I am confused how a chart that shows liberals were always more depressed than conservatives, and that incidence of depression is growing amongst liberals and conservatives at approximately the same rate, is supposed to prove that the cause of liberals being more depressed is some recent change in liberal politics / culture.
The obvious conclusion from that chart seems to be that some change in society or culture circa 2014 is making people more depressed than they were before, and that this is mostly indepentent of gender and political beliefs. It's interesting that the effect starts earlier for liberal girls than for either liberal boys or conservatives, but I'm not sure it's worth seeing too much into that.
I wonder if we’ve over-emphasized empathy. We saw a huge push over the last decade or so, and while it seemed/seems like it could only be positive, I’ve recently started to wonder if it was a little off target.
Compassion, for instance, is very different from empathy. Empathy can paralyze us, cause us to feel hurt when we ourselves are not hurt. It can overwhelm us. But compassion is the simple act of making space for the experiences and emotions of another--even if we do not understand them or cannot feel them personally.
Compassion actually sounds much healthier than empathy, but we just raised a generation to process everything as if it happened to them personally. It’s crippling, I’d say.
We wanted people to be less cruel, less intolerant, more understanding, and in the process we raised a generation of kids so attuned to the lives and plights and pains of others that they are drowning in empathy.
I think one thing young liberals are facing today that may be unique is the prospect of a number of serious policy problems that impinge on them and that seem almost intractable. Gun violence and schools shootings is the one that first comes to mind. But you also have the end of Roe and a very partisan Supreme Court with lifetime appts and no accountability. Perhaps there is some good on global warming, but the progress that has been made might seem too little too late for many. I am by no means young, but I was very dispirited (though not depressed) on how little accountability Trump has faced (until possibly recently). What seems to have shifted relatively recently is that the incentives that might have kept conservatives from overreach are no longer there. And (if this is true) this might be an important factor in more depression among young liberals.
Might be a cheap shot, but could depression or other related mental illnesses cause teens to adopt progressive ideology? I don’t know anything about this.
as a young liberal with a history of meh mental who know a lot of other young liberals with meh mental health, i’m extremely skeptical of any explanation that leans so heavily on politics. most young people aren’t _that_ politically aware and even among the ones that are, from my experience, most of them don’t make that the main reason for being sad. it’s much more normal stuff – not having many friends (this is the big one!), job issues, family/relationship drama, etc.
yes, young liberal catastrophizing is real, but to put it as a major reason for young liberal mental health problems just smacks of not interacting much with people under 30 outside of political spaces.
No harm, no foul. So if you want the referee to blow the whistle and fix the foul, which they will do, you can flop a little or a lot to get their attention.
Not sure how far this metaphor works, but it's a competitive disadvantage to just let the other team get away with fouling you a little. So you can either foul them a little right back to eraser the advantage or you can flop.
I know that today’s economy does force young people to depend on parents longer - both because of cost of living and because a college degree is more necessary to get ahead in life. But above and beyond that, I think that many young people have led such constrained lives that they feel helpless when something bad happens, or even when they see bad things happening in the world around them. They can’t comprehend that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Paradoxically, social media, which can be bad for mental health, gives us more ways to get involved than ever - Postcards to Voters! Textbanking! There’s a ton one can do, and the result is ideally, “even if our candidate didn’t make it, we tried our best and we’re going to keep trying.” Not “waah, the world sucks, it’s hopeless, I want to die.”
A lot of young people have the learned helplessness that was instilled by parents with the best of good intentions, to protect their kid and make sure they stayed on the right path. Jean Twenge relates in her “IGen” book that college students, once so eager to be Real Grown Ups, now *tell* university officials that they want to be treated like children! We’ve gone from “I can’t wait to be an adult and not have to answer to parents anymore” to “25 is the new 18, I want to shelter under the comforting blanket of minorhood for as long as possible.”
Again, I do not think that helicopter parenting and stunting emotional and psychological growth is unique to liberals. But I think it does cause anxiety and depression in parents and kids alike. I read an author named Michaeleen Doucleff on NPR and she’s very interesting in how she is raising her daughter (I have no kids, but if I did, I’d look to her for advice!). Instead of telling her daughter to “go play” when the kid tried to “help” Mom with chores, Doucleff included her, even as a toddler (with appropriate safety precautions). And she’s very restrictive on her daughter’s screen time. The result so far seems to be a well-adjusted, helpful kid. I think that kids need to know they are useful and needed and can make a difference in their own lives and those around them - of course graded to age, but still, I think that being coddled and sheltered and watched like a hawk prevents that.
Finally, I can’t remember if it was Pew or Gallup but someone on another board linked to a research survey on how people felt about America. The MOST optimistic, the most likely to feel like our country was headed in the right direction, were black Americans, followed by Latino Americans. Non-Hispanic whites were the LEAST optimistic. Probably those here will say “yeah no shit Sherlock” but the academic and Very Online left seems to have lost all touch with what normies, even lefty normies, feel and think. If people who are supposed to be suffering the most, as a group, feel the *most* optimistic about America (again as a group, I know that individual attitudes vary), then… maybe it’s time for a rethink on all the doom, gloom, and rending of garments?
I think helicopter parenting and the pervasive pressure “to get into a good college” plays a major role.
I’ve got a kid who just ended freshman year at a public high school and I feel like I fell off the turnip truck because I haven’t made him take a practice SAT exam yet, unlike many other parents.
