What's happened to young people? Can parents give me insight.

[EveningSpread]

I work in Higher Education, and I'm increasingly worried about young people.

So far this year, I've encountered more students than usual who:

• say they are unable to attend classes due to anxiety
• who are afraid of being in classes
• who won't speak when spoken to by staff or other students
• who say they find getting on a bus and getting to class to overwhelming
• who find the thought of doing their work so stressful that they can't cope
• who don't come to classes due to family parties / their hamster dying / waking up late (to name the reasons I've had just this morning) and expect you to fix what they've missed - in other words, who seem totally immature and unprepared for life (a different problem to the other things above, perhaps)

Obviously we express sympathy, reassure, and explain that they need to access the help that will enable them to function - to enjoy life, succeed on their degree, and get a job afterwards. (So the wellbeing services, and their GP.) Often the reassurance really helps. But equally a lot of these students don't cope at University. I'm sure this problem is exacerbated by the fact that I work in an institution that attracts students from postcodes with multiple indices of deprivation.

Part of me hopes that mental health issues are sometimes exaggerated or even an excuse, as an increasingly large percentage of my students seem essentially afraid to leave the house -- which would be much worse than them just trying it on/being a bit lazy! It's great that we have a language to talk about mental health now, but it's hard to know how/when to tell people that (a) they are responsible for improving their own mental health so they can function in the world, and (b) experiencing some mild discomfort and difficulty, such as being nervous around new people, is normal and crucial to development.

But I'm left wondering: how are parents coping with their young people if these are the miserable lives they're living? If they're not going to classes, are scared to leave the house, and can't function?

So AIBU, or is this problem getting worse? What can parents of roughly 16-20 year olds tell me? Are we still dealing with the legacies of COVID? What's the word on the street among young people about mental health these days?

Yes this is it - you could switch off from the news in that generation and only hear the big things. Now it’s a 24 hour news & media cycle and doom constantly in your face.

Definitely issues that many have mentioned on here.

However, I think the rise of appreciation of mental health has had the negative impact that any slight discomfort is now a mental health problem. People are not "anxious" any more; they have anxiety. Young people must be protected from all life's woes (partly this is a response to Covid that parents think they've already had to go through a lot).

My daughter has just started university so I'm on a lot of social media. There are an awful lot of posts from parents asking for information that their young person should really work out for themselves e.g. where to get the bus, where is the nearest supermarket, can you use fabric conditioner in the washing machine. I don't think parents are doing their children any favours by babying them.

Also a scary number of posts from parents of students who've been at university often for less than a week saying that their child has decided to leave. Measured responses that perhaps they could give it a bit longer and suggesting practical forms of support are shouted down as "mental health is most important".

There is supporting and there is pandering.

I think it’s a perfect storm of over protective helicopter parenting, under protecting children online and then having access to social media from stupidly young ages (read or listen to Jonathan Haidt’s stuff - it really is eye-opening) all exacerbated by lock downs and Covid.

They didn't. We were never invaded although people living in cities felt the effects of the Blitz. Children actually growing up in warzones, if they survive, are traumatised for life and regularly suffer CPTSD for their whole lives regardless of therapy. The effects of highly traumatic events such as wars continue to impact on families for generations.

Agree with this 100%. I actually left HE and went back into the NHS due to the huge pressures from the needs of the students. There was a campaign from the family a young man who had committed suicide at uni (obviously incredibly sad) for staff at the university to take more responsibility for safeguarding young people and effectively taking on the responsibility for them. At that point I packed it it- they are adult learners and I could not take that on along with my own family! Students would email me at 11pm on a Thursday (I didn’t work Fridays) then send a rude email on Monday at 6am saying I hadn’t replied for days…I hadn’t even been in work! And it was never anything urgent.

Im trying to raise my two younger kids with more freedom and resilience. I feel so sad for those parents who’s kids won’t leave the house with anxiety and I am desperate to avoid that for my two.

Also the ubiquity of porn. I know porn has always been about in some form, but it makes it harder for young people to work out how to relate to each other and build healthy relationships when they're surrounded by stuff that's all about disrespect and domination.

