Perhaps this is cruel but I don't see the problem. I'm not Gen Z, I'm a millenial, but in the early 2010s I observed my social circle descend into social media obsession and become... weird. People suddenly adopted weird opinions, they suddenly had odd social expectations and wokism exploded. I made a conscious decision in the year 2010 to delete my social media, I was only 18. I've never used instagram, never used tik tok, my facebook technically exists but I haven't posted in 13 years.
My mental health is great. I dated a guy I met in church, we fell in love, we got married, I graduated college, I moved out on my own and eventually moved in with my husband. My career is going great.
I look at my friends who made a different choice in the early 2010s and I see the opposite. I see a couple divorces, most of these women are serial monogamists addicted to the dating apps. Most are very unhappy and with each passing day they descend deeper into far left politics as a cope. Everyone else is selfish and evil, don't you see? That's why they're so unhappy.
from Australia - Paul kelly in The Australian (newspaper). “Inside their homes parents are locked in a silent, frightening, unprecedented battle with their young children who, once addicted to their devices and phones, cannot live without them and refuse to surrender them. It is a new form of intimate social warfare; the revolt of the technologically addicted youth generation.
In 2023 US social psychologist Jonathan Haidt warned that the West was witnessing “the great re-wiring of childhood”, which meant the central experience of childhood had become “phone based” not “play based”. Based on his survey work Haidt said the great change came across the Anglosphere from about 2012 when rates of mental illness and suicide exploded, most pronounced where young people were less integrated into society and religious communities. The onus lies on parents, schools and authorities to address this crisis. This represents an extreme form of the wider generational tension at work.”
Two generations of American boys have grown up inundated with the message that they are violent, dangerous, dim-witted and worth nothing compared to girls. Normal, healthy boy behavior has been pathologized and medicated - they are forced to be nice little girls, no matter the damage done to their developing manhood. White boys have the additional burden of being responsible for everything that has ever gone wrong in the world, for which they must do constant penance. They have grown up being told the world has no room for them, that they are at best useless, but more likely also a danger to the oppressed minorities, i.e. everyone else. How can we be surprised that so many fail to launch, or worse?
The more that we muse about the so-called perfect life, the more we destroy each other in the process. Nobody is off-limits in this treachery by which we stroke our chins and pass judgment on one other. And, as our society becomes more self-obsessed through this process, we destroy ourselves.
@EliseRonan mentioned Christina Hoff Sommers. As a high-performing female in the 80s who was simultaneously congratulated and pushed to reach higher, I read her book because even I could see how illogical it was for me to get that attention just because I was female. I read The Way Against Boys long before marriage and family to get more information on what seemed glaringly obvious even back then.
For the last 40 years we've treated boys like they were defective girls. When they got old enough, we told them to sit down and shut up. After they could shave we told them their very nature was toxic. In every possible way they have been told that they weren't needed, were defective, and their thoughts and opinions weren't valuable. Why wouldn't they be depressed and turn to the virtual world? Our culture has been feminized beyond recognition and we've all suffered for it.
Yes, 75%-80% of suicides are males, but this dunce is just now figuring it out that boys have problems. Only 40% of college enrollees are males, if there's an idiot or a violent character in pop culture, it's essentially invariably a male, males receive far harsher treatment by the criminal justice system than do females, the family court system routinely rules against fathers, males have no right to even know if they've fathered a child, 97% of alimony recipients are women, domestic violence is 50-50, but women have 1200 shelters and men have three in the entire country, there are literally hundreds of programs on campuses that benefit exclusively women and essentially none for men and that of course violates federal and state laws, child protective agencies ignore fathers as placements for children abused or neglected by their mother, adoption laws blatantly discriminate against fathers, etc., etc., etc. It's not as if we haven't known all this for decades, but Haidt figures he's made a great discovery.
I thought men were a privileged class and had the world handed to them on a silver platter without having to work for anything. How could they be so depressed if this is the case?🤔
Anti-male bias is also rife within my (‘hard science’) org e.g. we have only women in top leadership positions. When recruiting for new positions the silent rule is that we ‘must’ turn up women candidates (and preferably hire them). When looking at candidates for awards, female candidates always have the edge by virtue of their gender—the assumption is they had to overcome long odds to get where they are so they somehow ‘deserve’ it. While that might have been true in earlier generations, it is definitely not true now. (I say this as a woman appalled at seeing talented men lose out). Who can blame them for disengaging?
Hey Free Press— why don’t you break new ground here and feature more young men in your journalistic ranks?
Diet, vaccinations, estrogen from the Pill in the mother, feminism, toxic masculinity and safetyism have worked to destroy boys. Male testosterone levels have dropped dramatically over decades, grip strength has collapsed to where there is almost no difference between college age males and females on average. Put them in rooms with video and they become mushrooms. They need to play, get dirty and strengthen their immune systems. A high percentage of boys, over 40% last I knew, of all demographics, have no permanent male role model in the home.
The role of adult males, across all societies, indeed even across species, is the socialization of adolescent males. Robert Bly (paraphrased).
Perhaps this is cruel but I don't see the problem. I'm not Gen Z, I'm a millenial, but in the early 2010s I observed my social circle descend into social media obsession and become... weird. People suddenly adopted weird opinions, they suddenly had odd social expectations and wokism exploded. I made a conscious decision in the year 2010 to delete my social media, I was only 18. I've never used instagram, never used tik tok, my facebook technically exists but I haven't posted in 13 years.
