What is wrong with our kids these days?

[2021ismyyear]

So I live near a town that has a recent alarming number of teenage suicides. Mostly girls but there have been boys too. There seems to be a huge mental health crisis brewing. More and more are needing professional help. Schools are at a loss what to do. Parents are angry.

Parents are blaming social media, the schools, the teachers, the government.

One parent said that they had to remove their kids phone as there is peer pressure on social media with regards to suicide, becoming lgbtq, and going on anti depressants.

It’s just exploded here. Young people have lost it! I remember a few in my year with mental health issues (eating disorders, those that were abused etc) but it seems every teen has an issue at the moment. So severe in cases, that they are killing themselves.

What is this all about? How can we stop this?

I do think a LOT of kids are too protected. We moved to Oz when our kids were 7 and 11 and part of our issue was that the place where we lived...and the place after that...kids were not allowed out to play and mix at ALL!

We lived in beautiful, safe villages but all the kids had to stay indoors and play there...or be driven to miserable soft play areas.

As soon as we moved, our kids could play outside with others...ride their bikes and have a bit of a life.

Some kids we knew couldn't catch a bus at the age of 15.

@PiersPlowman

Several things are at play.

PARENTAL

i) Lack of boundary setting leading to;
ii) Lack of consequences for disrespecting other people's boundaries.
ii) Laissez faire parenting / latchkey kids
iii) Lack of parental interest in their children's education.
iv) Broken and or blended families. Unplanned pregancies in unstable relationships.

SOCIETAL

i) Children are no longer allowed to fail.
ii) This deprives them of the motivation they need to remedy themselves.
iii) Or alternatively, if they do screw up, their mistake will haunt them for the rest of their lives (see social media).

TECHNOLOGICAL

i) Social media and online relationships lead to detachment and loss of social skills in the real world.
ii) Peer pressure through social meda. Kids crave acceptance and validation, leading to self esteem being defined by the number of likes one has.
iii) All the phonies on Instagram merching and selling an idealized but fake lifestyle.

INTRINSIC

i) Anti-education rhetoric in working class communities.
ii) A class system very much alive and kicking
iii) Demotivated youth and lack of ambition

IDEOLOGICAL

i) Negative public image of Britain and British people by the media more akin to the propaganda of a vanquished nation rather than that of a thriving democracy.
ii) Tolerance of everything and anything no matter how absurd and counter intuitive or even criminal
iii) Blurred societal boundaries.

Excellent post and I agree with much of what you say but dislike the judgment implied in the phrase “latchkey” kids: used to be used in the 70s and 80s to describe children who came home from school to an empty house because, horror of horrors, Mum was out at work. I think what you probably mean is that some children grow up with a minimum of adult supervision/interest in their lives.

The constant bombardment of media.
social media
the smart phone that has became an extension of the person.

Several families I know have banned it form their homes. It was chaos for about a month or so which just shows how disturbingly addicted they were to it.

From what they'd told me, it's been close to a miracle for their DC. Better sleep habits and mood. Better grades.

I should clarify...in the UK the kids could not play out. But they could in OZ.

I have teens and have overheard (online) conversations where they are chatting with friends about LGBTQ stuff. The intake of breath when someone declared themselves as straight made me sit up and take notice! There is a definite pressure to have some kind of 'label' or even diagnosis; whether that's because of gender or mental health issues or both.
I think someone earlier hit the nail on the head when they said kids are trying to fit in and stand out at the same time. Perhaps this has always been the case but any little mistake or perceived misstep is magnified and broadcast to the world for anyone and everyone to ridicule. Yet everywhere the message is 'Be Kind'.
I think the reasons for self-harm and attempting suicide are multi-faceted (I have a teen who has unfortunately done both) although I'm sure the internet has a huge part to play. The complete lack of actual help when it's needed is another conversation entirely. I think we are already well on our way to a huge crisis.

And I think Gen Z are extremely resilient and have had better parenting overall than any other generation. They are bloody brilliant. Stop having a go at them.

@AllEffingHopeless Conservatives decided it make financial sense to import doctors and dentists rather than train them

That happened long before the last decade. We were "importing" doctors as far ago as the 60s. At some point (around 2000 ish) the BMA themselves were against increasing training place numbers. I'd say the number of training places for medical professionals has been far too low for at least the last 50 years.