How can you belittle the impact of lockdown? Do you remember being a teenager and how we'd worry about little things like what if no one liked us etc. Teenagers are wired for interaction with their peers. Now imagine coping with that through social isolation and social media that distorts views of reality. Loneliness kills people. It's not trivial.

I'm not saying its the only explanation but it shouldn't be ignored.

I’ve got a 19 year old not dissimilar to this but he has autism so is, in some way, excused. He’s also not remotely ready for uni and we wouldn’t dream of packing him off in this state

i also have a 16 year old and I’ve been really shocked at how some of his peers have been affected by lockdowns. School absence rates through the roof, terrible levels of anxiety and depression. We loved lockdown tho. Dh worked at home in a separate space. We did nature walks and baking. We hung out together and treated it as extended “time out”. Neither of us were furloughed so there were no financial issues, there were no fights between dh and myself. I think for a lot of families it was very, very different.

imagine quarantine whilst living in cramped or temporary accommodation with parents on furlough and on 80% of their already inadequate wages. Time outside is “rationed” but you live in a city so going outside is just looking at more grey buildings. Imagine being in quarantine with parents whose marriage is on the rocks, one parent has a drink or drug problem, a parent is physically (or emotionally) abusive, a parent has MH difficulties and relies on you to care for them and you can’t even have school as your escape. There’s no Wi-Fi at home, because it’s too expansive, you can’t even escape online

I guess it’s really not true - what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. The lockdowns really did cripple these young people.

Honestly, seeing the way my kids peers were parented I don’t think this generation were raised with resilience in mind but quarantine has been devastating.

Nail on the head there.

I have a 22 year old son. He worked his arse off at school, got mostly grade As at GCSE, all A* at A level and a First in his Maths degree. Now just started his second year at his graduate actuarial job on a very good "starting" salary close to national average income!

He is stuck in a tiny flat that costs over half his take home wage (rent, utilities, insurance, broadband, etc). He is regularly late for work because the buses are so unreliable, poor timetable, and the traffic is so awful, the buses regularly get stuck in queuing traffic for 30 minutes or so. It took him six months of looking and having to pay over asking price and a years' rent in advance just to get the flat in the first place.

He can't save anything, but at least isn't getting into debt - he's just breaking even which is stupid when on average income and living in a tiny one bed flat!

He just doesn't see the point in working and trying. Made worse with doing hard actuarial exams twice a year for five years. He's close to giving it up! A decade of working his arse off studying then spending dozens of hours on job applications, then upending his life to move to a city 100 miles away which is the closest place that there were any actuarial jobs, as we're in a run down Northern area so he had to move away for a decent job!

The whole thing is completely different to when OH and I left school 40 years ago, when homes were affordable, there were decent jobs in the regions, you could "live" on relatively low paid jobs, etc., and still there were opportunities for "windfalls" such as buying privatisation shares (utilities etc), endowment mortgage windfalls, etc etc.

Same here. I say lockdown plus no mental health support, backed up by phone /social media addiction. My kid is not like this at the moment but came close. Seeing so many parents /adults working at home doesn't help.
On top of this HE providers have been pushed into provide online recorded lectures for disability support, with the result that anyone who doesn't feel like attending /can't afford the fare doesn't. And nothing in the HE system pushes students with anxiety to attend- they are generally supported to just 'do what you can't.

Lots of things have happened I think. It isn't just covid and lockdown, although that's undoubtedly had an effect. I have children in that age range, and employ young people in their 20s.

• increase in anxiety - all my children have been diagnosed with this. Young people turn to medication and counselling. While the symptoms are real, I can't say whether in every case it is actual anxiety or whether the normal feelings of being a young person are now being called anxiety
• increase in diagnosis (and self diagnosis) of ASD/ADHD and other such disorders.
• Social media - increase in use of this and screen time. It's poisonous.
• Increase in snowflake type excuses - the young people I employ are very ready to take a day off .
• There is a definite reluctance to interact with other people. Being scared of phoning someone, or talking to someone in a shop. Talking to new people at freshers. etc. Perhaps this has been impacted by lockdown and the loss of interaction with anyone who wasn't in your family.
• increase in pressure. Cost of paying for university, cost of rent, pressure to get a job,

So many things.