Except that depression seems to be pervasive across class. My kids go to a school with a 75% graduation rate, almost no one does SAT prep, and no one really cares where you go to college. Most people go to the local community college or one of the 4 year colleges within 30 minutes of the school. And mental health and depression issues among teens at their school are similar to those at the ritzy suburb down the street.
Excellent piece. There's no virtue in histrionics. Happiness is hugely correlated with gratitude, which today should be gratitude for living in a free (and prosperous and powerful and secure) country. Anyone struggling to muster up that gratitude can read a story from Afghanistan, China, or a hundred other places and realize that they've lucked into the most precious gift imaginable. People are clambering thirsty through deserts for a bit of what we have.
There's depression (a lamentable part of the human condition), and then there's Lorenz-style solipsistic self-pity, which is a choice. Maybe it would do her psyche some good to cover Afghan refugees instead of Tiktokers for a while.
I'm going to work out and go to a rooftop party tonight. It's a good day to donate to a refugee or veterans charity too.
I spend a good chunk of my free time at a boxing gym for young people, coaching strength training and intro boxing. Most of the people who attend are young women and men of color, mostly Latino, Black, and Arab, with ages ranging from 15 to about 23. These “kids” aren’t depressed, nor are they anxious. They’re dedicated to getting better, and such dedication leads to resiliency. Lots of people in these comments are looking for meta-theories and grand explanations for supposed depression among Gen-Z and younger, but what they are doing instead is desperately seeing explanation for their own depression and anxiety.
I would suggest that the population of young people who are going to a boxing gym is probably not representative in terms of mental health; regular exercise, particularly in a social environment, is important for mental health and these kids are getting that! You refer to "supposed depression"—do you have reason to doubt the available numbers?
Oh, you too! I was literally typing a response as it went away so I was very confused. But also I actually don't think we disagree on anything at this point!
Spot on. I think we can be confident that the population he works with has very little overlap with the kids suffering from all this depression and anxiety, almost by definition.
Unfortunately, if you are a US teen, you are more likely to have depressive symptoms and other mental health issues if you are in a lower socioeconomic group than a higher one. (For teens in all SES groups, it is very high at the moment.) I happen to know more than I would like about this because of discussions and meetings in the Title 1 school district my kids attend, but if you do a quick Google Scholar search you will find a lot of info. Not much attention is paid to these poorer kids' mental health, so most people are not aware of this. I thought the same as others on this thread due to media coverage. I suppose it is akin to school shootings. They get tons of coverage, but the vast majority of kids killled by guns are killed outside of school.
Totally accurate. It grates on me, though, the way we talk about these kids as if it’s their fault. They don’t even have the tools to get out of that frame of mind because every adult in their sphere is endorsing the safetyism, the coddling, the validation of every fleeting emotion.
It’s up to all of us, truly, to help this generation.
Ps, a simple answer exists, backed up by copious research--internet addiction and over reliance on smart phone social media apps for peer interactions.
Basically, people who feel strong and efficacious (the author attributes it to life station but I think personality plays a larger role) advertise their capacity to provide and protect by adopting conservative views that valorize toughness and industriousness.
Meanwhile, people who feel vulnerable and put upon (again for either reason) advertise their harmlessness and willingness to cooperate by adopting liberal views that signal trustworthiness--“I’m so overwhelmed and sad and I’m honest enough to tell you even though it makes me a good target for coercion. I clearly have neither the intent or the ability to take advantage of you!”
As far as the time trend, my best guess is that communications tech has just amplified existing processes. People have observed that the political left tends to attract a lot of neurotic people for a long time.
Being at a large university I completely agree. Although I’ve noticed that in private a lot of successful academics aren’t as left-wing as they seem, especially when it comes to their views of meritocracy. Which is what you’d expect based on their high status. So I think that even within a group who would all identify as “liberal,” you still see a gradient from moderate liberals who are comfortable with the idea of competition and those further to the left who feel like any kind of competition is harmful.
The idea that victim status and aggrievement gives people status is weird. It is even weirder when rich and privileged elites at Harvard, Brown, or Yale try to position themselves as oppressed victims.
Can we just go back to when people defined themselves based on fashion, music tastes, and skateboarding?
See also what I think are the related concepts of valorizing "self-care" and continuously extending people the benefit of the doubt based on nebulous claims about their health, mental/emotional issues, etc.
I think that “be kind, for everyone is fighting a tough battle” is a good mentality when it comes to, for instance, little aggravating moments with strangers or service people. You can’t really do much about that cranky person ahead of you in line, and you likely won’t see them again, so just taking a deep breath and letting go is the best solution for your own mental health.
And with my close friends, benefit of the doubt always gets extended, because, well, we’re friends, and people have bad days! You give grace to your friends and they extend the same to you - and if they don’t, it’s time to re-evaluate the friendship.
Where things get to be unpleasant walking on eggshells is when that mentality is extended to the workplace and neighborhood. Yes, they’re kids, but no, they can’t just grab my cat! (Insert bad Trump joke here) Sure, you may be suffering from some painful health issues and be “low on spoons” but that doesn’t give you a good reason to be difficult to work with. Sometimes you just have to be kind and pleasant for everyone’s sake, no matter how you yourself are feeling.
What I'm thinking of in particular is my experiences with Kickstarter, where vague statements like, "I'm dealing with a lot in my life right now," are treated by many people (who've just had their pockets picked!) as licenses for someone to walk off with literal six-figure sums of money.
