Teens are anxious and depressed: drivers' licenses decline; Richard Hanania looks at social media; Noah Smith blames smart phones. Cowen/Yglesias/Dreher see a progressivism connection
Mar 5, 2023·edited Mar 5, 2023Liked by Arnold Kling
The obvious step is to ban smartphones and tablets in K-12 public schools. Even during lunch or recess or whatever. They shouldn't be allowed in the building, and given the controls schools have on entry/exit these days that isn't hard to do.
I can buy that people in their private lives or private schools can make these decisions themselves, but kids are largely beyond their parents control when they are in school and most people need to send their kids to public school. Note that even if a parent doesn't let their kid have a phone, if their friend does the contagion is complete.
I have encountered zero parents who think this is a bad idea and many that think it is a great idea and complain about how much time kids spend on phones.
And while some school districts have made some motions in this direction it remains a problem. I think that there is a mixture of a few things:
1) Teachers like that the phones make the kids passive an easy to control
2) Even if they don't like #1, they don't want to deal with the hassle of conflict to take them away
3) Schools have unfortunately integrated screens into daily life. The local elementary school makes kids do some of their work on a tablet and it's not even possible for them to do their work without interacting with a screen.
Even for those that eschew "regulation" I think "take phones away from children in the mandatory schooling they are more or less forced to attend" is low hanging fruit.
23-year-old here. The primary causes that I see are:
1. The widespread adoption of slave morality. (i.e. in a lot of circles, it isn’t morally acceptable to be confident, happy and popular with the opposite sex.) The new pharisaism of our day has created a world in which the most important thing is to never set a foot wrong. The best way to do that is to do nothing at all
2. Tech and social media replacing in-person social life. TikTok and video games are a low-risk way to be entertained, and there is no risk of being shunned, rejected, etc... like there is in real life. Social media is to real social life what porn is to a real sexual relationship
3. Mass urbanization. People don’t have friend groups from childhood. They don’t have defined and consistent community around them. They go to huge schools in the city and then go home after school. There is no broader community of which they are a part.
Freddie suggests an alternative for reduced mental health not mentioned - anger about overproduction of elites, especially "creatives". [He makes no mention of teen girls]
I'm convinced smart phones are at least like matches & tinder, not sure how much they fuel the burning fire of depression, if not also mental disease. Elite overproduction seems like more solid fuel for the problem, but w/o any spark.
Even more of the fuel for depression is Lack of Faith. A lack of Christianity (or some other major religion), means youngsters learn the mushy "there's no real purpose in life, which is essentially meaningless, and all authorities claiming otherwise are just lying to oppress you." College educated teachers don't say these words, usually, but are pretty consistent with parts of this message.
Often with little disguised hatred against Christianity.
Along with hatred for the problems of America.
and hatred for the problems of capitalism.
And a distrust, or disillusionment of family life with imperfect parents, whom many kids are angry at.
Hate is related to Anger, tho also a bit different.
People filled with hate are seldom happy, and are more often depressed. Hate can be useful to change some problem for the better, but most current problems exist partly because there is NOT agreement on what would be better. Even if there is wide agreement that something which now exists has problems, there is seldom agreement on how to change it - tho Burn, Baby, Burn has a lot of dopamine hit effects.
Finally, as girls grow into women, and into bras (usually far smaller than porn stars have), they are faced with being popular sex objects or ... being much much less popular. The social media popularity issues with the expectation of promiscuity and hook-ups w/o love are likely far worse for teen women then teen men. Sex w/o love is fine with so many guys (teen men & other males), and even desired without getting nearly as much as desired. "Attractive" is essentially synonymous with "sexually attractive" for both sexes. But smart phones raise the bar on "sexy" from the best in the high school to among the best in the world -- far too unrealistic.
The figures are compelling - over 20% of youngsters identify as LGBT+ and LGBT+ high school students have a 70% incidence of mental illness. This may mean that over 14% of high school students have a mental illness that is correlated with being LGBT+. Two thirds of the rise in mental illness over the past ten years is likely due to the LGBT+ choice or whatever is causing them to be identifying as LGBT+.
Hell would need to freeze over before sociologists investigate this change.