My mental health is great. I dated a guy I met in church, we fell in love, we got married, I graduated college, I moved out on my own and eventually moved in with my husband. My career is going great.
I look at my friends who made a different choice in the early 2010s and I see the opposite. I see a couple divorces, most of these women are serial monogamists addicted to the dating apps. Most are very unhappy and with each passing day they descend deeper into far left politics as a cope. Everyone else is selfish and evil, don't you see? That's why they're so unhappy.
Is there a correlation between the increased rate of depression and increased rates of kids on psyc medication over the timeframe?
Seems if the depression problem is getting worse maybe it’s not just smart phones.
from Australia - Paul kelly in The Australian (newspaper). “Inside their homes parents are locked in a silent, frightening, unprecedented battle with their young children who, once addicted to their devices and phones, cannot live without them and refuse to surrender them. It is a new form of intimate social warfare; the revolt of the technologically addicted youth generation.
In 2023 US social psychologist Jonathan Haidt warned that the West was witnessing “the great re-wiring of childhood”, which meant the central experience of childhood had become “phone based” not “play based”. Based on his survey work Haidt said the great change came across the Anglosphere from about 2012 when rates of mental illness and suicide exploded, most pronounced where young people were less integrated into society and religious communities. The onus lies on parents, schools and authorities to address this crisis. This represents an extreme form of the wider generational tension at work.”
Two generations of American boys have grown up inundated with the message that they are violent, dangerous, dim-witted and worth nothing compared to girls. Normal, healthy boy behavior has been pathologized and medicated - they are forced to be nice little girls, no matter the damage done to their developing manhood. White boys have the additional burden of being responsible for everything that has ever gone wrong in the world, for which they must do constant penance. They have grown up being told the world has no room for them, that they are at best useless, but more likely also a danger to the oppressed minorities, i.e. everyone else. How can we be surprised that so many fail to launch, or worse?
The more that we muse about the so-called perfect life, the more we destroy each other in the process. Nobody is off-limits in this treachery by which we stroke our chins and pass judgment on one other. And, as our society becomes more self-obsessed through this process, we destroy ourselves.
@EliseRonan mentioned Christina Hoff Sommers. As a high-performing female in the 80s who was simultaneously congratulated and pushed to reach higher, I read her book because even I could see how illogical it was for me to get that attention just because I was female. I read The Way Against Boys long before marriage and family to get more information on what seemed glaringly obvious even back then.
For the last 40 years we've treated boys like they were defective girls. When they got old enough, we told them to sit down and shut up. After they could shave we told them their very nature was toxic. In every possible way they have been told that they weren't needed, were defective, and their thoughts and opinions weren't valuable. Why wouldn't they be depressed and turn to the virtual world? Our culture has been feminized beyond recognition and we've all suffered for it.
Let's not overlook the sexual revolution and rise of ultra feminism that also hit in the 70s.
Sigh.
All those words about depression and not a single word on the likely cause, the pedophiles telling kids they face extinction in a decade or two.
Maybe the author should maybe read some stuff
To put it bluntly, we are raising a bunch of wimps and cowards.
Yes, 75%-80% of suicides are males, but this dunce is just now figuring it out that boys have problems. Only 40% of college enrollees are males, if there's an idiot or a violent character in pop culture, it's essentially invariably a male, males receive far harsher treatment by the criminal justice system than do females, the family court system routinely rules against fathers, males have no right to even know if they've fathered a child, 97% of alimony recipients are women, domestic violence is 50-50, but women have 1200 shelters and men have three in the entire country, there are literally hundreds of programs on campuses that benefit exclusively women and essentially none for men and that of course violates federal and state laws, child protective agencies ignore fathers as placements for children abused or neglected by their mother, adoption laws blatantly discriminate against fathers, etc., etc., etc. It's not as if we haven't known all this for decades, but Haidt figures he's made a great discovery.
I thought men were a privileged class and had the world handed to them on a silver platter without having to work for anything. How could they be so depressed if this is the case?🤔
Echoing earlier comments
Anti-male bias is also rife within my (‘hard science’) org e.g. we have only women in top leadership positions. When recruiting for new positions the silent rule is that we ‘must’ turn up women candidates (and preferably hire them). When looking at candidates for awards, female candidates always have the edge by virtue of their gender—the assumption is they had to overcome long odds to get where they are so they somehow ‘deserve’ it. While that might have been true in earlier generations, it is definitely not true now. (I say this as a woman appalled at seeing talented men lose out). Who can blame them for disengaging?
Hey Free Press— why don’t you break new ground here and feature more young men in your journalistic ranks?
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/testosterone?r=pq0qo
El gato malo's take on testosterone levels, including the growth in the uptake of pharmaceutical drugs.
Diet, vaccinations, estrogen from the Pill in the mother, feminism, toxic masculinity and safetyism have worked to destroy boys. Male testosterone levels have dropped dramatically over decades, grip strength has collapsed to where there is almost no difference between college age males and females on average. Put them in rooms with video and they become mushrooms. They need to play, get dirty and strengthen their immune systems. A high percentage of boys, over 40% last I knew, of all demographics, have no permanent male role model in the home.
The role of adult males, across all societies, indeed even across species, is the socialization of adolescent males. Robert Bly (paraphrased).
An overly feminized society is going to be crushed by a masculine one.
Just look at how Islamists are taking over Western and Central Europe.