I can only think of two ways to explain this: either it's about smart phones and social media, or just a reflection of the overall terrible mood in the country.
One the side of smart phones, there's this, about sleep:
Between 2012 and 2015, the number of teens failing to get seven hours of sleep per night increased by 22 percent, ultimately meaning that by 2015 a full 57 percent more teens were sleep-deprived than in 1991; presently, 60 to 70 percent of American teens “live with a borderline to severe sleep debt.” After 2012, the proportion of teens who regularly skip breakfast spiked from around a quarter to a third. Between that year and 2015, Twenge writes, “boys’ depression increased by 21% . . . and girls’ increased by 50%,” while between 2007 and 2015, the suicide rate among twelve-to-fourteen-year-olds doubled for boys and tripled for girls.
My experience with teenagers is that they stay up all night when they take their smart phones to bed.
3 comments:
"Did Something Happen in 2012?"
Let's see.. Obama won re-election... but somehow I doubt a lot of teenagers were particularly invested in Mitt Romney winning.
Queen Elizabeth celebrated her "Diamond Jubilee", which depending on your personal views of the British monarchy, might promote some consternation, possibly drive you to drink... but again, not really a big issue with teenagers...
CERN announced the discovery of the Higgs boson, but since very few people on the planet can even begin to understand what implications that actually has on anything, I doubt that troubled teens...
Oh! We all kind of collectively forgot about it, but uh... remember that the world was supposed to end in 2012? Yeah, okay, so the Mayans themselves didn't really seem to find it significant, but we modern idiots sure did latch onto things!
We had the "New Age" crowd who apparently learned nothing from the supposed "Dawning of Aquarius" in 1969 not really manifesting as anything of note... but we also had Christian Millenarians, who have proven they NEVER learn anything from their past predictions not coming true, and who were all just devastated, once again, that the world didn't end...
Hrrm. I guess it's just a mystery, huh?
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Oh, wait... hold on... wasn't there something about a man with a gun going into an elementary school and brutally murdering twenty children, six teachers and staff members, and then himself?
Hrrm... I wonder if maaaybe... the deadliest elementary school shooting in American history, the 2nd deadliest school shooting of any kind in American history, and the 4th deadliest mass shooting event of any kind, anywhere, at any point in history, might have had some sort of negative effect on the mental health of American children?
Ya know, particularly with the breathless, sensationalist, round-the-clock reporting by the news media? And what with all the schools across the country that started scrambling to enact security measures (or at least Security Theater measures) in response to the national panic?
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Maybe it had something to do with kids nationwide having metal detectors installed in the doorways of their school buildings; or having their lockers routinely tossed or outright ttaken away, and having backpacks banned (or required to be made of transparent plastic); or having their belongings routinely searched for weapons, as well as being subjected to routine pat downs and even strip searches in some cases.
Maybe it had something to do with all the grim faced police officers patrolling their classrooms, gymnasiums, cafeterias, parking lots, etc. Or maybe it had something to do with the fear and anxiety that their teachers were unable to hide. Or maybe it had something to do with living for months in an atmosphere of constant, unending paranoia - conditioned at all times to fear the threat of sudden, unpredictable, hidden death which could appear at any moment from anywhere.
Maybe it had something to do with the obscene and vitriolic "Gun Rights" rhetoric that exploded into the popular discourse in the wake of the slaughter. Maybe it had something to do with sitting members of Congress proposing that schools be outfitted with literal armories and teachers be expected to carry guns while teaching.
Maybe it had something to do with the fact that a huge number of Americans preferred the prospect of turning every school in the country into an armed fortress over the prospect of enacting more stringent gun control laws to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous actors.
Maybe it had something to do with all the loud, angry, violent, politicized men lining up to defend their right to own guns with minimal regulations as more important than the literal lives of schoolchildren - and the corporate media tripping over themselves to give them platforms and megaphones.
Maybe young children teenagers, who had previously in their lives not really had to deal with these kinds of things, suddenly felt like everything they knew had been upended. Maybe the felt like their privacy was being invaded, and like their rights were being trampled, and like they were suddenly being viewed with suspicion and treated as dangerous threats by the very adults that were supposed to be reassuring them and keeping them safe.
Maybe they felt scared at the thought that some random stranger might come shoot them to death for no good reason. Maybe they felt even more scared by how all the adults around them were just as scared as they were. Maybe they went from being normal kids, to being traumatized victims, caught in the throws of societal panic.
Maybe they realized for the first time in their entire lives that the people who run our nation and control our lives are actually cowardly, selfish, stupid, and cruel. Maybe they realized that we, as a people, KNOW how to fix the problem of gun violence, using common sense measures that have been PROVEN to work in other countries - and yet we're not going to do those things, and instead are going to just continue to let children get murdered in their classrooms, because that's the more popular choice amongst a large proportion of voters, and losing elections is treated as a bigger deal in our country that dozens of bullet ridden child corpses.
Sandy Hook was a tipping point in this country.
Obviously, we'd had shootings before - perhaps most notably, the Columbine shooting of 1999. But Columbine was different. We had a whole slew of excuses trotted out to explain it away.
The shooters reportedly asked several of their victims if they believed in God before killing them, so of course the religious right worked to spin a narrative woven from Christian martyrdom with a healthy dose of Satanic Panic added in.
The shooters were fans of Marilyn Manson, so of course Rock & Roll was blamed. The shooters played video games, so naturally that sparked a fresh wave of demonizing the Evil New Technology that older generations didn't like or understand. The shooters were also seen as "loners" and "losers" - so some parties fixated on the bullying they were subjected to. And, of course, the fact that both the perpetrators and many of the victims were High Schoolers gave people the ability to rationalize it as a rare case of teen drama and angst blowing up out of all proportion.
But by and large, the one thing America didn't really discuss very much in the wake of the shooting was gun control. The attack prompted a modest wave of gun reform proposals, as every such shooting does, but relatively little came of them. And by and large, the topic of gun control wasn't given much focus or attention in the broader public discourse. We, as a society, didn't really feel the need to change anything. We weren't really worried, yet.
Columbine inspired dozens of copycats attacks, and "pulling a Columbine" became a common phrase for a while akin to "Going Postal", but ultimately there wasn't much long-lasting meaningful change in society in the aftermath.
But Sandy Hook wasn't like that. All of the easy excuses and rationalizations of Columbine didn't apply. All we had was an unstable man who wanted to hurt people, and a score of dead elementary schoolers, and an assault rifle with ten 30-round magazines full of armor-piercing ammunition designed for the sole purpose of warfare, and precious little else to distract us from the problem staring us in the goddamn face.
And so we fought ourselves - we fought an ugly, disgusting fight, which divided us into two bitterly opposed camps, one which said "Let's do a better job controlling guns", and the other of which said "No, let's just transform schools into warzones instead".
And the latter came got their way for a while, until we all collectively forgot about the problem again. And nothing changed.
But the children were watching all of this happen. They saw with their own eyes, and heard with their own ears, how little adults care about what happens to them. We taught them that we value guns more than their lives.
And then you wonder why depression, suicide, etc, shot up among young people?
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