I'd extend your feedback loop the other way, too. Adult Progressives love to emote about topics, and social media gives them an audience that they can shape, via self-selection and selective blocking, into one which will reliably applaud any of their postings, thus reinforcing their inflated opinion of how many people approve of Progressive policies.
Small, unassigned lockers. Student choses one and uses it. Lock with a 4 digit code they create. We have them available at the university gym I use. No big deal. Of course you'd need a camera to reduce attempts to thwart it by "using" all the lockers.
As for rule breakers, if you have a rule and enforce it the problems will be rather minor. If you don't enforce it then yes, you will have problems. One enforcement method is that rule breakers get searched.
I have no doubt some schools don't allow phones. It can be done.
Not that it matters for your topic but all the univ students walk around using their phone and sit at the workout machines on their phones instead of working out. A whole other problem.
Doesn't seem like anything in your post is new to me but I love how most of the comments are stated. And all were good. Well done.
What are FITs points? I couldn't find an explanation in your posts of the last few months. Only one other similar mention. ... found it with a google search.
Today Yglesias writes that "older progressive leaders deserve a healthy share of blame for creating institutional cultures that celebrate pessimism as a sign of political commitment while teaching young people to weaponize claims of subjective harm."
Back in 2016, Yglesias predicted that "angry mobs will beat and murder Jews and people of color with impunity" if Trump's elected.
Why does Matt get a pass on this from people like Arnold Kling and Tyler Cowen? I don't know how anyone can help laughing when he criticizes leftists who promote a culture "that celebrates pessimism as a sign of political commitment." I don't mean this as a rhetorical question. I really would like to know why the center-right ignores his anti-social behavior.
I don't know that the phones and social media cause the dysfunction, but I do know the person I encounter anywhere under age 30 who isn't looking at his/her phone is the exception.
The obvious step is to ban smartphones and tablets in K-12 public schools. Even during lunch or recess or whatever. They shouldn't be allowed in the building, and given the controls schools have on entry/exit these days that isn't hard to do.
I can buy that people in their private lives or private schools can make these decisions themselves, but kids are largely beyond their parents control when they are in school and most people need to send their kids to public school. Note that even if a parent doesn't let their kid have a phone, if their friend does the contagion is complete.
I have encountered zero parents who think this is a bad idea and many that think it is a great idea and complain about how much time kids spend on phones.
And while some school districts have made some motions in this direction it remains a problem. I think that there is a mixture of a few things:
1) Teachers like that the phones make the kids passive an easy to control
2) Even if they don't like #1, they don't want to deal with the hassle of conflict to take them away
3) Schools have unfortunately integrated screens into daily life. The local elementary school makes kids do some of their work on a tablet and it's not even possible for them to do their work without interacting with a screen.
Even for those that eschew "regulation" I think "take phones away from children in the mandatory schooling they are more or less forced to attend" is low hanging fruit.
23-year-old here. The primary causes that I see are:
1. The widespread adoption of slave morality. (i.e. in a lot of circles, it isn’t morally acceptable to be confident, happy and popular with the opposite sex.) The new pharisaism of our day has created a world in which the most important thing is to never set a foot wrong. The best way to do that is to do nothing at all
2. Tech and social media replacing in-person social life. TikTok and video games are a low-risk way to be entertained, and there is no risk of being shunned, rejected, etc... like there is in real life. Social media is to real social life what porn is to a real sexual relationship
3. Mass urbanization. People don’t have friend groups from childhood. They don’t have defined and consistent community around them. They go to huge schools in the city and then go home after school. There is no broader community of which they are a part.
As far as causation for licenses: back in 1997, you could get a license in Maryland at 16.
Now you can get a provisional license at 16 years and 6 months, and a full license at 18.
Many other states have similarly increased their ages for getting a driver's license.
So the decline in 17-year-olds holding a license may indicate a demand change or a supply change...
Freddie suggests an alternative for reduced mental health not mentioned - anger about overproduction of elites, especially "creatives". [He makes no mention of teen girls]
https://www.persuasion.community/p/why-so-many-elites-feel-like-losers?publication_id=61579&post_id=106766109&isFreemail=true
I'm convinced smart phones are at least like matches & tinder, not sure how much they fuel the burning fire of depression, if not also mental disease. Elite overproduction seems like more solid fuel for the problem, but w/o any spark.
