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Young people are becoming less happy than older generations as they suffer “the equivalent of a midlife crisis”, global research has revealed as America’s top doctor warned that “young people are really struggling”.
Dr Vivek Murthy, the US surgeon general, said allowing children to use social media was like giving them medicine that is not proven to be safe. He said the failure of governments to better regulate social media in recent years was “insane”.
Murthy spoke to the Guardian as new data revealed that young people across North America were now less happy than their elders, with the same “historic” shift expected to follow in western Europe.
Declining wellbeing among under-30s has driven the US out of the top 20 list of happiest nations, the 2024 World Happiness Report revealed.
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Dr Vivek Murthy, the US surgeon general, said allowing children to use social media was like giving them medicine that is not proven to be safe. He said the failure of governments to better regulate social media in recent years was “insane”.
Everything’s unaffordable, the world is on fire and we’re doing somewhere between “too little, too late” and “nothing”, you can barely own anything anymore (only subscribe/rent), owning a house is a pipe dream for many, on top of all that, the Nazis are back, and more.
But yeah, let’s blame social media for the kids being unhappy. If they don’t know about all this bad stuff, they won’t be unhappy about it. Genius!
Have they finally moved on from blaming video games for everything?
Video games: one of the few things I can afford that bring me joy.
The irony being the video game industry is currently one of the most unstable and corrupt industries right now. Video game CEOs are raking in money while the actual creatives are being fired left and right. There is serious brain drain and a mental health crisis is occurring.
Thankfully the video game industry is huge and never been more varied. You can mostly ignore major publishers and still have a great time exploring indie and AA games. It still really sucks for the majority of the game devs but at least for players they have a lot of options if they can be steered away from the gambling of things like mobile games, FIFA and MTX-ridden AAA games.
On the other hand though, the industry is rapidly unionizing to stop the problems you’re talking about
Vidya games? Banned! For the children, naturally.
Social media is what’s making us aware of all those things concurrently. Continuously.
It is (that, and 24/7 news). I’m not qualified to debate the health effects of social media on the adolescent (or adult) mind, but I still find it disingenuous and tone deaf to blame it instead of the problems it’s merely highlighting.
Maybe in the younger people, pre-teens, teens, it has a bigger impact. They might not pay as much attention to politics and the news.
However, on social media you only see the positive parts of people’s lives. You don’t see the negative parts so often. People’s lives look so much better than ours. Plus there’s all the bullying aspect.
When you’re a teen with self esteem issues, these things can really get to you.
Then again, like you said, I’m no expert.
People see the harms of social media but forget how connected it can help make people. There’s a LOT of people who would be stuck, isolated from any peers without social media. It’s why shitheels like DeSantis wanting to block kids from accessing social media is not a welcome change. There’s a lot of vulnerable people who would otherwise stay uninformed and sheltered without it. It certainly has it’s downsides but people could say the same thing about the internet itself and no one’s calling to ban that.
People see the harms of social media but forget how connected it can help make people.
the best thing the internet did was connect all the “smart” people to each other. the worst thing the internet did was connect all the “dumb” people to each other.
All the idiots of the world have found each other and unionized
Unionized is not the right word. They found leaders. Then they voted against unions.
Definitely not equating what these people are doing to real unions, but they do form semi organized groups with leaders and push for whatever agenda (dumb as it may be) they have which is essentially unionizing by definition.
Big Social Media shares many characteristics of a drug, with similar anti-social consequences by overuse. But as with drugs, social media is just a symptom of the underlying problem.
Pick any point in the last hundred years and you’ll have the world coming apart because of global conflict, assassinations and bombings, or the threat of nuclear catastrophe, all under a backdrop of environmental destruction and pollution. Despite all this the previous generation is reported to be happier
Everything you listed is legit, but it’s our ability to serve up fresh horrors at all hours of the day that has changed.
What’s worse, is that social media gives us the feeling that we’re well informed when we’re actually not. Think of all the people you know who you think are well informed. Journalists, experts, even some bloggers. They didn’t get that way by scrolling for content on social media all the time.
All that to say that I think anyone who uses social media should consider how their media diet effects them
On a personal level it’s one of the reasons I try to use things like reddit (or Lemmy) less and fill my life with things that are more enriching, like books and music
Or maybe… JUST maybe… its because COL was cheaper for older generations and they made more money to boot
Having time and money to travel, own a car, and own a house at the same time on a minimum wage job was entirely possible in the 1950s.