Lockdown and the growth of social media/online interaction that accompanied it.

The contract between school and children was broken and it is no longer unquestioned.

Many children have (in their eyes) thrived in the changed environment.

My DC have always struggled at school, due to ND and learning difficulties, but they previously went to school unquestioningly.

They have been shown a "better" way of doing things for them.

Same with my Autistic adult DS, he won't countenance working outside of the home. In the same way, he has been shown a "better" way is possible.

Although I don't agree with my DC that online working and socialising was better, there were definitely some aspects of life and external responsibilities that became better over lockdown, one thing being family time in our own home, rather than rushing everywhere and visiting various people.

I would never choose to work full time outside of tge home again either tbh.

I suspect COVID may be a catalyst but not the cause.

I suspect social media, and its picture prefect air brushing, instant messaging meaning you can socialize without the bother of leaving the house. Instant gratification in the form of google telling you the answers, next day delivery of cheap consumer goods, Deliveroo when you don't want to go the the shops. Continual bombardment of (often unverified) news, usually focusing on the most disturbing and sensational stories is leading to anxiety, erosion of social skills and general lethargy.

If you don't have to put any effort into anything you want to do (see friends, eat good food, go buy your makeup, clothes or music, and the outside world is full of conspiracy, people wanting to do you harm, or influencers with lifestyles so different to yours you can only be a failure in comparison, then putting the effort into doing things you don't want to do and are hard work, going to school learning is going to be much, much harder.

I agree, this is a good list but I would just say that gentle parenting isn't about saying you never have to do anything scary. It's about not yelling and being kind and respectful. Ie I understand x is scary but we still need to do it for y reason. Perhaps people have confused being kind with doing what the kid wants.

Exam pressure is immense.

The trend for school discipline to be really strict with detention for small mistakes or uniform failures.

Cost of living crisis. If you are cold and hungry or can never have a treat life is shit.

Rented accommodation being precarious. Never fully settled. And shit with mould/damp.

Health from COVID...could be parents or grandparents being iller.

Both parents having to work many hours so you have latch key kids.

The world is noisier, (noise causes stress) busier, more polluted, fewer trees and green spaces...

@PuddlesPityParty yes indeed. When the official announcement "....we are at with Germany" was broadcast on the radio whole communities had to huddle around the one radio (or wireless they called it then) in the neighborhood.
A lot of people probably never actually heard the announcement.

My son travels on a bus every day - however on the day our hamster got put to sleep he had a day off college. Our hamster was a part of our family in the same way a dog would be. I didnt compare it to the loss of a person, no idea where you got that notion from

I couldn't agree more! Young people like yourself will be the ones who will actually make it in life. Well done to you and hopefully today's parents will learn something from your experience 👏🏻

Child directed play without adult interference is important for child development/human development.

Here is the thing though. Some times when I hung back and allowed my child to play at the playground without me or play in our backyard without me but still supervising at a distance I copped accusations. Your poor child, you should be playing with her. Yes, I did play with her even though in this snapshot of our lives you don’t see it. I am deliberately allowing her to either play with other children or shock horror, play by herself because it is good for her.

There is too much judgment, interference and a societal pressure to hover over your children and perform perfect parenting. I wonder at the detrimental affects of this societal pressure on parents and on children.

When I was young and parents could send you outside to play unsupervised, I and other kids had to problem solve, work out our disagreements without being told how to. It was incredibly beneficial.

Perhaps we need a societal shift away from expecting parents to constantly control their children, and hover over our children, and practically do everything for them.

Let children be children, let them learn and let them figure some things out for themselves. Even though they don’t get it quite right or perfectly. Instead of trying to fix them. This way they develop resilience, problem solving skills and emotional intelligence.

I think a lot of young people (and older people!) don't understand the difference between feeling anxious and anxiety. Feeling a bit low and depression. Etc etc. So many people think they have mental illness when in reality, it's the range of human experience that they are feeling.