I'm "low on spoons" quite a bit, but the idea of outing personal circumstances in order to claim some kind of victim status has always felt like a major hazard. Certainly self-pity is one of those roads that must be traveled at times, and it's something that can be learned from, but holding up self-pity as some kind of cultural norm seems extremely toxic. "Let's all spiral down the miserable drain of self-pity, blame, and powerlessness together."
(Just started watching Bill Nighy in "Living" - his stiff-upper-lip character prefaces explanations of his terminal illness with the remark "it's really a bit of a bore, but ...")
Yeah, the victim-mentality has only gotten worse. In my college days there were a lot of testimonials about someone suffering some indignity or micro-aggression, tending to brush it off, and then being talked into escalating it by their friends even though it didn’t really bother them in the first place. Today, it’s only a matter of time until articles pop up deeming a popular movie/celebrity/book as “problematic” for some aspect that no one even noticed.
We had an entire art exhibit in the student union called “hate on campus” which featured picture re-enactments of racist micro-aggressions at the school. It was ridiculous.
America in 2023 is a *much* less racist sexist homophobic etc. place than it was a generation or two ago. Why are the very people who call themselves "progressives" so committed to denying that we've made progress? Why can't we take a win?
There is much to what Matt is saying. The extent to which we've rejected the idea that the abused and traumatized deserve lower status is a good thing (I've definitely benefited from it), but in a case of what I like to call "Costanza politics", now we're teaching kids that if you're abused and/or traumatized you're entitled to higher status, a status you'd lose if you healed from it. But let me suggest another factor. For people who claim to believe in evolution, they refuse to accept that, as evolution shows, gradual and imperfect change can make a huge difference. (So Obama-era cringe!) Instead, they're going by what's essentially a religious view, that nothing short of burning this corrupted world to the ground and building something new and pure from the ashes wii do
I am not a Super Genius™️, but people who, like me, spend too much time here might have noted my trademark respose to comments I consider to be extra-good. 😊
It’s a much less racist and sexist place even relative to ten years ago. Hell Bush II’s re-election hinged on opposing gay marriage. Heck we even call it same sex marriage now.
Absolutely. But W’s team put anti-gay marriage initiatives on ballots across the country, as a means of driving turnout and helping Republicans win elections (I’d love to see data on how effective this was or wasn’t).
At the time, as a liberal I used to say “Republicans are idiots, banning gay marriage in Tennessee (for instance). It’s not as if gay marriage is going to be made legal in flipping Tennessee.” Shows how much I know.
“Gods, Guns, and Gays.” Pepperidge Farm Remembers. Even in blue California, Proposition 8 (anti-gay-marriage) was voted in after Gavin Newsom said “what the hell, I’m going to make gay marriage legal in my city.” (One result of that, incidentally, was florists being sold out! The couples waiting in line at City Hall were showered with flowers by random well-wishers. Gay marriage is a HUGE money maker for a lot of ancillary industries.)
Now, of course, gay marriage is legal in California, and many other blue states. There is a huge red/blue split around LGBT issues, especially the T. But back in 2004, even the blue states were hesitant. We really have come a long way.
Oh duh. I remember now thinking it was hilarious Scalia got all upset. (My excuse for forgetting is I came down with some crud just in time for America’s Big Birthday Party.)
And you know who forced Obama’s hand on accepting same-sex marriage? That doddering oldster Joe Biden. I wish the larval progressives who whine about him being Too Old and Uncool would remember that, or at least look it up.
It’s something I have to remind myself that perfectionism is a cognitive distortion too. As a depresssion sufferer who benefits a lot from Cbt and therapy and drugs it’s one of the hardest ones for me to avoid.
I don’t do this in my personal life, but in politics anything short of perfection is absolute failure is so easy to fall into. Especially when we have a kind of post material politics of status.
I also have this chart with a current snapshot of how common or uncommon interracial "baby-making" is. About 1 of 7 babies are born to parents of 2 different census categories. And for native-born citizens it's a little higher at about 1/6.
Certainly a positive development but I think this gets overstated. Elsewhere on the SB comment section it is a common opinion that Hispanic Americans are assimilating into the white majority, but Hispanic-White "interracial marriage" is a big chunk of that stat. (It would be interesting to see prior rates account for southern vs western European marriages!)
It's hard to say whether it's over or understated because while it's relatively easy to nail down the facts, it's harder to nail down exactly how much it's "stated" lol.
But even wrt Black people the numbers are fairly high. If you filter out immigrants, which are about (about 16% of new Black mothers) then about 80% of Black people are having kids with other self-identified Black people. That gives 80 / 120 children born to at least 1 black parent having 2 black parents, and 40 / 120 children having 1 black parent and 1 non-black parent.
In the past, children with 1 black parent normally considered themselves Black. That might still be largely true, but the percentage who consider themselves multi-racial is growing steadily. In any case for every 2 black kids in America with 2 black parents there is 1 with a non-black parent. That sounds like a big deal and a fast rate of change to me! And the pace is only quickening. I don't know if it means black people are assimilating into the white majority, but it's some sort of melting pot, for sure.
And the stats for Hispanic and Asian non-immigrants are much, much assimilation. Those census groups only appear segregated because of the high pace of recent imigration.
That's fair - under "intermarriage is reasonably uncorrelated between generations" this would produce a _gigantic_ change in the makeup of the US in our lifetimes, in a way that is probably under-appreciated.
Wow, really impressive analysis. I actually thought of trying to run a similar simulation or analysis but I never got around to it and I didn't have that 28% data point. Very interesting result, too, with the rising and then falling thing.