Even more of the fuel for depression is Lack of Faith. A lack of Christianity (or some other major religion), means youngsters learn the mushy "there's no real purpose in life, which is essentially meaningless, and all authorities claiming otherwise are just lying to oppress you." College educated teachers don't say these words, usually, but are pretty consistent with parts of this message.
Often with little disguised hatred against Christianity.
Along with hatred for the problems of America.
and hatred for the problems of capitalism.
And a distrust, or disillusionment of family life with imperfect parents, whom many kids are angry at.
Hate is related to Anger, tho also a bit different.
People filled with hate are seldom happy, and are more often depressed. Hate can be useful to change some problem for the better, but most current problems exist partly because there is NOT agreement on what would be better. Even if there is wide agreement that something which now exists has problems, there is seldom agreement on how to change it - tho Burn, Baby, Burn has a lot of dopamine hit effects.
Finally, as girls grow into women, and into bras (usually far smaller than porn stars have), they are faced with being popular sex objects or ... being much much less popular. The social media popularity issues with the expectation of promiscuity and hook-ups w/o love are likely far worse for teen women then teen men. Sex w/o love is fine with so many guys (teen men & other males), and even desired without getting nearly as much as desired. "Attractive" is essentially synonymous with "sexually attractive" for both sexes. But smart phones raise the bar on "sexy" from the best in the high school to among the best in the world -- far too unrealistic.
The increase in LGBT+ affiliation is probably sufficient to explain the increase in mental illness among the young in the US:
See https://therenwhere.substack.com/p/social-media-drives-you-mad
Although phone use is also a factor.
The figures are compelling - over 20% of youngsters identify as LGBT+ and LGBT+ high school students have a 70% incidence of mental illness. This may mean that over 14% of high school students have a mental illness that is correlated with being LGBT+. Two thirds of the rise in mental illness over the past ten years is likely due to the LGBT+ choice or whatever is causing them to be identifying as LGBT+.
Hell would need to freeze over before sociologists investigate this change.
I'd extend your feedback loop the other way, too. Adult Progressives love to emote about topics, and social media gives them an audience that they can shape, via self-selection and selective blocking, into one which will reliably applaud any of their postings, thus reinforcing their inflated opinion of how many people approve of Progressive policies.
Small, unassigned lockers. Student choses one and uses it. Lock with a 4 digit code they create. We have them available at the university gym I use. No big deal. Of course you'd need a camera to reduce attempts to thwart it by "using" all the lockers.
As for rule breakers, if you have a rule and enforce it the problems will be rather minor. If you don't enforce it then yes, you will have problems. One enforcement method is that rule breakers get searched.
I have no doubt some schools don't allow phones. It can be done.
Not that it matters for your topic but all the univ students walk around using their phone and sit at the workout machines on their phones instead of working out. A whole other problem.
Doesn't seem like anything in your post is new to me but I love how most of the comments are stated. And all were good. Well done.
What are FITs points? I couldn't find an explanation in your posts of the last few months. Only one other similar mention. ... found it with a google search.
https://www.arnoldkling.com/fits/rules.html
Today Yglesias writes that "older progressive leaders deserve a healthy share of blame for creating institutional cultures that celebrate pessimism as a sign of political commitment while teaching young people to weaponize claims of subjective harm."
Back in 2016, Yglesias predicted that "angry mobs will beat and murder Jews and people of color with impunity" if Trump's elected.
Why does Matt get a pass on this from people like Arnold Kling and Tyler Cowen? I don't know how anyone can help laughing when he criticizes leftists who promote a culture "that celebrates pessimism as a sign of political commitment." I don't mean this as a rhetorical question. I really would like to know why the center-right ignores his anti-social behavior.
https://twitter.com/Steve_Sailer/status/959238358160453633
I don't know that the phones and social media cause the dysfunction, but I do know the person I encounter anywhere under age 30 who isn't looking at his/her phone is the exception.
Blame it all on social media
But what a tree of knowledge there there be