Your comment (along with statements in the article) presumes that tech is the root cause of these problems but in my opinion this assumption is faulty.
Concurrent to the rise in loneliness, depression, anxiety etc. we have experienced a rise in geographical mobility, single parent households, and the divorce rate.
Which means that for many, the traditional social networks people relied on for support during hard times--family and lifelong friends--are more distant, geographically and emotionally, than ever before.
People may turn to social media as a poor substitute just as alcoholics confronted by trauma turn to drinking, but this doesn't mean that booze or tech are the root cause. I think it's absolutely fair to compare social media to say booze or weed as something that's fine in moderation, but can easily turn into an escape/coping mechanism which has its own problems.
Maybe tech can help, maybe not. But what troubles me is that we may be scapegoating tech because the real root causes of our growing mental illness epidemic are too difficult to face.
As far as I know there has been no society in history prior to ours where families and lifelong, geographically proximate friends were not the central part of people's lives. Thus we have no proof in the historical record that such a society can even last more than a few generations.
>the real root causes of our growing mental illness epidemic are too difficult to face
When this form of issue arises, it seems to be a recurring human pattern to attempt all of the possible alternatives before facing the root causes directly.
It sounds like you're proposing that the actual root causes include a move away from families and geographically proximate friends. I'm curious to hear more -- if you have a deeper sense of other root causes, possible solutions, or how we might implement more family and geographically proximate connections, given technology's increasing power to increase geographic, emotional, and economic mobility.
Total numbers of divorces have trended down modestly in recent years, but as a percentage of marriages they are still at historic highs. Prior to the 1970s only a low single digit percentage of marriages ended in divorce. It then rose steadily and is something like 50% now.
The marriage rate has also declined since the 1970s. Fewer marriages and more divorces have compounded to result in far fewer families per population (at least as families have conventionally been defined) than just two generations ago.
No, divorce rates are going down since 1980 or so. Rates, not just absolute numbers.
It peeked sometime after divorces became easier and more socially acceptable. And when women could be trully independent after divorce (her having job makes her less likely to stay when things go wrong.) Another peek was after WWII when quick marriages made before war were failing.
Also, single digit divorce stat of 1960 hides a lot of bad relationships with partners that hate each other, abuse each other, domestic violence and where one partner is alcoholic. The divorce there is an improvement.
At the time, you effectively had to marry else be discriminated against. Single men were seen as neurotic and thus less promoted in work etc.
Maybe I’m missing something, but number of divorces per 1,000 people (the “divorce rate”) does not control for marriage. It includes people who don’t get married, which makes the measure meaningless.
I did some quick searching but did not find any statistics on divorce as a percentage of married per capita over time.
Mostly, attitude toward marriage changed. People care more about selection of partner. They marry later and when they are able to form stable couple - finish college and find jobs. Poor people marry less, but form couples that live together and don't marry.
People are less likely to marry due to social pressure etc.
The statistics for all this are extensive and easily obtained on the Internet, as you say they are similar, at least across developed, Western nations.
For the purposes of mental (and actually physical as well) health: getting married and maintaining a healthy marriage tends to have a strong positive impact on everyone involved (partners plus their kids). Whereas getting divorced tends to have a strong negative impact.
This means that on a population level, all other things being equal, you tend to want to have a lot of healthy, supportive marriages, and kids growing up in those marriages.
1) From graph #2, the marriage rate is the lowest it's ever been in recorded history. Children are increasingly born into single parent households which tend to be less stable and lower income; the effect of having only one supportive parent will persist throughout their lives. Adults are less likely than ever to be partnered up with someone who will be there for them in hard times and "until death do they part."
2) From graph #3, the divorce-to-marriage ratio has been at or near record highs since the late 1960s. The number of divorces per 1,000 population has been highly elevated - over 3.0 - since 1969. What this adds up to is that for the past two generations divorce has been a much more common occurrence, and it is typically a traumatic event. Divorces further reduce the number of close family connections for everyone involved.
A valid point made in one of the responses to my comment is that not all marriages are healthy. It's certainly possible to have a marriage which is a net negative for one or both parties, maybe many of them. But I have rarely seen a rigorous attempt by people who make this point to quantify the net negatives generated by these marriages historically and compare them to the well understood negatives which accompany the current zeitgeist, which would be the intellectually honest thing to do.
To me the statistics couldn't be more clear, fewer people have close families, we are not creating as many new ones, and existing families are ending in divorce. All these things have been going on for two generations and have a greater deleterious impact on mental health than Facebook ever will. They increase isolation, loneliness, depression etc. Social tech is a shitty cope which is very popular in part because these social issues exist, but it doesn't cause them.
> Given that he opposed me first, if direct contradiction is what requires source, he should do it anyway.
Uh, no, if you're claiming facts, they require sources, always. I only pointed it out when it became absurd that you thought people would accept your word on faith, since it was clear someone already didn't accept your word.
Ah yes, well, you didn't actually verify that very well, because most of the links I found with that search cite the same meaningless "per 1000 people" stat, and the remaining links contradict each other. Also, given the top link is a divorce lawyer trying to sell their services, I'm really not sure which one of those you thought was a credible source.
Some of us search on other search engines with other search phrases, so you can't just assume that everyone will find what you found. See, the thing about research, is you have to actually read what you link, or you haven't actually done research.
We're all familiar with how to use Google to find sources, but if you want to actually participate in an intelligent debate, you should actually, you know, use Google to find sources, which you have yet to actually do. And it's not clever to tell me to Google it when you didn't actually read what you Googled.
Concurrent to the rise in loneliness, depression, anxiety etc. we have experienced a rise in geographical mobility, single parent households, and the divorce rate.
Which means that for many, the traditional social networks people relied on for support during hard times--family and lifelong friends--are more distant, geographically and emotionally, than ever before.
People may turn to social media as a poor substitute just as alcoholics confronted by trauma turn to drinking, but this doesn't mean that booze or tech are the root cause. I think it's absolutely fair to compare social media to say booze or weed as something that's fine in moderation, but can easily turn into an escape/coping mechanism which has its own problems.
Maybe tech can help, maybe not. But what troubles me is that we may be scapegoating tech because the real root causes of our growing mental illness epidemic are too difficult to face.
As far as I know there has been no society in history prior to ours where families and lifelong, geographically proximate friends were not the central part of people's lives. Thus we have no proof in the historical record that such a society can even last more than a few generations.