Coddled Kids Become Depressed, Anti-Social College Students | Hacker News Reader

Coddled Kids Become Depressed, Anti-Social College Students

reason.com

44 pointsfortran7729 comments

From my own experience in 3 different dorms in 2 different european countries. The dining hall problem is that a lot of the people there just doesn't seem to know basic community living rules, especially cleaning after themselves.

I have this problem with public transportation.

People vaping on trains, playing loud music over phone speakers.

I don't understand why this would ever bother people

> found that the majority of parents of kids ages 9 to 11 will not let them walk to a friend's house, play at the park with a friend, or trick-or-treat unchaperoned

If this is the cause, was this then cross-checked against data from Europe/Japan, where kids are often more free to walk around?

Probably not. It’s a pretty bad article in general.

As for statistics; in the USA around 19% of people suffer from an anxiety disorder.

In the Netherlands, according to an EU study, around 12% of the population had an anxiety disorder.

I do not know if this difference is statistically significant. The Netherlands does have a LOT of unsupervised play, and has the happiest kids year after year.

So it doesn’t seem that unsupervised play leads to extremely different outcomes population wise regarding anxiety?

Of course experiencing anxiety is completely different compared to how you deal with your anxiety, I can imagine there being a bigger effect there?

Assuming reporting standards and all else equal: 19% vs 12% is a very large difference. Are you implying differently?

I am implying that we do not know. What if anxiety is less likely in the Netherlands, but depression is double that of the us?

Why are the differences between general population and youngsters? What are the trends?

I simply do not have enough information. But if you compare the USA with probably the most unsupervised and happiest children on the planet, it does not seem like a large difference. What if the world average was 16%? Then you could argue that two extremes only cause a relatively minor change

It seems like the phenomena of helicopter parenting and an intense focus on the "nuclear family" are two sides of the same coin.

Helicopter parenting doesn't create resilience and also doesn't allow for an organic development of social behaviors.

On the flip side, focusing on the nuclear family and those focusing on "blood is thicker than water" also create anti-social behavior because you don't develop as deep of connections with others because they're not blood relatives and it's entirely possible you view them as less-than because of that. If your family isn't supportive, it creates a lonely situation where you don't welcome others as openly and your family doesn't support you.

So, really, we should be welcoming the idea that it takes a village and dropping our guard on blood-relation being critical. We need to mix and intermingle more fully and organically and socialize with one another. I wonder if that is more present in European cultures where it's largely absent in the current American culture.

I'm sure that it builds character in a kid to send him out to milk the cows at 5 am. But the zoning regulations are against it in most of the neighborhoods that feed the collegs.

This new book explores the complete change we have made in how we raise our kids in the last 30 years:

    The Anxious Generation: https://www.anxiousgeneration.com

It's really been one domino after another: Overprotection, helicoptering, immersive 3D games, 24 hour cartoon channels, internet, smartphones, social media. Our kids are no longer having the social interactions we evolved to need to properly train our brains. He calls it "the great rewiring".

It's a good book - lots of data and research, good analysis and a good plan of action (starting with getting phones out of schools).

Of course all of these are subject to reproducibility problems and the other associated near-humanities science, but everything you described comes down to one phenomenon:

increasing levels of data flooding and saturation/thresholds

Radio -> TV -> PC/Gaming -> Early Internet -> Mobiles -> Social Media -> VR Headset (inprogress) -> AI-gen content (also in progress) -> Neuralink (cutting edge)

At some point it leads to paranoia and regression. Good intentions are beaten down with advertising and hostile UI patterns.

I have only read an interview by the author and while I tend to agree with his analysis, I’m not so enthusiastic about his close ties with the likes of Google, and one of the solutions he offers, which has the undesirable side effect of ending anonymity on the web. Making schools phone-free seems like a great idea, on the other hand.

Could you elaborate on the proposed solution?

> We ended up selecting five reforms aimed mostly at increasing everyone’s ability to trust the people, algorithms, and content they encounter online:

> 1. Authenticate all users, including bots

> 2. Mark AI-generated audio and visual content

> 3. Require data transparency with users, government officials, and researchers

> 4. Clarify that platforms can sometimes be liable for the choices they make and the content they promote

> 5. Raise the age of “internet adulthood” to 16 and enforce it

From https://www.afterbabel.com/p/ai-will-make-social-media-worse

The “we” includes Eric Schmidt.

> 1. Authenticate all users, including bots

> 5. Raise the age of “internet adulthood” to 16 and enforce it

This is so infeasible and stupid that words fail me.

I don’t know the answer. But I did play unsupervised as a kid, and during college I not once needed a rope.

Something happened about 15 years ago, that began removing competitiveness for children. Everyone gets a ribbon. Standardized tests out the window. Elimination of gifted programs. Almost like a propaganda campaign to teach children that everyone's a winner, no one can be a loser, and everyone must get the same accolades no matter what. I think it's had a very detrimental affect instilling in kids that if they don't get something it's someone else fault.

