Idk but in France, when I was still a teenager, it was not that uncommon to talk/joke about the fact that we will never be able to retire. In high school, most of my classmate already started to have a political conscience and where thinking about this kind of stuff. Same with the environment.
We already had social media at the time (mostly facebook) and yes, I won't deny that there was already something anxious about feeling pressured to always show yourself/self yourself to other. When I look at Instagram today, I feel like it got even worse.
But, as someone still under their 30's, I think we shouldn't also deny what the original commenter said. In the case of Europe (and in my case France), we have seen the come back of extreme conservatism in politics, the slow decay of our public services, the inability for politician to make important decision for the environment, the idea that we will never retire/have a pension (which is not necessarily true but is definitely a strong belief), the imbalance in wealth creeping higher and higher every year, home ownership becoming harder and harder ...
Whereas the generation of my parent (those from the 60's-70's) had, in general, a more positive/peaceful outlook on the future, I find that my generation and those younger that me tend to be more skeptical, if not negative.
I really think that the current mental health issues are a combination of multiple factors and that social media is just one (but maybe a big one) of those factor.
>Idk but in France, when I was still a teenager, it was not that uncommon to talk/joke about the fact that we will never be able to retire.
The same in Italy. It was very disheartening and certainly contributed to our discontent.
>home ownership becoming harder and harder
This is starting to weigh more and more in our life (mine and my age cohort). The average monthly pay in my region is 1200EUR while the average cost of an house is 250000EUR, so 17 years of salary. On the other hand my father bought two houses with a manual laborer stipend and my mother never worked a day in her life and she had four children. I really don't know when (or better, if) I will be out of my house.
I don't know if it's a useful data point, but my sister made me a Facebook profile when I was 16. I never really gave a crap about it and would read a few posts maybe every other month or so and use the poke feature back and forth with friends because texting cost money. I was active on forums specific to my hobbies and that was honestly the extent of my social media use until the last couple months when I figured out I could just join local groups and hobby groups and continue to bullshit with people about aquarium fish and learn about local events. I had my first severe bout with depression shortly before I turned 16. I think it was actually a few months before I got that Facebook profile. It's been an ongoing struggle with anxiety and depression ever since. Recently, I found a balance of meds, mindfulness, and a fulfilling job and the symptoms are finally what I would consider to be minimal.
I was super active on reddit though from late college until recently. People go back and forth on whether that's social media, but it definitely didn't help me. Short memes about how awful the world is, you could look at 100 an hour and ruminate for 3 more how messed up the world is. Stories of injustice, both real events and creative writing projects, were available by the dozens. Find something you want to be outraged by and join the sub because it feels good to feel irate with other people.
Again, my mental health took a nosedive years before I got on reddit. But having that echo chamber where the world is terrible and we're all getting taken advantage of was definitely not helpful either.
I used to read news every day. I've noticed that I dread every coming day. Quitting the news for two years helped me a lot. I still read the news but not in the volume I used to.
Most of the things are outside my control so I just don't worry about them.
Conway, too, found much to interest him, apart from the engrossing problem he had set himself. During the warm, sunlit days he made full use of the library and music room, and was confirmed in his impression that the lamas were of quite exceptional culture. Their taste in books was catholic, at any rate; Plato in Greek touched Omar in English; Nietzsche partnered Newton; Thomas More was there, and also Hannah More, Thomas Moore, George Moore, and even Old Moore. Altogether Conway estimated the number of volumes at between twenty and thirty thousand; and it was tempting to speculate upon the method of selection and acquisition. He sought also to discover how recently there had been additions, but he did not come across anything later than a cheap reprint of Im Western Nichts Neues. During a subsequent visit, however, Chang told him that there were other books published up to about the middle of 1930 which would doubtless be added to the shelves eventually; they had already arrived at the lamasery. "We keep ourselves fairly up-to-date, you see," he commented.
"There are people who would hardly agree with you," replied Conway with a smile. "Quite a lot of things have happened in the world since last year, you know."
