Social Media icons on phone

Sharing – The Youth Mental Health Crisis Has a Deeper Cause Than Social Media

ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

The kids and phones thing was always an easy excuse, but the real mental health issue is much more complicated:

The most anxious generation in recorded history did not become that way because of their phones. That is the uncomfortable implication of a study published this week in Psychological Bulletin, which tracked perfectionism in college students across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom from 1989 to 2024. Across 307 samples and nearly 83,000 young people, the same pattern kept emerging: each successive cohort worried more about mistakes, doubted themselves more, and felt more acutely scrutinised by the people around them. The acceleration began around the year 2000. Smartphones arrived a decade later.

https://scienceblog.com/the-youth-mental-health-crisis-has-a-deeper-cause-than-social-media/

This study shows that this has been going on long before smartphones and social media were around to take the blame, and might have much more to do with the pressure we put on kids to always be perfect in order to succeed. They’re growing up believing that one mistake will cause them to be looked down upon, passed over for opportunities like getting into the right college, and left behind in the job market.

Imagine having your entire future riding on not making a mistake as a 10-year-old?

Similar Posts

  • Link – Mental Health First Aid for Suicide Prevention

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

    This seems like a good idea. Mental Health First Aid was created for the layperson, and I recommend members of the community to take this training – even those without mental health experience. In fact, the training is especially for those without prior mental health experience. This training is an important step to suicide prevention…

  • Sharing – Why Do We Downplay Our Accomplishments?

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    We all have different reasons for downplaying our accomplishments. Many people don’t take the time to recognize their wins, whether due to imposter syndrome, a well-intentioned but overly focused attempt at humility, a lack of self-worth, or perfectionism. 

    This is a problem. When we can’t see our accomplishments, the only thing left is seeing our failures. We get a warped sense of ourselves when we only see our failures. We carry that warped sense of ourselves into the world and interact with others based on a mindset that sees only failure. That impacts our relationships and work, becoming just another failure point. 

  • Sharing – How to Respond When Mental Health Advice Feels Like Judgment

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Look, I get it, you tried something and it helped you, or you’ve seen it help someone else. Clearly, you are excited about the possibility of helping others, but you’re forgetting something. You’re forgetting that the person you are sharing this advice with, isn’t you.

    When you come walking into a conversation with friends, or especially into online communities with statements like the ones above, the message you are actually sending is “Gee, fixing this is easy, you’re just doing it wrong”.

    Imagine using those actual words towards someone you barely know. You wouldn’t, would you? At least if you’re a decent human being, you wouldn’t. But you are totally willing to take your beliefs, your own experience, and completely railroad another person’s current reality with it, you are doing something awfully similar. In a moment of emotional vulnerability, you have come in, guns blazing, with the suggestion that all of this pain they are in, and all of this struggling they are going through, should have been easy to avoid.

  • Sharing – Create Support Network

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

    These are all possible, they don’t require one person to fix things, which is where I suspect many of us get stuck. We want to support a loved one, or friend, who is struggling and in need of support, but that looks like a lot, probably more than we can handle. Frankly, it is more than you can handle, that’s why we all need the larger network. It only makes sense!

  • This Week’s Links (weekly)

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

    Effects Of Child Sexual Abuse: Depression And Other Mental Health Conditions tags: CA Abuse Can Change A Victim’s True Nature tags: CA The Project 1 in 5 tags: CA Gov. Nikki Haley shares details of past child abuse tags: CA You Don’t Have A Mental Illness! It’s All in Your Head! tags: CA Parents must…

  • |

    Link – How Do You Talk About Mental Illness? This Study Shines Light On What To Say — And What To Avoid

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

    “According to a study from Ohio State University, something as subtle as phrasing can have an effect on someone’s tolerance. Using a questionnaire designed to measure attitudes toward people with mental illness, participants were given one of two versions of the survey: In one version, all references were to “the mentally ill,” and in the…

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

To respond on your own website, enter the URL of your response which should contain a link to this post's permalink URL. Your response will then appear (possibly after moderation) on this page. Want to update or remove your response? Update or delete your post and re-enter your post's URL again. (Find out more about Webmentions.)