Or, Catholic and any flavor of Protestant, or Protestant and the wrong kind of Protestant, or Christian and Jewish…Ethnic (not racial) intermarriage was considered a huge deal, too, in the 50’s and earlier. (There was also a time, albeit a couple hundred years ago, when the Irish, about the pastiest most translucent people on earth, were not considered “white.”)
This is why I believe that (most) Latino Americans are going to be where Italian Americans are now in about 50 years or even less. Just another ethnic grouping, depending on origin, with delicious food and some interesting traditions, but firmly in the US mainstream.
I'm a progressive who doesn't deny that we've made progress, as are many(?) commentators here. These extremely broadly scoped statements don't seem useful.
Every generalization has a million exceptions. (That's why the old school liberal axiom that people are individuals first and members of groups second is so essential.) It's tough to communicate without them though.
I'm not sure about this. I definitely agree that frequent commentators who enjoy Matt's writing aren't, but I think it's hard to know how distortionary the "read -> comment -> comment multiple times early in morning st you get upvoted" pipeline is. (And on the other end, since the progressives one encounters on e.g. Twitter are going through a similar filter).
But then we're forever on a treadmill of unfulfilled expectations and lack of contentment. I guess it just is what it is, but taking the time to reflect on how much we actually have and how good our lives actually are seems useful to me, and is potentially a way to combat feelings of depression, anxiety or insecurity. The reverse can be unhealthy, if taken too far, and that seems to be part of what Matt was writing about.
I feel like it’s a tricky balance. Accentuating the positives can sometimes feel like accosting people for having trauma. Toxic positivity can be a real problem too.
I’ve lived through incredible progress in attitudes about people like me. I’ve also been assaulted several times and have a lot of perhaps irrational fears but they didn’t come from only paranoia.
Yes. Hope is the opposite of despair. And I think that even when bad stuff happens we can be hopeful and resilient without the toxic positivity crap.
But the topic is about kids in a depressed state which is unique and separate from cost of living issues, or even being resilient in the fact of adversity.
More kids thrive, become resilient and hopeful adults, when provided a childhood free from danger, real or perceived, in their communities.
Going to a friend's but there will be a variety of sausages etc plus a Thai chicken salad (host used to live in Singapore and Japan and taught himself to cook in Asia). My contribution is a cake that was meant to be red, white, and blue (blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries) but ended up kind of purple. Centrist cake?
I admire the skill and/or courage of a person who cooks tri-tip on a grill. Had it at home last night (under the broiler), was outstanding but lack of control on a grill is daunting.
I've had really good luck over the years just putting the whole raw ear, husk and all, over the open fire. Started as a field expedient measure on a camping trip, but now it's my go-to method.
I'm going to get a bit controversial here, but the constant talk of su!cide relating to trans issues for kids is just messed up. Guidelines about discussion of su!cide in the media have always said to avoid going into graphic details, avoid simplification, and avoid suggesting it was inevitable. It's a disgrace that we are now suggesting that surgery and hormones, with permanent impact on fertility and sexual function, are now required for some people or they will almost inevitably go through with it. Just shameful that some people are doing this.
And think about the second order effects of that--all the kids and younger adults who hear that message about suicide and then assume anyone who questions anything about trans rights/the movement must want people to die. Empathy that overwhelms critical thinking.
It’s the catastrophizing. Certain activists assert of you don’t do X then you are killing children, without establishing how doing X affects the latter.
I see these types of arguments with climate change and degrowthers. I just think that casual mendacity is more acceptable now and people don’t even bother showing concern for finding the truth. They just assert if you don’t believe what they do then you hold horrible beliefs or said something horrible, without evidence.
The official narrative around LGBTQ rights (among others but it is especially notable here) is the opposite of CBT--constant reframing of everything to be trauma, harm, microaggressions. Everything is interpreted as proof that one isn’t wholly and fully accepted or celebrated by the world around them, and that that is itself a traumatic and depressive experience.
I can hardly think of a more destabilizing and immiserating way to experience the world.
I am confused how a chart that shows liberals were always more depressed than conservatives, and that incidence of depression is growing amongst liberals and conservatives at approximately the same rate, is supposed to prove that the cause of liberals being more depressed is some recent change in liberal politics / culture.
The obvious conclusion from that chart seems to be that some change in society or culture circa 2014 is making people more depressed than they were before, and that this is mostly indepentent of gender and political beliefs. It's interesting that the effect starts earlier for liberal girls than for either liberal boys or conservatives, but I'm not sure it's worth seeing too much into that.
I wonder if we’ve over-emphasized empathy. We saw a huge push over the last decade or so, and while it seemed/seems like it could only be positive, I’ve recently started to wonder if it was a little off target.
Compassion, for instance, is very different from empathy. Empathy can paralyze us, cause us to feel hurt when we ourselves are not hurt. It can overwhelm us. But compassion is the simple act of making space for the experiences and emotions of another--even if we do not understand them or cannot feel them personally.
Compassion actually sounds much healthier than empathy, but we just raised a generation to process everything as if it happened to them personally. It’s crippling, I’d say.
We wanted people to be less cruel, less intolerant, more understanding, and in the process we raised a generation of kids so attuned to the lives and plights and pains of others that they are drowning in empathy.
I think one thing young liberals are facing today that may be unique is the prospect of a number of serious policy problems that impinge on them and that seem almost intractable. Gun violence and schools shootings is the one that first comes to mind. But you also have the end of Roe and a very partisan Supreme Court with lifetime appts and no accountability. Perhaps there is some good on global warming, but the progress that has been made might seem too little too late for many. I am by no means young, but I was very dispirited (though not depressed) on how little accountability Trump has faced (until possibly recently). What seems to have shifted relatively recently is that the incentives that might have kept conservatives from overreach are no longer there. And (if this is true) this might be an important factor in more depression among young liberals.