"Nothing of importance, my dear sir, that could not have been foreseen in 1920, or that will not be better understood in 1940."
"You're not interested, then, in the latest developments of the world crisis?"
"I shall be very deeply interested—in due course."
With the Elon Musk news, I finally decided to try reducing my Twitter usage. With the exception of 3 or 4 specific tweets that I viewed because of a discussion on a site like this, I haven't been on Twitter in 10 days. I already feel much less "on edge" than I used to. I was already mostly off Facebook, basically checking once a day for 5 minutes max since a parent group I help lead in real life uses it as a primary form of communicating with the group at large.
Now to get off of Reddit and be more judicious with my usage of this site.
> Idk but in France, when I was still a teenager, it was not that uncommon to talk/joke about the fact that we will never be able to retire.
UK here, 42 years not dead, and my pension plan in my 20s as I started work after University, and most of my 30s too, was to not live long enough to need a pension¹.
I don't think it was anything I thought about at all as a teenager though, nor that teens (or very early 20s) today have it so much in mind. Those I know are far more concerned about being able to afford housing and other essentials² now, pensions are something they can't really plan for until they have some income left after paying for those things.
[1] in pursuit of that plan I invested heavily in alcohol
I know this is not reddit, and I know HN discourages posts that don't contribute to the discussion, but ...
Man did footnote [1] make me laugh. I feel like I have not invested enough in that asset class. It's a bittersweet laughter, for various reasons, but still. Thanks for that.
If you've managed to limit your investment in alcohol, feel grateful. I massively increased my investment starting around 2019. The pandemic was a boom time for my portfolio. I'm now looking to take some profits and diversify into areas that are less harmful to my liver and other vital organs.
Running shoes sounds like a future investment opportunity I'd like to explore.
Coincidentally running/walking/crawling around the countryside is one of my key investments since rearranging my portfolio. I can heartily recommend it.
Unfortunately, the way I've felt during my childhood, French schools don't teach critical thinking. Basically every student comes out of school saying exactly the same thing: more government, more power to the government, politicians, public services... Most schools are run by the government after all, and obviously governments will claim they need more power or society will decay.
So from a young age students are basically taught to give up their power if not their lives to authorities, to politics. It has to be politics, it can't come from the individual. So they don't care about freedom or personal sovereignty (that's evil), they ask for government, rules, laws and taxes like would seniors. And they call that protection, if not "progress".
I don't blame you, it's hard to stand across a tidal wave, especially when young. But how about standing out a bit from the herd once and think outside of the political box?
> I don't blame you, it's hard to stand across a tidal wave, especially when young. But how about standing out a bit from the herd once and think outside of the political box?
That's a lot of assumption about me from one comment. You don't know me, we never met nor discussed, you should refrain from talking to people that you don't know like that.
> Most schools are run by the government after all, and obviously governments will claim they need more power or society will decay.
This is far from true on many level. Also, the only class that talk about politic, society and such is teached in high school, when most teen already started to develop their own critical thinking, and is very short.
> So from a young age students are basically taught to give up their power if not their lives to authorities, to politics. It has to be politics, it can't come from the individual. So they don't care about freedom or personal sovereignty (that's evil), they ask for government, rules, laws and taxes like would seniors. And they call that protection, if not "progress".
What ?
I had a lot of friends who were anarchist and communist in high school and after. Unions and the french communist party were often coming to the high school giving literature to teens who would accept them. So no, a lot where not "asking for government". That and there was often student protest (blocus, when you block your high school).
And even then, what is wrong about asking, and fighting for, the government to improve ? The political class to improve ? What is your solution ? It's not like the government is going to go away.
So what do you want ? Massive privatization ? We saw the result of such policies in many other country. Asking for public services and fighting for them to improve is not "asking the government", it is being involved and being able to think critically. Critical thinking is not about being a libertarian ancap.
You are just acting like a pedantic know-it-all making a lot of assumption about a whole class of people without making any meaningful proposition and insightful criticism.
I can subscribe to the last sentence more than the rest.
