Yes but I think internet population [1] changed all this.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/209117/us-internet-penet...

Science supports this. There is an observable decline of suicides during wars. https://academic.oup.com/book/24371/chapter-abstract/1872592...

Some of the most common phrases occuring in communication by men have committed suicide are "useless" and "worthless". I think you can go quite a bit further and say that not only is disaster not the reason for the bad mental situation but potentially the opposite, there isn't enough of it.

Mental health issues and suicide rates around the world are persistently high in affluent and safe societies. South Korea ranks fourth highest, Syria 7th lowest. the USA, Germany, Finland, Sweden rank way above countries in the MENA region.

Totally, but this is about what news and media teens are accessing and looking at constantly. In the 2000s, was that really a thing? Even so, reading the paper, watching news on TV, reading website on your desktop or laptop… these don’t follow you into your other activities. And you don’t do that for four hours a day as a teenager. I bet most teens would flip the channel if they sat down and the news was on.

But you can’t just flip the channel like that any more. Now, you’re consuming media feeds which are algorithmically designed to keep them engaged for hours on end, which in turn means feeding them rage-inducing topics.

It doesn’t seem like the negative media itself is the problem, but the fact that phones and social media make it a prevalent part of daily life.