I’ve been going through piles of printed materials saved over the years with the intention of doing something, some time, with the information they contain. They are mostly clippings from newspapers and magazines and items printed from the Internet. There are also some old emails. One that I found last week is very interesting in light of current cultural issues.
I had sent a two sentence email to our niece, a middle school teacher in Canada. It read “What is your take on the cyber-bullying issue? My Inbox is being flooded these days with reports from everywhere.” Lynne’s long response included the following:
I felt an emptiness in the pit of my stomach when I heard reports late last year and earlier this year of the suicides happening in the US. Since I found out about the first suicide of a local student almost two weeks ago I have been doing a lot of thinking . . .
Though the Internet is beneficial in many ways it is also causing a lot of harm. The fact that individuals can post anonymously makes it so much easier for them to write mean things and never be held accountable . . . As I have said for so many years I think parents need to keep computers in common areas and monitor what their children are doing online closely.
I was struck by the date of this email: April 06, 2011.
We know that depression and anxiety, self-harming, and suicide rates have increased exponentially in teens over the last few years. Why?
Around 2014 Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt were becoming aware of increasing depression and anxiety among students entering university. They decided to collaborate on researching the issue. Their book, The Coddling of the American Mind, was published in 2018. It details what they discovered and their conclusions. The subtitle of the book is How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure. Lukianoff is President and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). Haidt is Professor of Ethical Philosophy at New York University.
In a lecture at the University of Colorado Boulder, Professor Haidt talked about this research.
What Lukianoff and Haidt found
A sudden increase in fearfulness in young people
Suddenly, around 2014, fearfulness appears in university students. First year students were asking for protection against books, speakers, and ideas that might disturb them intellectually or emotionally. Students were beginning to think of themselves as fragile, needing to be protected. These were Gen Z (Generation Z) teens, the generation born after 1996.
Why?
An absence of the usual markers of maturing
Many Gen Z teens arrive at university never having done the things that in previous generations would have been considered basic: they have never dated, never obtained a driver’s license, never tried alcohol, never had a job.
Why?
An increase in psychological disorders and suicides
- Between 2010 and 2014 (the first Gen Z teens were 14 to 16 years old) rates of psychological disorders (depression and anxiety) in young people began rising.
- Psychological disorder have tripled for Gen Z.
- In 2009-2010 there was a 62% increase in older teens admitted to hospital for cutting. The number of pre-teen girls being admitted for cutting tripled.
- Completed suicides of middle school students rose by 150%.
Why?
A vast gender difference
Psychological disorders are up for both males and females, but only slightly for males, more for older teens, and massively more or pre-teen girls.
Why?
To be continued