Might be a cheap shot, but could depression or other related mental illnesses cause teens to adopt progressive ideology? I don’t know anything about this.
as a young liberal with a history of meh mental who know a lot of other young liberals with meh mental health, i’m extremely skeptical of any explanation that leans so heavily on politics. most young people aren’t _that_ politically aware and even among the ones that are, from my experience, most of them don’t make that the main reason for being sad. it’s much more normal stuff – not having many friends (this is the big one!), job issues, family/relationship drama, etc.
yes, young liberal catastrophizing is real, but to put it as a major reason for young liberal mental health problems just smacks of not interacting much with people under 30 outside of political spaces.
No harm, no foul. So if you want the referee to blow the whistle and fix the foul, which they will do, you can flop a little or a lot to get their attention.
Not sure how far this metaphor works, but it's a competitive disadvantage to just let the other team get away with fouling you a little. So you can either foul them a little right back to eraser the advantage or you can flop.
This is probably not specific to young *liberals*, but there is plenty of evidence that helicopter parenting is bad for a young person’s self-esteem and sense of efficacy. Here’s but one article: https://www.gottman.com/blog/helicopter-parenting-good-intentions-poor-outcomes/
I know that today’s economy does force young people to depend on parents longer - both because of cost of living and because a college degree is more necessary to get ahead in life. But above and beyond that, I think that many young people have led such constrained lives that they feel helpless when something bad happens, or even when they see bad things happening in the world around them. They can’t comprehend that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Paradoxically, social media, which can be bad for mental health, gives us more ways to get involved than ever - Postcards to Voters! Textbanking! There’s a ton one can do, and the result is ideally, “even if our candidate didn’t make it, we tried our best and we’re going to keep trying.” Not “waah, the world sucks, it’s hopeless, I want to die.”
A lot of young people have the learned helplessness that was instilled by parents with the best of good intentions, to protect their kid and make sure they stayed on the right path. Jean Twenge relates in her “IGen” book that college students, once so eager to be Real Grown Ups, now *tell* university officials that they want to be treated like children! We’ve gone from “I can’t wait to be an adult and not have to answer to parents anymore” to “25 is the new 18, I want to shelter under the comforting blanket of minorhood for as long as possible.”
Again, I do not think that helicopter parenting and stunting emotional and psychological growth is unique to liberals. But I think it does cause anxiety and depression in parents and kids alike. I read an author named Michaeleen Doucleff on NPR and she’s very interesting in how she is raising her daughter (I have no kids, but if I did, I’d look to her for advice!). Instead of telling her daughter to “go play” when the kid tried to “help” Mom with chores, Doucleff included her, even as a toddler (with appropriate safety precautions). And she’s very restrictive on her daughter’s screen time. The result so far seems to be a well-adjusted, helpful kid. I think that kids need to know they are useful and needed and can make a difference in their own lives and those around them - of course graded to age, but still, I think that being coddled and sheltered and watched like a hawk prevents that.
Finally, I can’t remember if it was Pew or Gallup but someone on another board linked to a research survey on how people felt about America. The MOST optimistic, the most likely to feel like our country was headed in the right direction, were black Americans, followed by Latino Americans. Non-Hispanic whites were the LEAST optimistic. Probably those here will say “yeah no shit Sherlock” but the academic and Very Online left seems to have lost all touch with what normies, even lefty normies, feel and think. If people who are supposed to be suffering the most, as a group, feel the *most* optimistic about America (again as a group, I know that individual attitudes vary), then… maybe it’s time for a rethink on all the doom, gloom, and rending of garments?
I think helicopter parenting and the pervasive pressure “to get into a good college” plays a major role.
I’ve got a kid who just ended freshman year at a public high school and I feel like I fell off the turnip truck because I haven’t made him take a practice SAT exam yet, unlike many other parents.
Except that depression seems to be pervasive across class. My kids go to a school with a 75% graduation rate, almost no one does SAT prep, and no one really cares where you go to college. Most people go to the local community college or one of the 4 year colleges within 30 minutes of the school. And mental health and depression issues among teens at their school are similar to those at the ritzy suburb down the street.
Excellent piece. There's no virtue in histrionics. Happiness is hugely correlated with gratitude, which today should be gratitude for living in a free (and prosperous and powerful and secure) country. Anyone struggling to muster up that gratitude can read a story from Afghanistan, China, or a hundred other places and realize that they've lucked into the most precious gift imaginable. People are clambering thirsty through deserts for a bit of what we have.
There's depression (a lamentable part of the human condition), and then there's Lorenz-style solipsistic self-pity, which is a choice. Maybe it would do her psyche some good to cover Afghan refugees instead of Tiktokers for a while.
I'm going to work out and go to a rooftop party tonight. It's a good day to donate to a refugee or veterans charity too.
I spend a good chunk of my free time at a boxing gym for young people, coaching strength training and intro boxing. Most of the people who attend are young women and men of color, mostly Latino, Black, and Arab, with ages ranging from 15 to about 23. These “kids” aren’t depressed, nor are they anxious. They’re dedicated to getting better, and such dedication leads to resiliency. Lots of people in these comments are looking for meta-theories and grand explanations for supposed depression among Gen-Z and younger, but what they are doing instead is desperately seeing explanation for their own depression and anxiety.
