Abstract:
Adolescent internalizing symptoms (e.g. depressive affect) have increased over the past decade in the US, particularly among girls. The reasons for these increases are unclear. We hypothesize that increasing exposure to politicized events has contributed to these trends in adolescent internalizing symptoms, and that effects may be differential by political beliefs and sociodemographic characteristics.
We analyzed nationally-representative data from 2005 to 2018 Monitoring the Future annual cross-sectional samples of 12th-grade students (N ​= ​86,138). We examined self-reported political beliefs, sex, and parental education as predictors of four internalizing symptom scales over time, including depressive affect. From 2005 to 2018, 19.8% of students identified as liberal and 18.1% identified as conservative, with little change over time.
Depressive affect (DA) scores increased for all adolescents after 2010, but increases were most pronounced for female liberal adolescents, and scores were highest overall for female liberal adolescents with low parental education. Findings were consistent across multiple internalizing symptoms outcomes.
Trends in adolescent internalizing symptoms diverged by political beliefs, sex, and parental education over time, with female liberal adolescents experiencing the largest increases in depressive symptoms, especially in the context of demographic risk factors including parental education.
These findings indicate a growing mental health disparity between adolescents who identify with certain political beliefs. It is therefore possible that the ideological lenses through which adolescents view the political climate differentially affect their mental wellbeing.
Well, it’s fixed !
I did a search for “ignored content” and it came up with a link to a page that explained that it was a setting that could be changed. I poked around a little bit and found something that showed that - changed it to view all messages and now I can see your messages.
Done!
I think you are missing the most important part of this study. The fact is that depression has dramatically increased for all groups, regardless of political leanings or education of the parents.
To quote the study:
Our research highlights the growing mental health burden faced by millions of adolescents, independent of political beliefs or demographic characteristics. These results emphasize the need to explore alternative causes for declines in adolescent mental health and that factors such as amount of screen time are insufficient as sole explanatory variables for worsening internalizing symptom trends (Kreski et al., 2020; Orben & Przybylski, 2019). Variation in internalizing symptoms by political belief, sex, and parental education subgroups instead suggests that a heterogenous factor such as screen content (e.g. political and world news) might be an etiologically relevant exposure for adolescents that warrants further investigation.
In other words, the consumption of certain media might be fueling this. Would be interesting to see then further analyze this based on the type of media consumed - as well as what the results would be is measured from 2018 (when the study ended) through 2022.
Further:
Among the most socially privileged group, male adolescents with highly educated parents, conservative ideology may work as a psychological buffer by harmonizing an idealized worldview with the bleak external realities experienced by many (Jost et al., 2008). This group presumably benefits from the American cultural myth of an equalplaying field in which exceptional social positions are thought to be earned through hard-work and talent rather than inherited through codified privilege (Turner, 1960). Among underprivileged groups, such as those without a parental college degree, especially Black female adolescents, conservatism alone was not protective for mental health.
It might not be media at all but could be in what state they are living in. Maybe the study needs to be broken down state by state. That would be very interesting.
These German kids of the late 30’s were in a cultural social moment somewhat parallel to the depressed kids of the OP, but found an alternate cultural structure that gave them meaning and hope. In 1971, while bicycling in Germany, I met one of them who had survived. He was a revelation of joyful endurance.
This glorious mostly unnocticed movie gives a brilliant nuanced view of their must-not-be-forgotten emblematic resistance to nihilistic hatred:
Many of them died in concentration camps, but they did not give in to depression.
I have a suspicion that it isn’t the consumption of certain media but is rather the consumption of excessive media. The main difference between recent generations of teens and previous generations of teens is the access to more forms, and a much larger quantity, of media. While more access has some benefits, perhaps it also causes some harm as well.
Flyerboys, Thanks for the movie reference. I’ll watch it.
Reading about it brought to mind the Comedian Harmonists on whom the film The Harmonists is based.
Its the story of a popular Jewish group of A Capella vocalists performing as the political climate in Germany changed (The Fool wouldn’t let me write the N word. )
In all likelihood there has been no change in the numbers for any of it. Depression has always been a very high stat. Some 7% of people have depression.
Autism is another problem that is now counted in much larger numbers. The child had a vaccines so we know nothing but can blame something.
The difference is in how many people are in contract with therapists. People are being diagnosed for their ailments today. There was a time where suck it up meant not reporting things. Not recording who has problems meant the stats were lower.
The bigger problem with video games is not taking risks in the actual world. We do not know what will happen yet but how the next generations perceive things will be different…as always…but in ways never seen before. That does not mean depression or other diseases.
It does mean business risks etc are different to these kids.
Working remotely still is not really subsiding in the US. On Whatsapp today to London my family in the property business says the London vacancy rate is much lower than the US one. Our younger workers are very empowered. If they have a problem everyone around them hears about it.
In the workplace some of this reporting is just bring a problem to work and then displacing it on other people. It is wrong. It is just why previous generations of young workers were told to suck it up. Blame is in fashion now. Why not just blame the cellphones. After all you looked at one so it must be responsible.
Thanks all for interesting informed discussion. I agree about video game playing in the kids I see here in Mexico, but they are overwhelmingly relatively rich compared to most of the kids around me.
Dr. Willough Jenkins, medical director of emergency and consultation liaison psychiatry at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego…said that the number of kids seeking psychiatric emergency care in her ER has grown from approximately 30 a month in recent years to 30 a day…Jenkins said that children as young as six are coming in, often talking about suicide…
The call for help comes as the number of children and teenagers with mental health problems skyrockets. A February study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, found an “unprecedented level of hopelessness” and suicidal thoughts among the nation’s youth. “The bulk of these children are coming in with depression, anxiety and trauma,” Jenkins said.
But emergency departments are not set up to handle mental health crises. Emergency physicians are highly equipped to handle situations that need immediate attention: gunshot wounds, shattered bones, heart attacks.
Last year a study came out showing that left-leaning adolescents were experiencing a greater increase in depression than the more conservative peers…
But as I looked closer at the data, I saw that the inflection point for liberal adolescent depression wasn’t 2016, but around 2012…
Girls also use social media more than boys do, though boys tend to spend more time on screens because of video games. Twenge pointed out that “The Politics of Depression” found increases not just in depression but also in Loneliness among liberal teenage girls. “Why would they feel lonely because of the state of politics?”…
And regardless, the steep decline in young people’s mental health around 2012 isn’t just an American problem: It also shows up in Britain, Canada and Australia.
Technology, not politics, was what changed in all these countries around 2012.
Hmmm. I would say sociology driven by technology changed, and politics was changing at an accelerating pace in an ugly direction.
Murdoch’s empire of marketing attractive emotional false and imflammatory stories shifted into high gear
Brexit got its wheels rolling, and Brexit was not driven by economics but by nationalist alienation and emotions.
Obama’s election shifted USA racist madness and alienation into high gear.
Marie Le Pen revivified French far right (quasi-fascist) conservatism by moving it into the info-age, and the old left and the old center and the old right started their long collapse
Germany saw the rise of the Pirate Party, a party of alienation and bafflement…
Seat-of-the-pants hunch: liberals actually see what is going on. The “right thinking” embrace an ideology that dictates every thought. They are blind to reality.