French are generally very interested in politics from youngish age, for better or worse (the amount of outright communism supporters there among young anywhere I spoke to is disheartening, especially for somebody like me who went through proper communism and saw first hand how it always fucks up individuals and nations for generations, and consistently fails to deliver on every single promise that looks nice on paper). I attribute this to their naivety, seeing wrong in the world and instinctively going for some direct quick solution, despite proofs that it never worked that way and side effects were nasty.
French and some other southern states have really rich social support, even in decades it will be above-average for western world. So french complaining about it going south need to travel the world a bit and get a reality check.
There is too much information readily available, and humans for some reason tend to focus much more on negative part, as do media. So if already pre-teens are watching gruesome combat footage, hardcore porn, reading about depressing future prospects re climate and environment, demographic curves, terrorism and so on and on... its hard even on grown ups, and not even kids that should be carelessly running outside without a worry in their head. It can be just few in the group/class, but they will easily 'spoil the rest of the basket'.
> French are generally very interested in politics from youngish age, for better or worse (the amount of outright communism supporters there among young anywhere I spoke to is disheartening
I think it is normal and even desirable for young people to be interested in extremist politics. Communism but also anarchy, dictatorships, etc... Modern day "free market" democracies are really a "least bad" system, there are many things wrong with them, things that communism or why not a ruling king can address. In practice, most people discover soon enough that it doesn't work, but to go to that conclusion, you have to at least consider it, and it is better to do that when you are still young and not involved in actual politics.
Also, being able to consider other systems is a sign of a well functioning free country. If any idea other than "democracy is the best" is being suppressed, then it is not really a democracy.
It may be bullshit, but certainly not obvious bullshit. Communism is a real solution to a real problem, thousands of people fought for that. It didn't work out in the end, but if you think it is obvious then you probably didn't think about it enough.
History books? Let's look at the French Revolution, often credited with so many great things. The period following it is called "the terror", you can't get more explicit. Anyone reading just that part would want to bring back monarchy, and that's actually what happened. But anyways, for many young people, me included, history books are either stuff to memorize for the test, or something that reads like The Lord of the Rings, but with slightly less magic.
It takes some experience to actually understand what's behind history books, and considering "obvious bullshit" as you call it is the kind of experience that get people to better appreciate history books. At least the ones that are not an excuse for propaganda.
Communism was obviously bullshit to me based on just a basic knowledge of human nature. It didn't take much life experience to figure that out, and reading a few history books only confirmed what already seemed obvious. Thinking deeply about nonsense is a total waste of time; I had better things to do. The problems were real enough, but Communism has never been a solution to anything. If young people saw it as a solution then I have to assume they were just too trusting and naively believed the lies that ambitious idealogues sold them.
Because it is a fallacy to attribute to nature what is clearly at least significantly product of social relation.
This is one of the very interesting things everybody (no matter their political affiliation) can learn from Marx and the whole group around Adorno and Horkheimer, but you will find this echoed by more conservative sociologists and historians, too.
Zizek also frames this quite nicely in The Perverts Guide to Cinema, where he explains, that ideology is never a pair of glasses [EDIT]you wear[/EDIT] but the very eyes through which you see.
Right now I sadly cannot look through my books to find you less leftist references for the topic.
If you are interested I can link to some less controversial works of sociology once I have access to them again.
(Edited for some typos and the marked addition.)
> French and some other southern states have really rich social support, even in decades it will be above-average for western world. So french complaining about it going south need to travel the world a bit and get a reality check.
No. We are just not naive and we know that all of our social support comes from the WWII aftermath, thanks to communist politics. This implies that we'll probably not have anything more than what we have now and we know it. Most of the french don't want anything more, but we will absolutely fight against every aggression against our social security net because we are really confident that anything we lost is lost basically forever.
They support communism because they see the current leading power, unbridled capitalism, also has its downsides. It's a classic case of figuring out consumer desires from what they say.
Most of them just want some kind of regulation which keeps greed in check and allows them to be confident in a future of relationships, family, home ownership and security. Surely the success of games like Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, Sims and and such would showcase how important this is to individuals.