I would suggest that the population of young people who are going to a boxing gym is probably not representative in terms of mental health; regular exercise, particularly in a social environment, is important for mental health and these kids are getting that! You refer to "supposed depression"—do you have reason to doubt the available numbers?
Hey, I wrote a response that came across more aggressive than I meant; so I deleted it. Have a good holiday.
Oh, you too! I was literally typing a response as it went away so I was very confused. But also I actually don't think we disagree on anything at this point!
Spot on. I think we can be confident that the population he works with has very little overlap with the kids suffering from all this depression and anxiety, almost by definition.
Well, yes, they aren’t miserable over privileged white kids who spend too much time on the internet.
Unfortunately, if you are a US teen, you are more likely to have depressive symptoms and other mental health issues if you are in a lower socioeconomic group than a higher one. (For teens in all SES groups, it is very high at the moment.) I happen to know more than I would like about this because of discussions and meetings in the Title 1 school district my kids attend, but if you do a quick Google Scholar search you will find a lot of info. Not much attention is paid to these poorer kids' mental health, so most people are not aware of this. I thought the same as others on this thread due to media coverage. I suppose it is akin to school shootings. They get tons of coverage, but the vast majority of kids killled by guns are killed outside of school.
Totally accurate. It grates on me, though, the way we talk about these kids as if it’s their fault. They don’t even have the tools to get out of that frame of mind because every adult in their sphere is endorsing the safetyism, the coddling, the validation of every fleeting emotion.
It’s up to all of us, truly, to help this generation.
Ps, a simple answer exists, backed up by copious research--internet addiction and over reliance on smart phone social media apps for peer interactions.
Insightful comment, thank you for sharing.
I’ve always found this paper insightful: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jacob-Vigil-3/publication/228846196_Political_leanings_vary_with_facial_expression_processing_and_psychosocial_functioning/links/0fcfd509ea4b33ebaa000000/Political-leanings-vary-with-facial-expression-processing-and-psychosocial-functioning.pdf
Basically, people who feel strong and efficacious (the author attributes it to life station but I think personality plays a larger role) advertise their capacity to provide and protect by adopting conservative views that valorize toughness and industriousness.
Meanwhile, people who feel vulnerable and put upon (again for either reason) advertise their harmlessness and willingness to cooperate by adopting liberal views that signal trustworthiness--“I’m so overwhelmed and sad and I’m honest enough to tell you even though it makes me a good target for coercion. I clearly have neither the intent or the ability to take advantage of you!”
As far as the time trend, my best guess is that communications tech has just amplified existing processes. People have observed that the political left tends to attract a lot of neurotic people for a long time.
Being at a large university I completely agree. Although I’ve noticed that in private a lot of successful academics aren’t as left-wing as they seem, especially when it comes to their views of meritocracy. Which is what you’d expect based on their high status. So I think that even within a group who would all identify as “liberal,” you still see a gradient from moderate liberals who are comfortable with the idea of competition and those further to the left who feel like any kind of competition is harmful.
The idea that victim status and aggrievement gives people status is weird. It is even weirder when rich and privileged elites at Harvard, Brown, or Yale try to position themselves as oppressed victims.
Can we just go back to when people defined themselves based on fashion, music tastes, and skateboarding?
See also what I think are the related concepts of valorizing "self-care" and continuously extending people the benefit of the doubt based on nebulous claims about their health, mental/emotional issues, etc.
I think that “be kind, for everyone is fighting a tough battle” is a good mentality when it comes to, for instance, little aggravating moments with strangers or service people. You can’t really do much about that cranky person ahead of you in line, and you likely won’t see them again, so just taking a deep breath and letting go is the best solution for your own mental health.
And with my close friends, benefit of the doubt always gets extended, because, well, we’re friends, and people have bad days! You give grace to your friends and they extend the same to you - and if they don’t, it’s time to re-evaluate the friendship.
Where things get to be unpleasant walking on eggshells is when that mentality is extended to the workplace and neighborhood. Yes, they’re kids, but no, they can’t just grab my cat! (Insert bad Trump joke here) Sure, you may be suffering from some painful health issues and be “low on spoons” but that doesn’t give you a good reason to be difficult to work with. Sometimes you just have to be kind and pleasant for everyone’s sake, no matter how you yourself are feeling.
What I'm thinking of in particular is my experiences with Kickstarter, where vague statements like, "I'm dealing with a lot in my life right now," are treated by many people (who've just had their pockets picked!) as licenses for someone to walk off with literal six-figure sums of money.
I'm "low on spoons" quite a bit, but the idea of outing personal circumstances in order to claim some kind of victim status has always felt like a major hazard. Certainly self-pity is one of those roads that must be traveled at times, and it's something that can be learned from, but holding up self-pity as some kind of cultural norm seems extremely toxic. "Let's all spiral down the miserable drain of self-pity, blame, and powerlessness together."
(Just started watching Bill Nighy in "Living" - his stiff-upper-lip character prefaces explanations of his terminal illness with the remark "it's really a bit of a bore, but ...")
I thought low on spoons was an opiate reference.
Great point. This also helps one to "fake it till you make it," at least in my experience.
Yeah, the victim-mentality has only gotten worse. In my college days there were a lot of testimonials about someone suffering some indignity or micro-aggression, tending to brush it off, and then being talked into escalating it by their friends even though it didn’t really bother them in the first place. Today, it’s only a matter of time until articles pop up deeming a popular movie/celebrity/book as “problematic” for some aspect that no one even noticed.
