How We Created A depressed Generation
Between 2011- 2017 the percentage of persons aged 12–17 who had at least one major depressive episode in the past year has risen from 11 percent to 20 percent for girls and from 4 percent to 7 percent for boys. These statistics should be worrying especially with all the opportunities we have in the western world these days.
The same rising trend can be seen for the age group 16–19, 20–21 and 22–25. The trends seems to go in line with the exposure of children with social media. Facebook was founded before 2011, but the children only started to get phones with connection to social media around 2010–2011.
According to dr. Jonathan Haidt the big difference between boys and girls is that boys use phones for games and porn and girls use their phones for bullying and going at each other online. At some degree I think this fact is true. However, the addictive part of social media on phones seems to hit boys as well as girls.
Social media portrays a distorted image of reality. Almost all the photos found on famous people’s accounts are edited. All other photos found from your friends are snapshots of how they look at their best moment. All that children see are portrays of reality which in their eyes is unattainable, without noticing the flaws in all these peoples lives. Everyone suffers, but no one is gonna post a story of himself crying for obvious reasons… Another problem is the fear of missing out, seeing all your friends attending parties, while you are at home in your pajamas' watching Netflix all day.
The recent Netflix documentary the social dilemma portrays an excellent image of what is happening, but more attention is needed in order to fix this!!!
*All data can be found on the National survey on drugs and health
