MEMBER BLOGS
WHY ARE KIDS SO DEPRESSED? (John Shadowens)
A reporter friend of mine contacted me a few weeks back to get my impressions on a news article that stated "five times as many high school and college students are dealing with anxiety and other mental health issues as youth of the same age in the Great Depression". Even though I am no psychologist or researcher, I immediately had several thoughts on the topic that I thought I could include here:
Mobility and the Erosion of the Family/Neighborhood - Seventy years ago, families kind of stayed put. If you farmed, you were on a family plot and you would likely parcel that out to your own kids someday. Parents stuck together through hardship. Grandparents, aunts and uncles were around to offer wisdom. Neighborhoods were more open and interactive. Now we have multiple cars and relatively cheap travel options. People chase education and career opportunities all over the country. We put the grandparents in assisted living. Life gets tough, we divorce. And we can live entirely isolated lives behind closed blinds and privacy fences. Isolation becomes an issue for kids. There are fewer positive adults in their lives to talk about problems and model coping skills.
Media and Technology - Easy target I know, but relevant nonetheless. Television news is completely fear-based. We hear daily that radical terrorism, global warming, cancer, tainted food, lack of healthcare and a thousand other threats are going to kill us all. How should we expect a kid to have an optimistic view of the future? We immerse our kids in video games, books, music and movies with dark, supernatural, violent and sadistic themes. We allow "reality" TV to communicate the most shallow messages of casual sex and interpersonal dysfunction into their daily lives as "normal". Any wonder their emotional growth is stunted?
Lack of Role Models/Consistency and Boldness in Parenting - Back in the day we used role models from sports, movies, and yes, even politics. Today, who do we have? Tiger Woods, Mark Foley, John Edwards, Kobe, Charlie Sheen? Even in terms of family relationships there is a serious shift in parent attitudes from the Great Depression to now. In the 30's it was about sufficiency. Everyone sacrificed to make sure the family had what it needed. Families worked as a team. Kids had important roles and responsibilities. There were clear rules and expectations for behavior with meaningful consequences for violating them. Today, sacrifice is a lesser concept. So many parents are still trying to find their own place in the world (the right job, right spouse, etc) that they have nothing concrete to give their kids in terms of moral absolutes and spiritual truths. Often, parents are so distracted and conflicted that they have a hard time even having meaningful conversations with their own kids. They let their own hang-ups and insecurities get in the way of providing direction for their kids. One example we see often is fear of hypocrisy. Parents hesitate to talk straight with their kids about drugs and alcohol, because they used them when they were teens. So, many parents instead just encourage some vague notion of "responsibility" and sort of duck down, cross their fingers and hope for the best.
Pace of Life/Shallowness of Culture - We are preparing kids for jobs that don't yet exist. Every industry is in the throes of "change". We are in a constant adaptive cycle with no periods for rest. Rapid change brings along anxiety and a sense of loss of personal control for even the strongest adult. This has to translate to kids as well. And what are our coping outlets? People are trying to shape complex human thought and emotions into 140 character status updates. We communicate by abbreviated text instead of conversation. We are an opinionated culture where a million blogs lay out one-sided arguments and rants with little balanced discussion (just like this one). It seems every other ad on TV is for a pill to make things better (depression, erectile dysfunction, weight loss). Kids can come to believe that a quality life is only meant to be lived with the aid of pharmaceuticals. Plus, the stakes seem higher on virtually everything. For example, kids used to play sports for fun and exercise. There were distinct seasons for sports and corresponding off-seasons. Now kids are being shaped for hyper-intense competition with year-round physical training, traveling teams, and posturing for scholarships. How's that for pressure? Advertisers have become experts at exploiting teens with disposable income, creating a hype-driven economy for $80 designer jeans, $50 video games, and $15 collectible toys that no one will be playing with in a year. And of course, we are a culture fascinated with beauty. Every checkout stand has magazine headlines telling girls that they need to look great in a bikini. Fitness magazines tell our boys that they all need to have ripped abs. Expectations run high in every arena except the ones that matter (i.e., character, perseverance, integrity, honesty, kindness, generosity, patience).
Add all that together we get a pressurized environment for kids with lots of questions and few answers.