@NEVERQUIT3331

Not to mention everything nowadays you need a identity and you have everyone jumping on the bandwagon. For example, pronouns. If someone identifies as something else (minority of the wider population) that is fine but why do others feel the need to jump on the bandwagon and write their pronouns? I mean it just is unnecessary.

I think this is pertinent. It’s hard to understand if you’ve lived in a circle that has very much taken the stance ‘I am not defined by my ‘ and suddenly people seem to be clamouring to make sure that’s absolutely what defines them. That’s not to ignore those things or not celebrate them but they’ve never been an aspiration to define ourselves by in my peer group.

but it seems every teen has an issue at the moment

Why wouldn’t they though? Every adult has poor mental health at various points throughout their lives, a great many of the adults of the world are suffering from poor metal health now as a result of the covid pandemic. Why wouldn’t teens, and children, have the same issues?

When I was growing up in the 80s, if you had a bad day (say you’d done something- like fart in class/ tampon leaked) you came home, had a cry, had a biscuit and went outside to play or watch tv on one of the 2 channels available. The next day everyone had forgotten about it. Today you’ll come home it will be all over social media, the whole school will know so you’ll bury yourself in fb/insta seeing lots of people’s pictures about their perfect days.....and feel worse, or watch TV on endless channels and then you’ll get a load of messages about your incident and it will go on and on and on, and as SM is designed to be addictive it takes a strong person to set the phone down.

@Wearywithteens

“Young people today have experiences that most of us never had to endure... they are acutely aware of the climate crisis, they have been witness to countless terror attacks (there's no shielding them when it's blasted on huge screens everywhere) and they are living through the greatest health crisis in a century. I think they are entitled to feel unnerved.”

Statistically speaking, hardly any young people have any direct negative life experience of any of those things...

Yes, sorry, not buying that. The climate crisis is terrible, but not something British teenagers are suffering from every day. Terror attacks have been worse in other times, there was even a cold war and real world wars before. This is actually quite a safe time in terms of attacks and wars. The health crisis, yes, that is unnverving, but young people are the group least affected either by the illness or the isolation that restrictions have led to.

I certainly had mild depression when I was a teenager and dealt with it by eating my bodyweight in chocolate and never ever talking to anyone about how I felt
I agree with that. I would have been labeled as depressed when I was 14/15. A number of my friends' parents did feel sorry for me. No access to mental health support, no diagnosis, no help from school, but looking back, it wasn't bad. I would have loved it at the time, but ultimately I learnt to cope, learnt to identify trigger points, learnt to pick myself up myself and move forward and it's doing so that I became more resilient and self-assured.

In depth support is great as a short term measures but can lead to dependence and lack of confidence long term. Somewhere in the middle is probably best but we've gone the other extreme instead.

@khakiandcoral

I am no expert, but a global pandemic and a year pretty much in lockdown might have something to do with it.

Completely agree. What did they think would happen when they closed all the clubs and expected parents to supervise teens while WFH? The spike in eating disorders, tics, decline in mental health etc should have given education professionals a clue that it was having a terrible impact, but they chose to claim children were resilient and shut schools down again. Between that and the continuing isolations and unpredictable future it's no wonder many teens aren't coping. Many went in to lockdown at 12 and are now young teens, others will have gone through puberty with no support, others will have seen their parents struggle and live in a pressure cooker environment. The list goes on. We have shown children and young people they don't matter and now we're surprised they're kicking off? It was always obvious that shutting schools for months on end would have long term consequences. Even if your child are out ok the toxic environment we have created will damage society in ways we can't predict and increasing poverty will ruin far more lives than Covid ever could.

And being anxious is NORMAL. Every other person I meet has ‘anxiety’. Anxiety is part of living and we need to stop medicalising it. Sure there are some people who have crippling anxiety but being anxious about a drs visit, your children, paying bills, elderly parents is NORMAL.

@Gwenhwyfar

"This will be very controversial, but I wonder if parental conflict and the determination to share contact is partly responsible. Residency seem to be more about things being fair for the parents than in the best interest of the child. It must be very unsettling to live between two homes."

50-50 residency is the default in Belgium. If your theory were true, there would be more mental health problems in Belgium and any other countries that do a lot of shared custody.