I’d just like to mention that that is a very US-centric perspective. Of course it’s not social media, but in the 1950s the average person who was just graduating from the place I did was fighting the 8th Mechanized Army of the Soviet Union. Things did not improve immediately after.
Point is, the relative welfare of the US was built on the fact that Europe was devastated in WWII, and then squandered once the wealthy saw they can’t keep accumulating wealth at the same pace after Europe was back in one piece.
That said, the boom-bust cycle is seeing us worse and worse every iteration and the 100 obscenely wealthy people better and better off. So maybe that’s the problem.
I’m sorry, social media is the problem? It’s a part of the problem sure but not THE problem. We just want to afford rent and feed our families. It’s really not a big ask.
Surely it’s not that our planet is dying, we can’t afford shit like a roof over our heads / food / kids / health coverage, our rights are dropping like flies, christofascism is fucking rampant, and the Nazis are back…
No, it’s social media! Surely that’s what’s getting everyone all fuckered up.
Social media is how the kids know the world is fucked, therefore social media is the problem. Think about it. :P
Perhaps it’s just so much easier these days to find out about those problems on social media.
Before social media became popular, people still complained about cost of living (not sure how it compares to the 2010s, since post-pandemic is probably worse). Health coverage has always been tough in North America. At least in Canada, we haven’t been losing rights (…yet?), and we’ve been gaining some (e.g. protections for minorities under the law). Christofascism and Nazis have been around for a while.
But with social media…
- We become more aware of the rights and health coverage we’re losing, even if they don’t affect us directly (a good thing, but depressing)
- We hear more about cost-of-living regardless of how it impacts us, which is more depressing. As well, we realize it’s a problem of society, not of our local stores necessarily (another good but depressing thing)
- We see more of the Nazis, who generally stayed hidden before they had the veil of anonymity on social media (a bad thing)
- The Nazis can more easily organize, and (inter)nation-wide, too (a very bad thing)
Not to mention how addictive social media is.
And with the algorithms, you could end up with smart people reading about the problems of the world, and then to keep them engaged, the social media platforms just feed them a bunch of depressing stuff to doomscroll through. Then you’ve got another depressed person.
It could be argued that their depression was inevitable given the state of the world, but social media can make it so much faster and easier to get sucked into “doomerism”…and harder to get out.
Cost of living is so much worse now than in 2010s. Housing and food prices have doubled, but salaries have not doubled in 10 years. I couldn’t come close to affording now the house I bought in 2012. Health care costs are actually rising lower than inflation, as is total healthcare spending. Christofascists and Nazis have been around forever, but in the early to mid 2010s we didn’t have one as President of the US who actively encouraged them to come of hiding and boldly advertise their hatred.
Social Media and 24 hours news channels bring to light the issues facing us in the world today, but people wouldn’t feel so bad if they felt a comfortable future was at least attainable. “Yeah, the world might suck but at least I should be able to afford a moderately nice house and car once I’ve paid my dues at work in 10 years.” Versus, “shit, it sucks now and will probably suck even more in 10 years.”
Cost of living is so much worse now than in 2010s
Yeah, that’s what I was saying. Everything went crazy during the pandemic and never got close to recovering.
I’ve seen the argument made that Trump became president in a big part due to social media. He grew his cult following thanks to Twitter while Obama was president. So the problems caused by Trump could also be tied back to social media.
[Cost of] Everything went crazy during the pandemic and never got close to recovering.
It continues to piss me off that the pandemic effectively let Trump off the hook for the economy he had already fucked up with his 2017 tax handout to the rich and 2018 trade war with China. He had already been badgering the Fed to lower interest rates to stave off a recession in 2019, before COVID showed up. In fact, the erosion of the interest rate in 2019, and therefore the capacity for quantitative easing, is yet another way Trump’s incompetent and vindictive policies made the pandemic even worse than it would’ve been otherwise.
Wouldn’t doubt that one bit. I live in Canada, and while the Conservative party is often presented as “good for the economy”, objectively, they’re no better than the Liberals here.
the Conservative party is often presented as “good for the economy”, objectively, they’re no better than the Liberals here.
I don’t know about Canada (I assume it’s the same), but here in the US the conservative is objectively worse for the economy every damn time. The Republicans have been running a “two Santa Clauses” con for decades.
As late as 1980, a high school graduate could be self supporting the minute they turned 18. A minimum wage job could support a studio apartment and pay for some luxuries while putting a few dollars in the bank
Of course people were happier when they felt like they were in control of their lives.