Obviously this doesn't apply to everyone and there are many people who do have the aforementioned conditions. But a lot of the general public can't distinguish between the two and when we're telling young people that their normal emotions of feeling anxious sometimes, feeling down sometimes, are actually mental illnesses, they are going to feel like there's something wrong with them and that they can't cope with life. And it's going to snowball.

I do agree it's much harder for youngsters to find their feet with regards to housing and jobs
Unless they receive an inheritance or something along those lines the majority can't find anything to live in that's affordable and jobs are not what they once were either.
I feel sorry for those who do all the right things with education and training and still hampered by outside forces they can't control. It's definitely a complex situation all round , but this doesn't help matters.

I think it's a multi generational problem.

I'm a millennial, and many of my peers have no awareness of their own emotional intelligence, have never faced up to difficult situations but just "got on with it" or failed and therefore cannot teach children in today's society how to cope with difficulty, probably from being bought up by boomers/gen x who also hid trauma away.

The labelling of ADHD, anxiety, ND is both positive and negative. People use it as a reason why they or their can't do something, instead of using it as something to be aware of to navigate situations accordingly.

My husband was diagnosed with anxiety at 16yrs old and put on anti depressants. He stayed on these for 20years as that was the extent of the medical help he could get. His reaction then to early adulthood was to back away from anything that made him anxious, as he had never been supported and taught that feeling uncomfortable in new situations was ok and can be made better by working through it.

With time and therapy, he has developed the resilience and self awareness to prevent the "reactionary brain" which says "No chance" from taking over and being able to work through things in smaller steps.

I see this echoed so much in Gen Z, life is so fast paced and we're overloaded with information so much. Instead of being taught to look at things objectively and problem solve, their initial reaction can be to just say "nope" because it causes anxiety (rightly) being bombarded from all directions, and then there is no clear way forward taught to them. This is what needs to change I think.

I have four dc 2 are teenagers of 14 and 17.

2020 and 2021 was the absolute cause of my teenagers anxiety and mental health issues. Not only like every other child had to cope with the lockdowns but mine also had to cope with my husbands devastating and very sudden cancer diagnosis and death, my hospital wedding which they could not attend due to lockdown restrictions and seeing him in a hospice 2 hours before he died. My youngest dd at 11 then witnessed domestic abuse between her bio father and his new wife. both were groomed by a person we know who should have known better (he knew we were vulnerable as a family)

Both dds have developed school anxiety, won’t go on public transport alone, both have self harmed, they won’t speak to teachers or councillors. The school are absolutely useless and have a one rule fits all when both have been desperate for help.

Anyone who tells me that my kids should get a back bone can gtf to be honest. We’ve been through hell as a family

The only thing that has helped our family is sport.. dd17 does dance classes and dd14 plays grassroots football and both are passionate about it

What a stupid comment to minimise the VERY real effects on people during Covid lockdowns.

My son went to Uni in Autumn 2020. He was lied to by the Uni who said (on their website, I have a copy of it) that teaching would be a mix of face to face and online. Funny how they changed the website once applications had been confirmed to change the wording to "mostly online". It was basically fraud but they got away with it.

When he started, it was ALL online for the entire first year. Even during the periods when there were no lockdowns. Most of the staff weren't even on Uni premises. Some were giving lectures online from other countries! The library and most other buildings were closed and locked, including college common rooms, the SU building, all campus bars/cafes, etc. Even during periods when lockdowns weren't in force. No excuse at all. All clubs and societies were online only except a limited amount of sporty ones.

His entire 3 years at Uni was ruined because of it, mostly unnecessarily. Other places opened during the non lockdown periods. His Uni basically didn't! Even for his second year, over half his lectures were still online. Also another year of wholly online exams (different format, so very limited past papers to work from!).

For the first two years, the Uni was mostly a ghost town. When we drove around campus, there were just lots of faces in bedroom windows and virtually no one out and about in evenings and weekends.

You simply can't say that such a poor experience of what should be formative years for young people doesn't have a massive detrimental impact!

They didn't.