They support communism, like in Italy, because it is customary for teenagers in affluent blocks to do so or to join extreme right wing parties. Half of my friends have been senior members or founders of minuscule communist parties before finishing high school.
It has nothing to do with their understanding of capitalism, whatever that is supposed to be.
Because Italy is an elderly care state with a hierarchy that is so rigid it might even impress the Japanese. No wonder everyone young leaves or becomes an extremist.
>Because Italy is an elderly care state with a hierarchy that is so rigid it might even impress the Japanese.
This is the best description of my homeland I've ever seen. By reading the Italian news one would think the main enemy of the Italian State are young people that are constantly berated, ridiculed and forced to keep hearing how lazy they are.
If I get stabbed in Italy the newspaper would title “A 34 year old boy has been stabbed in the park”, if a 18 year old get stabbed in the UK the newspaper would title “A 18 year old man has been…”
Wow. Italy's demographics are basically reverse pyramid in just a decade. New babies are still precipitously falling off a cliff. There are actually an astonishing number of 80+ year old women.
Communism is not right wing. Maybe a typo, but historically the young on average prefer left leaning idealogies and become more conservative as they get older.
You have to differentiates between French Socialist and do communists of the east. French Socialism was very successful in the 70s and 80s. The reason France is so successful today is because of the communist regime in the 70s and 80s.
> French Socialism was very successful in the 70s and 80s. The reason France is so successful today is because of the communist regime in the 70s and 80s.
This is wrong as in those two decades there were at most 4 years of socialism ("programme commun de la gauche"):
-----------------------------------------------
Party | President ........................| Tenure
-----------------------------------------------
Right | Charles de Gaulle ..........| 8 January 1959 – 28 April 1969
Right | Georges Pompidou ........| 20 June 1969 – 2 April 1974
Right | Valéry Giscard d'Estaing | 27 May 1974 – 21 May 1981
Left ..| François Mitterrand ........| 21 May 1981 – 17 May 1995
(yet soon the number of people out of work topped 2 million, and in March 1983 they drop most socialists policies when they introduced the "austerity turn" and in 1986 Jacques Chirac (Right) was prime minister up to 1995)
My bad. I meant 80s 90s.
And even before and after that presidents had to interact with a strong socialist parliament. Living in france and germany I see the benefits of that time. I mean we have health care and transit systems and etc….
There is a huge difference between the democratic sovialist movements of the west and the totalarian socialist regime of the east.
Edit: litle other example. In france there is a shitload of free culture sponsored by the state to make it accesible to everyone.
Oh there was no real socialism after 1984 either. The Parti Socialiste always had an unclear/contradictory agenda, pro banks, anti industry, pro unions, anti low pay/service workers.
The insanely huge "code du travail" distinguishes between many kind of workers. Depending on your status or the kind of branch you work, you might work 35h/week, 48h/w or 60h/w. In the two later cases exceeding working hours must be compensated at a minimum of 50%, but it can be at suitable times for the employer.
Daily work duration must not be above 10 hours per day but it is permitted to work 12 hours per day if there is a "convention collective", the employer has only to permit a rest time of 50% of exceeding working hours.
For some categories of workers this daily work duration limit legally does not exist at all. For example employees on a flat rate in days (like "cadres"/low level executives) are not subject to this limit.
Fortunately for the Parti Socialiste, service workers, lorry drivers, housekeepers, nannies, etc do not vote much and it is very difficult for them to integrate a union, as most unions (CGT/CFDT/SUD) only protect workers with a contract (roughly half of workers in France).
Ok thats true … but stil compared to the US there are some social goals. And there are many unions and rights for workers. For sure there is a shitload of bad things, I mean its france ..cmon, but there are some milestones compared to other countries. Specialy the US. Like right to abortion(downvotes incoming) and the right to maternal vacancy… they can even protest without getting fired….
To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher “Socialism works great until you run out of other people’s money”.
And the ironic part is when the people asking to maintain social programs complain too much attention is paid to economic growth - the very source of what pays for those programs.
