The Anxious Generation

Anxiety wasn’t a thing I grew up with.  I heard about it only in the context of someone being worried before giving a talk in church or performing at a piano recital or something like that.  That was dealt with by simply standing up in front of the congregation and doing one’s best.  Much later, while serving as a young men’s advisor in the ward (congregation) where we were living, I encountered anxiety again, this time as it is known in the modern world, a mental condition.  I honestly had no idea how to deal with it, and I think the other leaders and I mostly didn’t.  If the kid didn’t want to do something, that was fine.  It didn’t bother us.  Since that, which is already fifteen years or so in my rear view mirror, anxiety has only become a bigger thing in society.

The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt (ISBN: 978-0-593-65503-0) explores why anxiety and other so-called mental health problems have exploded over the last fifteen years.  The author believes that most of the blame lies with smart phones.  He doesn’t deny that there are good things about smart phones, but he points out that because they allow unfettered access to the Internet and social media in particular, children and teenagers who spend time on the Internet lose out on formative experiences that steel them against anxiety and other mental problems while increasing their likelihood of being negatively affected.  Haidt first argues that children need to be exposed to a certain level of risk while they are young to attune the body’s natural response to risk.  Throughout history, kids have generally done this by playing outside with other kids, usually unsupervised.  A culture of safetyism (eliminating all risks even when the positives of some risk are considered) encourages — in some places, usually more liberal places, forces — parents to keep their kids indoors and only let them out when they or other adults can supervise.  This tends to make kids view the world around them as a large and constant threat.  The perception of a constant threat is just what so-called clinical anxiety is.  Additionally, without being exposed to little risks (the risk of falling off a swing or the risk of being rejected by a peer) that come with interacting with others while outdoors conditions kids to be comfortable only when there is no risk.  The second half of Haidt’s argument is that social media exasperates these feelings in most people.  Social media generally presents only the good side of things, which is something people on it then worry about it.  It is also designed to be addictive (people experience hormone-induced positive sensations when their posts are liked, for example), so it’s a cycle of doom where people endlessly scroll, looking at the supposedly perfect lives of those around them while the post themselves, hoping to feel the dopamine-caused high of the next like or comment.  If those are few and far between, the anticipation of the next like keeps people scrolling, all the while increasing negative feelings toward oneself.  Haidt notes that girls are particularly prone to this type of activity.  Boys are also negatively affected by constant time online.  They are less likely to be anxious about social media, but video games and pornography easily engage the young male mind, pulling them away from reality.  Since it’s relatively easy to exist in a world where you don’t have to engage in real-world situations that may have negative consequences, boys withdraw into these virtual worlds and try to not emerge.  The book ends with some ideas on how to overcome the problems caused by smart phones.  He has ideas for governments and for individuals, led by eliminating smart phone exposure for those under fourteen and limiting it for those over, both in school (complete bans on smart phones at schools are his preferred option) and at home.  He also advocates letting kids get out and play and do other things on their own, like run simple errands, do chores around the house, and other things that are relatively safe, but still have distinct negative consequences for not accomplishing them.

I liked the book.  I may have had a preconceived bias since I find most of what kids do on cell phones to be a waste of time (although, I, like the author, see that there are some good things).  However, I went into my reading not knowing about the reasons behind the market change in kids’ behavior over the last fifteen years or so.  There are lots of things that people can do by opening their eyes and seeing what is going on, and I think the negative trend when it comes to things like resiliency, critical thinking, and mental fortitude in young people is obvious, but a book like provides all kind of solid charts, graphs, and analysis of that.  I always like having the data behind the things I see and believe.  I also thought the prescriptive section of the book was a little stronger than most are.  Usually that is the weakest section in these types of books, but here I thought the author provided some relatively realistic suggestions for both governments and individuals.  I also liked that they were more concrete than those of most authors.  That might be because the data was so straightforward.  If it’s painfully obvious that teens under 16 are hurt by exposure to social media, it’s pretty easy to say parents should do all they can to keep kids off social media.  If all the data says kids do better at school when they have to set their phones aside for the entire school day, it’s not hard to recommend that schools ban cell phone entirely (not just during class).  I thought all the policy and parenting prescriptions were solid.  If you want to understand why the youth of today don’t seem to measure up to what you remember, this is a great read, especially because it provides some realistic suggestions to help not only kids, but also adults improve their quality of life and make them more resilient, forward-thinking people.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and is copyrighted © MMXXI John Pruess.

