To think that there must be a tech related reason that so may teenagers are depressed and anxious

[38cody]

At least 70% of the teens I know are anxious and/or depressed. I don't remember any of my peers going through this - panic attacks, weeping etc.
I can only think that it's something to do with how they are communicating online?

I have to agree with angelcakerocks, and being recently out of my teens it affected me and it has got even worse since I was at school judging by my teenage relatives. There is no escape now as social media is used to communicate in the way previously people would have texted or used msn; now in order to continue friendships it is necessary to use social media and engage with the group behaviours. I never got it and wasn't good at playing the game as a result became pretty isolated. It also means that now your popularity is there in black and white in the form of likes, these are social currency that everyone can see. At a time in your life where you really care what your peers think this is poison. It doesn't help that the future seems bleak with debt and renting traps and spiralling house prices, I know a shocking number of recent graduates from 'good' universities working in pubs because there just aren't the jobs to go around. I really hope things change before my dd is of an age to start engaging with this sort of thing.

I think there may be some link but more along the lines of its just an extra area to cause / highlight issues
For example - cyber bullying
No switch off from school issues however small because the same people are there when kids log on to Facebook etc
Pressure to look a certain way even more in your face than just say magazines when I was a teen
Etc etc etc

I also think that it's just more talked about now ( thankfully ) being a teen is a difficult time
I was actually majorly depressed for a while around age 16 . Stayed in my room most the day felt utterly empty and lost but I had no idea this was depression ( I only look back now and recognise that it was ) parents just thought I was being typical moody teen etc

I think there were a lot of very stressed and depressed teenagers when I was young. We were ignored and discounted.

YABU.

I remember feeling in complete despair as a teen, suicidal some days. We had no one to turn to back then (70s).

I cannot remember how I got out of it, just glad I did, eventually.

My DD has anxiety, depression, possible ED and has self harmed. We're also going through school refusal atm.

On the one hand social media did contribute to the start of it. She was bullied very badly, both in school, outside of school in the park etc and on social media. When I removed her from social media she felt she was being punished for being the victim of bullying.

Of course, without social media the bullying still would have happened but she would have had an escape from it at home.

On the other hand, social media has been invaluable when dealing with what she is feeling. She is able to follow vlogs and youtubers who talk about depression, self harm, bullying etc and their experience of it and know that she is not alone in what she is feeling.

She's also through commenting on these vlogs etc made a good, supportive group of online friends. They have a private group chat going where they cheer on each others successes and support each other through failures (and help out with the 'likes' issue by liking each others posts)

Her bio dad also had depression and suffered from alcohol abuse, so I think it's genetic and maybe exacerbated by tech in DD's case.

Hmm...Okay so I must have just had easy teen years with my peers as we were all fine I think.
I don't think these depression websites and support groups help AT ALL - It makes the depression the centre of their being and 'who they are'.
Much better to watch Mama Mia to lift the spirits than go onto a depression website.
But from replies here it was obviously more prevalent in the 80's and 90's than I thought. It does seem weird though that all out kids are depressed, seems to span regions and class too. It could be that we're more aware but I think something has changed in society to cause it - I just don't know what.

You don't know for sure whether your peers were fine - the stigma around mental illness was far greater 10, 20+ years ago. People hid it.

You seriously believe that watching MamaMia would be more helpful for a person with mental illness than a support group?

I think we just hear more about anxiety and depression now. I was embarrassed in my late teens / early 20s and felt weird about having it. I didn't know anyone else who was dealing with panic attacks. These days people can share all of their thoughts on social media and there's not so much stigma attached. It definitely helps to be able to talk openly about these things.

But thinking about your actual question, no it's not unreasonable to wonder about that. Personally, I don't think it's technology so much as too much choice. People are almost expected to have fantastic, interesting and worthy careers (not just jobs), to travel the world in their "gap year", to have amazing fulfilling relationships... Sometimes it's nice to float along and just "be", if you know what I mean? Not always striving to do something or be something.

I absolutely agree there are pressures n stuff around now that there didn't used to be (the rise on the on-line world - the constant being in touch, the social media, etc). I think all these are valid.

However, they're just the current "thing". It being shit to be a teen has been around for AGES. Go and watch Rebel Without A Cause (c. 1956 or something). Being a teen SUCKS. (lots about it is great, but so much is awful).

There's also SO much more support and understanding these days.... Older relative fiddling with you - report and you'll be believed (didn't use to be the case); cyber bulling/on line grooming (most secondaries run evenings to enlighten and support). Declaring abuse - social workers nowadays believe the child. Young carer - there's so much in place to support.

Young voices are "heard" these days, and they didn't use to be (children shoved back into the place where they'd disclosed abuse).

It is absolutely not new that Young People are saying they are depressed and worried. Maybe the stats for collecting and reporting that information have changed.

It is NOT worse now.

It's just different. And the on line world has it's place in that. It also offers lots of positives - look at how we're all using it to make sure our kids are protected and supported. Our parents and grandparents never had that.

Christ I can't think of anything more likely to send me back into depression than watching mamma fucking Mia!

I think the fact that people don't go out as much as they used to has a lot to answer for, even with things like grocery shopping or buying clothes.

I was severely deppressed as a teenager and nobody had a clue. The fact that I could hide away in my room all day on my laptop probably made things much worse.

Totally agree harley getting outside every day and seeing people live their lives, having title snippets of conversations (thanking a stranger for holding a door open) and being in reality was a huge part of my recovery. Real life interaction is so important, I don't think people realise.

