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Comment by b_tterc_p | Hacker News Reader

You can download the data for the chart. It's actually 2007 if you don't eyeball it. I think we're probably seeing Maslow's hierarchy of needs here. The great recession made loneliness less important to them or less apparent to them. Pretty cool actually. This kind of thing is probably unaccounted for in many similar studies.

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I doubt that the start of the recession impacted teens this much. I think it's more likely the rise/fall of certain social media (yahoo/AIM/FB/idk) than relating to them missing physiological needs, especially given most teens are not fending for themselves.

I imagine this was it. I was starting high school in 2008, and I hadn't felt so connected with my friends than that first year or so that Facebook became popular. Previously, I would go home after school, and typically wouldn't see most of them until the next school day. That fall, everyone I knew signed up for Facebook, and we would all be online, chatting and posting dumb things on each other's walls.

I was graduating high school around then. It definitely did impact teens that much. Net job growth was negative by 300K+ for over a year. More than 800K jobs were lost in November 2008 alone. Lots of stress at home, and you're more than old enough to notice. So you start reading the news, where you find lots of people were speculating about if not a great depression at least a lost generation.

Graduating into GFC was terrifying.

I'm sure some were sheltered from it or blissfully unaware, but many were very aware.

> So you start reading the news

not most teens.

Even with 1 year of economic stress, that's not going to suddenly make kids take a mature emotional perspective and feel less lonely.

This seems very strange to me. The idea that a dramatic macro economic downturn is less likely to to effect personal beliefs than early Facebook? I know most teens aren’t paying for food and rent but if your parents lose their job or their house that feels like it’s going to hit hard.

That’s still a year before any of us really felt the Great Recession. I was in my first year of college back then..

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