Verrat verjährt nicht

As a kid, the world was bipolar when it came to international relations.  There was the free and capitalist West, led by the United States, and the Communists, led by the Soviet Union.  One of the great tragedies of that division, from my standpoint, was the fact that there were split countries like North and South Korea and East and West Germany.  The German situation was especially interesting to me because of my German heritage.  I was aware of the plight of the people oppressed by communist systems.  Their lack of opportunity to express themselves, to freely assemble, to worship as they wished, and the lack of economic prosperity seemed very unnecessary to me.  The idea of an ever-present and all-knowing secret police was fear I was happy to be living without.

Verrat verjährt nicht: Lebensgeschichten aus einem einst geteilten Land (usually translated as Betrayal Never Dies: Life Stories from a Once Divided Land) by Christhard Läpple (ISBN: 978-3-492-25467-0) retells the stories of East Germans from a few different standpoints.  The author, after studying many accounts in the archives, chose a few that seemed extra compelling and reached out to people to see if they would be willing to tell their stories.  A few were, and they are recorded in this book.  There is a former Stasi spy; a regular guy who wasn’t part of any resistance movement, but still fought the regime; a woman who wrote fiction and hoped to have her views published in the West; and a brother and sister who ended up on opposite sides of the wall after she fled to the West and he stayed in the East.  Each chapter in the book tells the story of one of these members of East German society from their standpoint.  The spy told of his craft.  He worked in academia and reported on his colleagues and students.  He seemed to not feel much remorse for this.  The man who made several attempts on his own to flee and the authoress whose efforts to see her work published in the West seemed the most sympathetic.  They despised the system that suppressed the basic urges of all mankind to be free.  The story of the brother and sister was another one where the reader hopes for the storybook, happy ending, but it never comes.  The sister hated the East and got out when she could thanks to some human traffickers that it took her a while to extricate herself from once she got to the West.  The brother was a true believer in the East and remained so for quite some time.  The Stasi asked him to spy on her, which he did.  The author did not lay blame on anyone but the Communists running the awful system and just let the subjects tell their stories.  At the very end is a rather extensive timeline of events pertaining to East Germany, from its formation to its fall.

The book, available only in German (and I admit I spent a bit of time in the dictionary to get through it), was a very interesting read.  It had a raw and truthful feel.  Läpple let the subjects of his interviews do the speaking.  Their desperation, indifference, disgust, and yearning were tangible.  It was interesting to read about the pervasiveness of the security apparatus that spied so heavily on its own people.  It was obvious while reading, just as it was to 1980s me, that a system that requires so much overhead just to keep its own people in check is not a system that respects people and has clearly taken away their God-given rights.  I was surprised to learn that people weren’t always summarily shot for making attempts to get to the West.  The bravery and courage required to stand up the evil of communism are always inspiring, and this book provides a clear contrast between those who yearned for freedom and those who actively chose to suppress the freedom and potential of others.  I also found the timeline at the end of the book to be fascinating.  As a non-expert in East German history, there were a lot of events that were new to me.  It was also depressing to read about how few of the high-level Communists and security service officials were brought to any kind of justice in this world.  Most ended up serving either light or no sentences, including some who fled to Russia or South America.  The lack of culpability in high-level government officials seems to be an oft-repeated problem.

   

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and is copyrighted © MMXXI John Pruess.