My wife and I make over 175K together, live modestly, and can’t make finances work to have a child and not go broke.
That’s insane.
Not really, it’s depends on where you live.
Sorry, but people were buying houses and raising families in New York and San Francisco for a long time.
A quick check shows that a two bedroom apartment in Manhattan [not the cheaper outer boroughs] circa 1960 would be about $200.00./month.
In 1960, minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the cost of the average US home was $11,000.00.
Current prices are insane.
Completely agree with you
Time to do nothing about the underlying causes.
Why do nothing when we can make things worse?
Look what they’re being left to inherit.
Yeah I feel like its not social medias fault as much as it’s a condition of the poor state of society, kids just happen to learn about that state on social media.
I see all the declining birth rates and negative population growth and totally commiserate with them. I wouldn’t want to have kids in this world either. I wouldn’t want to create someone that would inherit this grim outlook. Thankfully, we aren’t but that was personal reasons. I know lots of people still having kids with the biggest reason people don’t outside their desires being financial. At least among fairly privileged people in the US.
Its also really expensive to have kids and we arent getting any richer
Younger people are increasingly seen as a resource to be harvested by their parents and grandparents. They are expected to go into debt to start their careers, go into more debt to buy exorbitantly priced houses from the older generation, and pay into a Social Security program they will never see a dime of, all while having to save for their own retirement. And I bet their parents will expect their kids to build an addition to that mythical house when the parents get to be too old to take care of themselves.
Their grandparents complain they don’t work hard enough or spend money on frivolous things, while failing to see the hole that Gramps put the younger generation in, so the olders can continue to be on the government dole in retirement.
Retirement dole should be lauded, in fact just make it UBI and be done with it
The older generations will die while the younger generation has to deal with the aftermath of the older generations terrible decisions.
Of course they’re happy, they don’t have to deal with the consequences.
Wow look when you fuck up the fabric of society and take away the social safety net and ruin the planet so we’re all probably going to be killed by the changing climate, young people are unhappy! In fact they are more unhappy than previous generations! I’ve never been so insulted by a piece of research in my entire fucking life fuck
I think maybe it isn’t the social media itself but the fact that we are letting impressionable kids be exposed to multi billion dollar recommendation algos that are designed to exploit human psychology for engagement metrics that get boosted whenever people feel inflamed or ashamed. I feel like we are going to look back in 20 years and see this paradigm as bad as letting cigarettes advertise to kids
Thank you. At the end of the day social media and the Internet are just tools. The constant exposure to the gamification of human psychology for profit is harmful to all of us and children are less capable of breaking free of it.
Real talk, as a parent, it distresses me to think about my kids’ future. Shit’s going to start going sideways fast by the time they’re adults. They’re going to have to deal with so much awful bullshit because of a bunch of rich/old fucks making decisions that they are beyond the consequences of. I wonder if they’ll have kids, but I doubt it; I sometimes feel guilty having brought them into this, and I wouldn’t blame them for not wanting to have their own when things start really falling apart. I’m just trying to appreciate the good times while we have them, and being cognizant that they’re not going to last.
I’m trying to be politically active, trying to make a difference where I can to make sure they inherit a better world, but it’s damn hard to find the time.
Damn these kids must be pretty strong. With my levels of frustration, depression and loneliness, it nearly kills me.
Even if you just consume the correct media, no fake news and no tiktok brain melting dopamine rush content, you still find out more about the world and what’s going wrong by two clicks. Be it the climate catastrophe, carcinogenic food and materials, war going on or simple economy crisis. That’s all my grandparents didn’t have to read or to deal with in such an excessive way. Large news made it the tv news and local issues never had this huge impact on their lives. Print was slow and compacted.
You could say ignorance is a bliss. Now add all the dopamine killers and you get a toxic cocktail, that our brain can’t handle. We jump from one extreme to the other and can hardly escape it.
The only solution is a healthy abstinence from most news for most of the day, activities counteracting bad events (like community work or going into politics) and avoiding all dopamine rush things. I bet we could also make school (and later work) feel less shit, so we’re less inclined into counteracting by indulging into bad habits.
There’s a lot of pressure on young people and we’ve yet to gasp this. The first generation who had to deal with all of this at once, are only approaching their 30s. Give it another 30 and they might be into the positions to effect things for the better. But I see at least 3 more decades of things getting worse.
My father: High school diploma, homeowner, family man, good retirement.
Me: Good STEM degree, can’t afford home, can’t afford family, can’t afford retirement.
This article (and you): Why would social media do this?