The truth is as economies stagnate and the demographic shift happens, Western Europe will have no choice but to cut back programs.
You cant maintain the same system when you go from 1 worker and we retired to 1 worker and 2 retired.
It’s amazing how many fans of socialism, such as yourself, don’t see the connection.
The UK would be even less able to afford social programs if the economy had continued on its pre-Thatcher slide down.
And calling the UK third world just shows how laughable the understanding is - try “socialist paradises” like Greece where much of the economy has gone underground because the tax burden is so high in people who can barely make ends meet.
It was a dumb idea to conect the social system to the economie…. But still a social system has a lots of benefits that are apparent if you once lives in the us and europe. What would be your solution for schooling, housing etc… just keep dumb people dying on the street because somehow the market will regulate it??
Edit: because even if the economie goes bad there are humans living there that need a certain baseline of living. In the capitalist world there is only taking more debt , cuttings and hope … if that doesnt work.. what then??
Adorno once said that one cant do right in the wrong world. Right can only be done in a right world.
Its hard to sustain socialism if its bound to capitalism
I've known this since I was a teen in Croatia as well, two decades ago. Doesn't mean I was planning for retirement or depressed by it. There's a huge leap between knowing generational national pension systems are bust and being depressed about retirement as a teenager.
Teen years are about forming a self image - social media fucks that up in so many ways - it's really next level compared to what my generation had growing up. Glad it was just starting when I was a teenager.
My assumption, I'm in my 40s now, has been since before going to University that my state pension, if any, will be a bonus I can share with grand kids. I have to find a way to finance retirement myself, somehow. Which is bleak, even bleaker for all those low paying blue collar "job" that sprung up in the last two decades. And I don't think the gig economy is rock bottom for now.
Is this the root cause forental health issues? I don't think so. I'd rate climate change, uncertainty and media living of controversial topics and FUD as serious reasons as well. All topped by social pressure. And all of that is drven, enabled and aggrevated by the current social media. We will figure it out, as we figured out mass media before. Maybe we just started figuring it out. Until er do so, we will pay a price.
Would ve interesting to hear what the affected people, teenagers, have to say about all that.
This is also the case for Spain. Since I was a teenager (also in my 30s) it was a pretty common theme. Not only pensions, but pretty much everything is a scheme where yougnsters are doomed no matter what.
I remember my history teacher telling us about it and people saying they knew, and they also knew that they couldn't change it unless boomers were on board, which they weren't at the time, and definitely still in the same position.
Lived in Europe for four years and come back to my resident American hellhole and now the gray-haired extremists stacked our highest court so they can ban abortion after they legalized it when they were young and in control of society... slowly but surely turning towards fascism as a last ditch attempt to create the world that they dreamed of in their childhood while talking about "love and peace"... funnily enough just like the old Russians currently throwing a tantrum because their precious dream the USSR died.
Scholz and co. are too self-centered to accept a hit to their economy in exchange for de-clawing the next Hitler. Rutte and co. are too greedy to allow for a deeper union. Macron has a business-friendly "mandate" despite only being elected for not being Le Pen. We are all tired of the largesse of the old and the few.
We already had social media at the time (mostly facebook) and yes, I won't deny that there was already something anxious about feeling pressured to always show yourself/self yourself to other. When I look at Instagram today, I feel like it got even worse.
But, as someone still under their 30's, I think we shouldn't also deny what the original commenter said. In the case of Europe (and in my case France), we have seen the come back of extreme conservatism in politics, the slow decay of our public services, the inability for politician to make important decision for the environment, the idea that we will never retire/have a pension (which is not necessarily true but is definitely a strong belief), the imbalance in wealth creeping higher and higher every year, home ownership becoming harder and harder ... Whereas the generation of my parent (those from the 60's-70's) had, in general, a more positive/peaceful outlook on the future, I find that my generation and those younger that me tend to be more skeptical, if not negative.
I really think that the current mental health issues are a combination of multiple factors and that social media is just one (but maybe a big one) of those factor.