this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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Young people are becoming less happy than older generations as they suffer “the equivalent of a midlife crisis”, global research has revealed as America’s top doctor warned that “young people are really struggling”.

Dr Vivek Murthy, the US surgeon general, said allowing children to use social media was like giving them medicine that is not proven to be safe. He said the failure of governments to better regulate social media in recent years was “insane”.

Murthy spoke to the Guardian as new data revealed that young people across North America were now less happy than their elders, with the same “historic” shift expected to follow in western Europe.

Declining wellbeing among under-30s has driven the US out of the top 20 list of happiest nations, the 2024 World Happiness Report revealed.

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[–] ptz@dubvee.org 157 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (5 children)

Dr Vivek Murthy, the US surgeon general, said allowing children to use social media was like giving them medicine that is not proven to be safe. He said the failure of governments to better regulate social media in recent years was “insane”.

Everything's unaffordable, the world is on fire and we're doing somewhere between "too little, too late" and "nothing", you can barely own anything anymore (only subscribe/rent), owning a house is a pipe dream for many, on top of all that, the Nazis are back, and more.

But yeah, let's blame social media for the kids being unhappy. If they don't know about all this bad stuff, they won't be unhappy about it. Genius!

Have they finally moved on from blaming video games for everything?

[–] Empricorn@feddit.nl 61 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Video games: one of the few things I can afford that bring me joy.

[–] Shirasho@lemmings.world 42 points 8 months ago (2 children)

The irony being the video game industry is currently one of the most unstable and corrupt industries right now. Video game CEOs are raking in money while the actual creatives are being fired left and right. There is serious brain drain and a mental health crisis is occurring.

[–] Neato@ttrpg.network 30 points 8 months ago

Thankfully the video game industry is huge and never been more varied. You can mostly ignore major publishers and still have a great time exploring indie and AA games. It still really sucks for the majority of the game devs but at least for players they have a lot of options if they can be steered away from the gambling of things like mobile games, FIFA and MTX-ridden AAA games.

[–] rockSlayer@lemmy.world 13 points 8 months ago

On the other hand though, the industry is rapidly unionizing to stop the problems you're talking about

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Vidya games? Banned! For the children, naturally.

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 25 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Social media is what's making us aware of all those things concurrently. Continuously.

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 19 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It is (that, and 24/7 news). I'm not qualified to debate the health effects of social media on the adolescent (or adult) mind, but I still find it disingenuous and tone deaf to blame it instead of the problems it's merely highlighting.

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 3 points 8 months ago

Maybe in the younger people, pre-teens, teens, it has a bigger impact. They might not pay as much attention to politics and the news.

However, on social media you only see the positive parts of people's lives. You don't see the negative parts so often. People's lives look so much better than ours. Plus there's all the bullying aspect.

When you're a teen with self esteem issues, these things can really get to you.

Then again, like you said, I'm no expert.

[–] Neato@ttrpg.network 18 points 8 months ago (1 children)

People see the harms of social media but forget how connected it can help make people. There's a LOT of people who would be stuck, isolated from any peers without social media. It's why shitheels like DeSantis wanting to block kids from accessing social media is not a welcome change. There's a lot of vulnerable people who would otherwise stay uninformed and sheltered without it. It certainly has it's downsides but people could say the same thing about the internet itself and no one's calling to ban that.

[–] big_slap@lemmy.world 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

People see the harms of social media but forget how connected it can help make people.

the best thing the internet did was connect all the "smart" people to each other. the worst thing the internet did was connect all the "dumb" people to each other.

[–] 5oap10116@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

All the idiots of the world have found each other and unionized

[–] otp@sh.itjust.works 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Unionized is not the right word. They found leaders. Then they voted against unions.

[–] 5oap10116@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

Definitely not equating what these people are doing to real unions, but they do form semi organized groups with leaders and push for whatever agenda (dumb as it may be) they have which is essentially unionizing by definition.

[–] erlend_sh@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

Big Social Media shares many characteristics of a drug, with similar anti-social consequences by overuse. But as with drugs, social media is just a symptom of the underlying problem.