Micro aggressions were not even a concept when I went to uni.
We had an entire art exhibit in the student union called “hate on campus” which featured picture re-enactments of racist micro-aggressions at the school. It was ridiculous.
The use of the terms micro and hate together suggests the he creators have no concept of or concern for magnitude or degree.
Looking forward to the Maya and Milan articles soon!
Timely:
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/shining
America in 2023 is a *much* less racist sexist homophobic etc. place than it was a generation or two ago. Why are the very people who call themselves "progressives" so committed to denying that we've made progress? Why can't we take a win?
There is much to what Matt is saying. The extent to which we've rejected the idea that the abused and traumatized deserve lower status is a good thing (I've definitely benefited from it), but in a case of what I like to call "Costanza politics", now we're teaching kids that if you're abused and/or traumatized you're entitled to higher status, a status you'd lose if you healed from it. But let me suggest another factor. For people who claim to believe in evolution, they refuse to accept that, as evolution shows, gradual and imperfect change can make a huge difference. (So Obama-era cringe!) Instead, they're going by what's essentially a religious view, that nothing short of burning this corrupted world to the ground and building something new and pure from the ashes wii do
Superlike™️.
Because if the world isn't a perfect, equal, immediate, utopia, it can't be a win.
Wile E. Coyote, Super Like?
I am not a Super Genius™️, but people who, like me, spend too much time here might have noted my trademark respose to comments I consider to be extra-good. 😊
It’s a much less racist and sexist place even relative to ten years ago. Hell Bush II’s re-election hinged on opposing gay marriage. Heck we even call it same sex marriage now.
Both HRC and Obama opposed gay marriage in 2008
Absolutely. But W’s team put anti-gay marriage initiatives on ballots across the country, as a means of driving turnout and helping Republicans win elections (I’d love to see data on how effective this was or wasn’t).
At the time, as a liberal I used to say “Republicans are idiots, banning gay marriage in Tennessee (for instance). It’s not as if gay marriage is going to be made legal in flipping Tennessee.” Shows how much I know.
“Gods, Guns, and Gays.” Pepperidge Farm Remembers. Even in blue California, Proposition 8 (anti-gay-marriage) was voted in after Gavin Newsom said “what the hell, I’m going to make gay marriage legal in my city.” (One result of that, incidentally, was florists being sold out! The couples waiting in line at City Hall were showered with flowers by random well-wishers. Gay marriage is a HUGE money maker for a lot of ancillary industries.)
Now, of course, gay marriage is legal in California, and many other blue states. There is a huge red/blue split around LGBT issues, especially the T. But back in 2004, even the blue states were hesitant. We really have come a long way.
>>Now, of course, gay marriage is legal in California, and many other blue states.
It’s legal in every state since 2015…
Oh duh. I remember now thinking it was hilarious Scalia got all upset. (My excuse for forgetting is I came down with some crud just in time for America’s Big Birthday Party.)
And you know who forced Obama’s hand on accepting same-sex marriage? That doddering oldster Joe Biden. I wish the larval progressives who whine about him being Too Old and Uncool would remember that, or at least look it up.
It’s something I have to remind myself that perfectionism is a cognitive distortion too. As a depresssion sufferer who benefits a lot from Cbt and therapy and drugs it’s one of the hardest ones for me to avoid.
I don’t do this in my personal life, but in politics anything short of perfection is absolute failure is so easy to fall into. Especially when we have a kind of post material politics of status.
I always point to this survey from pew which shows pretty clear positive trends in interracial personal relationships: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/05/18/intermarriage-in-the-u-s-50-years-after-loving-v-virginia/
I also have this chart with a current snapshot of how common or uncommon interracial "baby-making" is. About 1 of 7 babies are born to parents of 2 different census categories. And for native-born citizens it's a little higher at about 1/6.
https://theusaindata.pythonanywhere.com/segregation
Certainly a positive development but I think this gets overstated. Elsewhere on the SB comment section it is a common opinion that Hispanic Americans are assimilating into the white majority, but Hispanic-White "interracial marriage" is a big chunk of that stat. (It would be interesting to see prior rates account for southern vs western European marriages!)
It's hard to say whether it's over or understated because while it's relatively easy to nail down the facts, it's harder to nail down exactly how much it's "stated" lol.
But even wrt Black people the numbers are fairly high. If you filter out immigrants, which are about (about 16% of new Black mothers) then about 80% of Black people are having kids with other self-identified Black people. That gives 80 / 120 children born to at least 1 black parent having 2 black parents, and 40 / 120 children having 1 black parent and 1 non-black parent.
In the past, children with 1 black parent normally considered themselves Black. That might still be largely true, but the percentage who consider themselves multi-racial is growing steadily. In any case for every 2 black kids in America with 2 black parents there is 1 with a non-black parent. That sounds like a big deal and a fast rate of change to me! And the pace is only quickening. I don't know if it means black people are assimilating into the white majority, but it's some sort of melting pot, for sure.
And the stats for Hispanic and Asian non-immigrants are much, much assimilation. Those census groups only appear segregated because of the high pace of recent imigration.
I think a more important question than biological parentage per se is who is raising the kids.
That's fair - under "intermarriage is reasonably uncorrelated between generations" this would produce a _gigantic_ change in the makeup of the US in our lifetimes, in a way that is probably under-appreciated.
Wow, really impressive analysis. I actually thought of trying to run a similar simulation or analysis but I never got around to it and I didn't have that 28% data point. Very interesting result, too, with the rising and then falling thing.