I was severely deppressed as a teenager and nobody had a clue. The fact that I could hide away in my room all day on my laptop probably made things much worse.

Above is what I meant by mama Mia comment - a distraction from feelings of depression seems to me better than focussing on it online with chat rooms and forums. I really don't mean to be flippant - I know many kids are very unwell and it's very sad - I thought it was a new thing to have so many affected - but maybe I'm wrong.

There is a genuine and frightening rise in suicide and serious self-harm in teenagers; this is clear from the statistics about things which wouldn't have gone unreported in the past.

I think a lot more kids are genuinely unwell, and have serious problems, but there is also a lot of pathologising of the normal ups and downs of becoming an adult.This seems to me to be increased by constant use of the internet; it is now impossible for kids to come home from school and have a break from hearing about everyone else's teenage angst/ eating disorders/ gender issues/ self-harming/ etc.

Life is quite frenetic compared to the past.

I know the internet is great, I am on MN too much and other interesting stuff. But it means no down time.
In the past i until ipods (2001) and then hand held phones 2000+ you did not have music, conversation, news constantly in your life. Only in your car could you listen to stuff. Teens, not having cars, spent lots of quiet time, walking to wherever, chatting to friends, doing sport. All in quiet without interruption. True TVs were on indoors but often more of a background noise than something you paid attention to.

It's not very natural for us humans to be constantly alert and thinking. It is imv stressful if it never lets up,

it could be techonology

or it could be an increasingly intense curriculum coupled with qualification devaluation that means they're under constant pressure to perform to higher and higher standards in order to pass exams that will let them sit more exams that will let them go to university that will force them them wrack up tens of thousands of pounds worth of debt in order to get a job that pays barely above minimum wage and wouldn't have needed a degree 10-15 years ago but now demands a 2:1 or higher, and in order to do that job they'll probably need to move and live in rented accommodation sapping 50% or more of their wages so that they can't afford to save up and move out, their employers will constantly be expecting them go above and beyond and show enthusiasm and passion for their work because a job can't just be a job anymore, all in the hopes of earning a promotion that will get them a huge increase in responsibilities and a tiny increase in pay, and they'll probably be working till they're eighty
All the while dealing with being part of a politically disenfranchised generation with little power to influence their own futures as they watch older generations suck the planet/the economy/the pension system/the nhs dry for short term profit, and they're bombarded with constant news about terrorism, superbugs, and climate change

meanwhile the adults around them are probably telling them that these years (often rife with bullying, hormones, and the lack of maturity to cope with life easily) are the best of their lives and that they should just be happy and that the real problem is them for using cute snapchat filters

so yeah, it's definitely being able to communicate on line that is the problem

Actually depressed teenagers hid in their bedroom in the past. But they did not even have virtual communication then.
Also when I was a teenager we were in the middle of a depression with high unemployment. The future for many felt bleak.

I think it definitely has a lot to do with peer pressure. At one school I know there is an epidemic of self harm. It really appears that you are the odd one out if you don't do it.

What has caused that though? Are they struggling with the pressure that they are under? Is it social media? Who knows but it definitely needs investigating.

I think it's hard to know how to help/ deal with this as we didn't grow up with this technology and constant pressure. We didn't have constant access to a phone, or to the horrors, as well as the joys, of the internet. Technology has developed much faster than our ability to deal with it IMO.

I think it is an extension of the increase in adult MH issues. Whether that is greater incidence, recognition or misdiagnosis, I don't know.

38cody Tue 28-Feb-17 07:01:20

"Above is what I meant by mama Mia comment - a distraction from feelings of depression seems to me better than focussing on it online with chat rooms and forums."

There are forums and forums. Not all social media do the same. It's like saying reading books is bad, because some books encourage you to obsess about negative things.

Dd has been known to distract herself by watching silly DVDs. And get support from friends via social media. And get help from medication. And do CBT exercises. The one does not exclude the other.

At times when she has been too ill to leave the house, social media has been her only contact with the outside world, the only alternative to hiding under the bed clothes and sleeping all day. I should hate for that to be taken away from her.

Though I agree that epidemics of self-harming happen, I am very wary of any statistics for self-harming relating to the past. What mechanisms for recording such statistics were there when I was young in the 70s? How likely was it that an adult would even find out, let alone put it on record: we didn't even have a word for it! I remember finding out about self-harming from a French film about Nazi collaborators- the poor girl who had had a German boyfriend ended up cutting her wrists against the window sill. And as I watched the thought that went through my mind, as a 17yo or thereabouts, was "how could that film director know what is in my head???" My family thought I was fine. There were no words for telling that I wasn't.

Although i agree that in some cases feeling low could be cured by fresh air and no tech there are a lot of children suffering with a mental health issues

I am worried that all children including ones with MH problems will all be lumped in with 'typical teenager' comments and dismissed

People have always had depression and teen years have always been hard for some.

When I was a girl there was nowhere near as much stuff to buy. Nothing designer as such, no mobile phones, no tablets, no computers. I had a home pc way back in around 1988, it was really unusual.

There were and always will be the poor kids at school but these days there is a lot to go without. To make you feel different and then the pressure to be attractive is fed by social media. My nieces are forever changing their profile pic on fb and putting up tons of pouty pics on instagram.

It's just added yet another layer of pressure.

The outside world left you alone when you shut the front door when I was a kid, it's harder to get away from the outside world now.

School league tables, extra exams, higher grades needed for uni, tuition fees, being told you'll not get a job or be able to buy a house, no matter what you do by the media.

There are loads of shit pressures alongside tech and kids are more open about them now.