Jul 2, 2023 04:57 PM
https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/teen-fri...epression/
KEY POINTS: In 1996, U.S. 10th graders went out with friends an average of 2.5 times per week, according to the long-running Monitoring the Future project at the University of Michigan. By 2020, before the pandemic upended life in the U.S., the rate had collapsed to 1.5 times per week.
The striking decrease really kicked into overdrive in 2012, when for the first time the majority of teens owned smartphones and more than 70% used social media daily. As teenage friendship has markedly changed over the last decade, teenage depression has roughly doubled.
EXCERPT: As data from Monitoring the Future shows, the proportion of 12th graders in the U.S. with high depressive symptoms remained fairly consistent between 1989 and 2012, between about 10% and 15%. Since then, that rate has nearly doubled. A CDC report published earlier this year showed that teen girls are experiencing higher rates of mental health problems compared to past years, with the proportion reporting that they have seriously considered suicide up almost 60% from a decade ago.
It’s annoyingly common for adults to fret and complain about “kids these days.” However, this seismic shift in the nature of teen friendship seems to be a different beast entirely, with genuinely nefarious effects compared to the imagined problems posed by rock music, video games, and all the other trends that adults squawked about in recent decades. None of these fundamentally altered how teens socialize. Social media has. And the experiment has already had decidedly negative results... (MORE - missing details)
KEY POINTS: In 1996, U.S. 10th graders went out with friends an average of 2.5 times per week, according to the long-running Monitoring the Future project at the University of Michigan. By 2020, before the pandemic upended life in the U.S., the rate had collapsed to 1.5 times per week.
The striking decrease really kicked into overdrive in 2012, when for the first time the majority of teens owned smartphones and more than 70% used social media daily. As teenage friendship has markedly changed over the last decade, teenage depression has roughly doubled.
EXCERPT: As data from Monitoring the Future shows, the proportion of 12th graders in the U.S. with high depressive symptoms remained fairly consistent between 1989 and 2012, between about 10% and 15%. Since then, that rate has nearly doubled. A CDC report published earlier this year showed that teen girls are experiencing higher rates of mental health problems compared to past years, with the proportion reporting that they have seriously considered suicide up almost 60% from a decade ago.
It’s annoyingly common for adults to fret and complain about “kids these days.” However, this seismic shift in the nature of teen friendship seems to be a different beast entirely, with genuinely nefarious effects compared to the imagined problems posed by rock music, video games, and all the other trends that adults squawked about in recent decades. None of these fundamentally altered how teens socialize. Social media has. And the experiment has already had decidedly negative results... (MORE - missing details)