Because you shouldn’t assign credit for integration twice over. My Italian and Irish parents aren’t an interracial marriage
At one point an Italian and Irish intermarriage was probably considered a bigger deal than most of us would consider black-white intermarriage today.
Or, Catholic and any flavor of Protestant, or Protestant and the wrong kind of Protestant, or Christian and Jewish…Ethnic (not racial) intermarriage was considered a huge deal, too, in the 50’s and earlier. (There was also a time, albeit a couple hundred years ago, when the Irish, about the pastiest most translucent people on earth, were not considered “white.”)
This is why I believe that (most) Latino Americans are going to be where Italian Americans are now in about 50 years or even less. Just another ethnic grouping, depending on origin, with delicious food and some interesting traditions, but firmly in the US mainstream.
I'm a progressive who doesn't deny that we've made progress, as are many(?) commentators here. These extremely broadly scoped statements don't seem useful.
Every generalization has a million exceptions. (That's why the old school liberal axiom that people are individuals first and members of groups second is so essential.) It's tough to communicate without them though.
Sure but some generalizations are broadly correct and some are wrong, and unfortunately I think yours is wrong.
I'd submit that progressives who enjoy Matt's writing aren't representative of most progressives one is likely to encounter on-line.
But the progressives one is likely to encounter online aren't representative of progressives generally, either.
I'm not sure about this. I definitely agree that frequent commentators who enjoy Matt's writing aren't, but I think it's hard to know how distortionary the "read -> comment -> comment multiple times early in morning st you get upvoted" pipeline is. (And on the other end, since the progressives one encounters on e.g. Twitter are going through a similar filter).
Lifestyle creep explains most the complaints about cost of living.
It’s the cost of purchasing what they think is an appropriate social status.
What, like in door plumbing?
When the overall standard of living increases, it’s right for folks to reset their expectations.
The base to determine our relative standard of living must constantly adjust up.
But then we're forever on a treadmill of unfulfilled expectations and lack of contentment. I guess it just is what it is, but taking the time to reflect on how much we actually have and how good our lives actually are seems useful to me, and is potentially a way to combat feelings of depression, anxiety or insecurity. The reverse can be unhealthy, if taken too far, and that seems to be part of what Matt was writing about.
I feel like it’s a tricky balance. Accentuating the positives can sometimes feel like accosting people for having trauma. Toxic positivity can be a real problem too.
I’ve lived through incredible progress in attitudes about people like me. I’ve also been assaulted several times and have a lot of perhaps irrational fears but they didn’t come from only paranoia.
Yes. Hope is the opposite of despair. And I think that even when bad stuff happens we can be hopeful and resilient without the toxic positivity crap.
But the topic is about kids in a depressed state which is unique and separate from cost of living issues, or even being resilient in the fact of adversity.
More kids thrive, become resilient and hopeful adults, when provided a childhood free from danger, real or perceived, in their communities.
We have failed in that.
What are y'all grilling this afternoon?
I am combatting young (okay, young-ish) liberal depression through the healing powers of tri-tip, brats, and asparagus.
Pork shoulder roast on the smoker, over here.
Going to a friend's but there will be a variety of sausages etc plus a Thai chicken salad (host used to live in Singapore and Japan and taught himself to cook in Asia). My contribution is a cake that was meant to be red, white, and blue (blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries) but ended up kind of purple. Centrist cake?
I admire the skill and/or courage of a person who cooks tri-tip on a grill. Had it at home last night (under the broiler), was outstanding but lack of control on a grill is daunting.
Enjoy your feasts, everyone!
I cooked salmon yesterday, a friend cooked tri tip the day before that, and family will be cooking chicken today.
Grilling sausage and drinking beer, while hopefully taking the kid to a firework show tonight if we can both stay awake.
Earlier we kept the kids awake so we could show then the full moon through the telescope.
Heck yea! That’s awesome.
Nothing celebrates EUA better than Picanha
I've got the same thing for corn as a side today, except without the cheese or rosemary. Rosemary does sound good though.
I've had really good luck over the years just putting the whole raw ear, husk and all, over the open fire. Started as a field expedient measure on a camping trip, but now it's my go-to method.
I'm going to get a bit controversial here, but the constant talk of su!cide relating to trans issues for kids is just messed up. Guidelines about discussion of su!cide in the media have always said to avoid going into graphic details, avoid simplification, and avoid suggesting it was inevitable. It's a disgrace that we are now suggesting that surgery and hormones, with permanent impact on fertility and sexual function, are now required for some people or they will almost inevitably go through with it. Just shameful that some people are doing this.
And think about the second order effects of that--all the kids and younger adults who hear that message about suicide and then assume anyone who questions anything about trans rights/the movement must want people to die. Empathy that overwhelms critical thinking.
It’s the catastrophizing. Certain activists assert of you don’t do X then you are killing children, without establishing how doing X affects the latter.
I see these types of arguments with climate change and degrowthers. I just think that casual mendacity is more acceptable now and people don’t even bother showing concern for finding the truth. They just assert if you don’t believe what they do then you hold horrible beliefs or said something horrible, without evidence.
The official narrative around LGBTQ rights (among others but it is especially notable here) is the opposite of CBT--constant reframing of everything to be trauma, harm, microaggressions. Everything is interpreted as proof that one isn’t wholly and fully accepted or celebrated by the world around them, and that that is itself a traumatic and depressive experience.
I can hardly think of a more destabilizing and immiserating way to experience the world.