocelebrity influencers on Instagram sucking all ad money, making droves of people super depresses when they look in a mirror. It's also much easier to get in touch with them directly, damaging opportunities of worse-looking real people to socialize.
"Beauty filters", in the form of cosmetics, have been widely used by both men and women at least since the days of ancient Egypt, 5000 years ago. Likely before... that's just the earliest record we have.
I agree on some premisces, but not all. I do not think your sex/hormones/whatever influence if you do it positively or negatively.
It's either the nature of what you're competing in, or how is it viewed by the society at large. Not sure which yet, I haven't thought enough about it.
My two main non-work, non tabletop activities are now windsurfing and rock climbing, two activities that are split roughly 70-30 male/female. We compete the same.
> Males do it positively and females do it negatively.
Such a weird statement. I guess it has the implicit “generally”. But a lot of ways that men compete can be more negative from a physical point of view. Sure I won’t feel bad about my self but If I challenge someone’s macho in the wrong state or neighborhood I might end up with Bullet Holes in my body.
I grew up being told I could do anything I put my mind to. That I was responsible, to a very large degree, for my own path and making my dreams come true.
I don't understand how those told that they're disadvantaged can persevere and succeed. Especially when they're told that it's the system's fault.
It takes seeking out adversity, embracing and enjoying it to push ahead. If you're uncomfortable at your basal level, grinding even harder must be unbearable.
To make it ahead in any fitness landscape, you have to undergo hardship to lower the activation energy of your path forward. If it was easy, everyone would do it. You have to seek out discomfort where others will not. That seems especially challenging if you don't have the right mindset.
Leftists argue your mindset is a symptom of the toxic mantras of neoliberalism. It's basically a Protestant work ethic: Highly individualistic, and little sense of commonality or cooperation.
Thats the reasonable argument against your ethics, in that a community or team can do things that are impossible for any individual. It's absolutely true, and can't be refuted.
But that's also the trap that modern society is falling into. We do not operate in nuance. We *could* combine ethics such as yours with community efforts and empower everyone, but instead we're trying to squash individuality, and enforce toxic mantras of community!
The modern left eschews nuance and reacts with self-destructive vengeance, and that's the core problem with their politics. They equate liberals with neoliberals, neoliberals with conservatives, conservatives with Nazis, and Nazis with the boogeyman.
To them the individual is absolute evil. So, I think the best thing to do is attempt to assuage their fears: show them that individuals can work together to improve society for everyone, without destroying individual values.
I view their politics as a meme prion: perhaps there’s some reasonable interpretation — as you’ve outlined here — but that’s not what they’re arguing.
For example, despite saying that they’re staunchly against bigotry, they’re defining commonality by race and sex — rather than common circumstance. That’s inherently toxic because it foments the very bigotry they (pretend to) decry: look at their proud anti-Asian racism at Harvard, using 1950s style arguments there’s “too many Asians”.
They absolutely detest the people who when viewing things through the lens of individualism, conclude that they should form partnerships with people that have aligned values, principles, and goals. After all, they’d have to admit their beliefs were a return to racial and sexual essentialism to have that realization — and they’re Good People (TM) who would never do such a thing.
One of the most important choices an individual makes is who to have “on your team” — and their entire world view is built on assigning those roles based on protected class.
I don’t think your attempt to “assuage their fears” will be met with anything but rabid anger — because we already did that and it already produced superior results. They’ve intentionally destroyed that system, as anathema.
Do you think such a person can do anything they put their mind to? Also I don't know where skin pigmentation came into this though I'll admit I didn't read the article - does it say something about differential racial effects?
Also, extremely unlikely. But they’ll be better served by the mentality that they can than worrying about a victim narrative about how they’ll never be able to succeed.
Do you think repeatedly failing to achieve a goal that you may never have been able to in the first place is good for mental health? Getting people to believe some lie about how they can achieve anything might make you feel better, but it seems fundamentally dishonest; despite what we may wish, not all the children can be above average. I'm glad the person in your example has the support required to spend his time doing non-productive sports that he enjoys, that's very nice and I wish more people had that opportunity, but do you think he'll ever be able to live independently?
I think it’s better for mental health than not trying due to grievance and negging narratives.
Most people calibrate their expectations; the people who don’t sometimes succeed — and don’t seem to wither the way people who don’t try tend to.
Again, my point isn’t that they’ll all succeed — but they’re strictly better off with a mentality that they should try.
To your point about living independently, that’s exactly my point: the ones trying live more independently and require less support because they do the most they can — rather than emotionally imploding, not trying, and requiring extra support.
Those years during high school are a very challenging time in one’s life, when we develop into adults. The fundamental question of “Who am I? Where do I fit into society?” are subconsciously trying to get answered.
On the other side, in the west, we have a very body-centered idea of self-worth, exaggerated by TV, music and social media. Fundamentally, I do not see this situation getting any better because of how society is wired right now. There are more dramatical changes needed than what we are perhaps capable of.
3 main changes that might help come to mind -
1. We are in an obesity epidemic. Acknowledge this, make changes in the eating and exercise habits, feed children less sugar, especially what’s provided at school during lunch.
2. Due to most kids being overweight, find ways to acknowledge their other talents. Encourage high school kids to find paid work. Help them derive self-worth from other avenues.
3. Help them learn to work their minds. It does not need to be esoteric eastern meditation techniques but learning to sit still for 20 mins a day and watch the breath, and one more time for 5 mins or so before sleep, will have tremendous transference to the rest of one’s life.
We aren't grounded enough in reality anymore. For younger people, this is related to the twin evils of social media and video games, both of which are more captivating than ever. The disengagement from reality can also be seen in being shut inside during the pandemic, decline in teen employment and potentially even grade inflation. Teens are insulated from negative consequences and it's debatable that this is making them more miserable.
While we can't change society, we can make personal choices or choices within our families. I would say that it's beneficial to recognize parts of the modern world that are illusory and attempt to scale them back or avoid them.
> Fundamentally, I do not see this situation getting any better because of how society is wired right now.
It think tight regulation of advertisement industry could help. They really have all the incentive to make people feel worse. It directly translates to their income.
There should be pre-publishing check on every advert. Like a focus group paid for by advertiser, but organized by government body. If it makes people feel worse after watching it it shouldn't be allowed to publish.
It shouldn't be and whoever decided it is should have that reversed.
"The Supreme Court extended First Amendment free speech protection to commercial speech in Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc. (1976). The court held that commercial speech is protected by the First Amendment because it serves the public interest by providing information about products and services."
And since it became apparent that it's not the only thing it does, but also hurts people and leads to destruction of social and natural environment that decision should get reversed after 46 years. Especially since technology enabled us to have a single all encompassing catalog of products and services which customers can draw such information from whenever they request it instead of advertisements being shoved into their faces from all sources causing them psychological harm at no small cost to the economy.
(Although, IANAL, so I can't tell if that page is an accurate summary or if it's the legal equivalent of someone ranting about why the CEO of Facebook can't stop naughty pictures showing up in Google search results…)
We need more research on this without "teen girls" in the clickbait titles. This affects everyone. It affected the person of my romantic interest and I had to break up at the end.
This affects 30+ year old men too. Don't dismiss it.
Besides research we need solutions. We need advice on how to approach this topic. We need to find a way to be able to help those who want it.