Well that is interesting, a quick Google suggests Belgium does have a high teen suicide rate, one of the highest in Europe and higher than UK. I'm not for a minute claiming a direct link, but it certianly doesn't disprove anything.

www.oecd.org/els/family/CO_4_4_Teenage-Suicide.pdf

Stop having a go at them

Having a go? These are our children. I think the desire is to improve the landscape so they can a live which is not dogged by diseases of despair and wondering how to achieve that.

Can live a life

@Wearywithteens ... I agree.

I still have v young children, 6&10, but they are overindulged, and I have NO experience to use for child-centric parenting. When my Mother was young it was children should be seen and not heard. When I was young I was given a smacked bum and if I didn't eat my dinner I'd be given it again the next day. I'm NOT saying that's right, I consciously wanted to approach parenting differently, and naively assumed that if I was kind as a Mother, I wouldn't need to be harsh and shout. My 10 year old threatened to tell the police when I shouted at him and he has rights, they expect to be considered in every decision, consulted on what we ought to do for the day, consulted what lead the dog can have. I've failed as a Mother, they walk all over me, I do everything for then and they are incredibly upset if they don't get what they want. I'm so scared of messing them up that my weak anxiety did it for me. What does this teach them, how Will they cope with inevitable problems and issues...they won't.

@Mousetown

Peer pressure to become LGBTQ?

Yes. Where have you been?!

@Roominmyhouse

Social media clearly has a huge part to play. But I also think lack of resilience and labelling everything is a problem. Normal everyday nerves on things like exams, interviews etc are now being labelled as anxiety and seen as a huge problem rather than normal human emotions that you can deal with. I think we need to try and teach children that normal emotions involve ups and downs but that doesn’t mean you necessarily have a mental health issue. Sometimes it seems like saying you have a mental health issue is an easy way to get out of dealing with things. And that’s not good for anyone, especially those who do have serious mental health problems and can’t get the support they need.

This

In depth support is great as a short term measures but can lead to dependence and lack of confidence long term. Somewhere in the middle is probably best but we've gone the other extreme instead

I completely disagree. Kindness and support build resilience, not leaving kids to sort it out themselves. If kids do sort it out themselves it's because they have had kindness, love and stability in the past. We have not "GONE THE OTHER WAY" at all, far from it. For many there is no help at all, for some there is some help but not enough. In most areas there is a massive waiting list for help and even when they get help it isn't sufficient, or they only get help in an emergency. MH services are nowhere near enough sufficient and they are certainly not "going too far" in their assistance. They aren't even papering over the cracks.

Auto - yes, interesting...
One of my most distressed friends at school had divorced parents and she did go between both homes a lot, not because of shared residence, but because she was mobile and could do so, and because whenever she fell out with one parent they'd tell her to move in with the other :(
Interestingly, also LGBT, but the pressure went in the other direction then.

Whilst it's not strictly on topic, I always like recommending the "Infinite Monkey Cage" podcast to people! They did an episode on teenagers which talks about why they behave in certain ways due to the changes in their brains. It's definitely worth a listen (as are all the other episodes!).

It's not a dry, science lecture, it's a panel based discussion with a couple of scientific experts from the relevant field and a comedian or two and hosted by comedian Robin Ince and everybody's favourite physicist Prof Brian Cox.

This is the link to the "Teenage Brain" episode: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b09pl662

This is the summary:

"The Teenage Brain

Brian Cox and Robin Ince are joined by impressionist Rory Bremner, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and Professor of Zoology at Manchester University Matthew Cobb to look at the working of the teenage brain, and why teenagers are so, well, teenagery. Stomping off to your bedroom, being embarrassed by your parents, wanting to fit in with your peers and a love of risky behaviour are all well known traits associated with our teenage years, exasperating parents through the ages. But new research into dynamic changes going on in the brain during these key years has revealed that it's not just hormones that are responsible for these behaviours. Could a better understanding of what is going on during these formative years not only help teenagers themselves, but inform our education system and even help prevent many of the mental health problems that often begin during adolescence?"

Parents aren’t teaching their children any resilience.

They’re doing absolutely everything for them so they turn out as snowflakes and are unable to deal with the real world.

Absolute blithering nonsense.