The system of before was not perfect, and kids were unfairly left out, but the hard turn to "everybody's a winner" has done severe harm. There has to be a better way.

This is a load of nonsense. We had all this stuff growing up, or it didn't end up mattering.

1) "Everyone gets a ribbon".

The year 2000 called, and they want this complaint back. Half the time kids don't even want the trophy; it was an embarrassing consolation prize. The people complaining were the ones doing it (boomers, generally)

2) "Standardized tests out the window."

Really looked to people like this didn't matter and there were ways to buy your way to victory. However, I see some value in some standardized tests.

3) "Elimination of gifted programs"

We did this because they enhanced privilege and also didn't really seem to mater that much.

4) "Almost like a propaganda campaign to teach children that everyone's a winner, no one can be a loser, and everyone must get the same accolades no matter what"

No, who wins and loses isn't actually fair and it's used to belittle people and prop up others for essentially no good reason. Some people do really poorly with this kind of negativity and people noticed their kids were miserable (or dead)

4) "The system of before was not perfect, and kids were unfairly left out, but the hard turn to "everybody's a winner" has done severe harm."

I really have never encountered the "everybody's a winner" mentality. Administrators stressed taking pride in effort, but never treating a loser like a winner. Just don't feel too bad if you tried hard, and do feel a little bad about slacking your way to a win.

It seems like people just lose their minds at the idea of someone saying something nice to the kid that "doesn't deserve a trophy".

When all you have is a hammer, everything seems like a nail. The author is advocate for free play, which is something good. But unfortunately, then every single problem and several non-problems are suddenly lack of free play. By non problems I mean whatever student government does, people not hanging around dining hall or people wanting to call via teams rather then coming in personally.

Like, common, there is not even any indication students are "unprepared for the even eating in the dining hall". Not even a supporting anecdote. All the author has is students spending less time there - whether they eat elsewhere or eat faster.

When kids grow up with parents hovering over them all the time, they miss out on those classic childhood adventures — like riding bikes with friends or exploring the neighborhood till the streetlights come on. When I was a kid, if my bike chain fell off or I needed help with homework, I had to figure it out on my own or ask a friend for help. Now, most kids I know speed-dial Mom or Dad for instant rescue, so no wonder they will be not ready for real life as adults.

Unclear how to recreate that for the next generation. Taking away cell phones isn’t likely. More camping trips? Explicit trust extended to go dark?

Fundamentally, why wouldn't cell phones ENABLE more wandering? You can call help a lot more easily with them. That's the crazy thing. They have built-in tracking as well.

Of course we now know that pervasive access vector has been enshittified by Google/Apple and the associated social media mafias to assault children's minds with the unrestrained/unregulated full arsenal of the advertising psychological manipulation playbook.

Parents are simply regressing/withdrawing from the sheer assault of unyeilding economic stress/disruption, negative news floods, information intrusion, dual incomes, etc. That passes on to the kids.

Just let them go explore.

Make sure they can contact you in case of emergencies, make sure they know your address/phone number, and wave goodbye.

(Obviously if you live near poisonous/venomous things then warn them about that, and set some boundaries.)

As a parent we are constantly worried about road safety, I feel like the roads are more dangerous than when I was playing street hockey in the streets back in the 80s. Honestly, I've noticed EV drivers are typically driving over the speed limit.

EV drivers skew young/employed. Retired people drive slow. The young/busy? Speed,

On the other hand, mom and dad on speed dial means camping trip, kayak hike, and a lot more freedom to explore if you are enclined to. I did stuff around 2008-2012 my father couldn't do without an experienced adult in his group at the same age.

Granted, it was mostly kayaking/roaming in Eastern Europe (and he was the same age between 87-91, so yeah, geopolitical stuff did not help)

For a website named “reason.com” this article lacked it. A link to a poll and a WSJ article, and otherwise drivel lamenting the change in habits and attitudes toward play.

There is a very good case to be made against the impacts of social media and an arguably overinvolved parenting style for Gen Z, but this article is some middle aged lament rather than anything substantive.

I haven't seen a single article from reason that feels even remotely worth my time.

This feels like the typical reason article: driving an agenda based off scary words and blusters, that people need to be picking themselves up by their bootstraps & saying this elite liberal world is terrible & wrecking everything, while offering some hastily tossed in barely related links as justification.

This source of submissions, in my view, is actively making us worse. It's awful that we keep having to waste time commenting/re-litigating the worth of these submissions. They're trash, and actively make us dumber.

It's the website for reason magazine, a relatively famous right-libertarian publication. They expect their audience to already believe certain things, which is a pretty good bet for a political magazine with an acknowledged angle.

It's not meant to be persuasive in the way you want it to be, because people reading the article mostly don't need to be persuaded in that way.

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