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  • Is this like how everyone warned us about an ADHD epidemic and it turned out it was an epidemic of getting extra time on exams? There were lots of explanations from the mental health brigade. These kinds of extra strong effects are like the blue zones situation - there's always something else that creates a formal effect that is nothing like an actual change.
    by arjie
  • Turns out houses are getting smaller for most people,and less interest in gardening and outdoor activities, sitting around and playing on there phones all the time will create boredom. And without having goals in there life to keep them motivated is one of the key things to prevent depression. John kirwin also stated this in his book. Apart from people with chemical inbalance
    by VaderAi
  • We are inundated with more choices and decisions than ever before, causing stress that becomes overwhelming.

    Up until the last generation, you didn’t even worry about what you were going to have for dinner. Your option was whatever was available. You spent the day making that thing. You ate. Now you have to make decisions on every little thing in life because there are options and choices for everything in life. We have not yet evolved quickly enough to handle this many choices and decisions, as lame and unimportant as they may seem.

    by Aboutplants
  • To put it more succinctly: the world is changing too quickly for our biology to adapt.
    by ks2048
  • If privileged people use words like depression (without also accounting for change in diagnosis) to basically say phones should be taken away from their children so they can control their feelings more, it always reminds me of https://heatherburns.tech/2026/07/08/the-kids-with-phones-ar...:

    > the upper classes have always objectified their children into possessions. These are groups who, culturally, do not want their children to have agency over their own lives, nevermind devices, nor do they want their young adults to develop essential skills to live their lives as independent adults. They never have. And they never did themselves, which is why the notion of blanket bans come so easily to them.

    by janpeuker
  • I don't know. I think it's too convenient to blame this solely on devices and internet and such.

    I'm certain that they are a symptom, but I am unconvinced that they are a sole cause for this

    Edit: Obviously not a psychologist, but just from what I observe: People have had way higher expectations from life than ever before in the past, and life has not really been meeting those expectations.

    A lot of people I know simply aren't going to enjoy the same luxury that they grew up expecting, being told they would have, that they were "promised".

    by bluefirebrand
  • Is it because the world is more depressing?

    Inequality, injustice, war, climate change, lack of opportunity, loneliness, destruction of social systems by technology, decay of community values and the promise of a worse not better future. Is it that this generation is less well off than its parents, that housing is no longer affordable, that the world is polluted, that nuclear war has returned as a possibility, that careers once valuable are commoditized by technology? Is that why or is it something else?

    by wewewedxfgdf
  • 60 years ago you might have ended up in a psychiatric hospital without getting effective treatment, mental health issues were stigmatized and the incentive to seek out help was low. People used to just live a miserable life with their issues.

    Nowadays knowledge about mental health issues is widespread in the population, somewhat normalized and leading to people seeking help.

    I consider it realistic that depression did not actually increase, its just more people showing up in the statistics.

    by blueflow

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