A compelling case for a cause in the growth in teenage depression: reverse CBT.
> In CBT you learn to recognize when your ruminations and automatic thinking patterns exemplify one or more of about a dozen “cognitive distortions,” such as catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking, fortune telling, or emotional reasoning. Thinking in these ways _causes_ depression
The past decade these three beliefs have grown in prevalence:
1. What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker
2. Always trust your feelings
3. Life is a battle between good people and evil people.
They are all cognitive distortions and many schools today endorse them. Rather than teaching students skills of critical thinking, they encourage the distortions (reverse CBT).
> A compelling case for a cause in the growth in teenage depression: reverse CBT.
No it isn't. The hypothesis might have merit, but the article is hot garbage.
The author straight up brings up a more fitting explanation- that liberal girls adopted social media use and correspondingly reduced their IRL interactions first- and completely disregards it in favor of trying to spin it as liberalism itself somehow harming young women.
He then proceeds to cherry-pick data from older studies, uncritically brand concerns about wealth inequality/climate change/etc as cognitive distortions rather than merely possibly-unhealthy ways of processing ground truth, cherry-pick data points from studies, describe tumblr as the villain in the culture war between 4chan and tumblr, disregard corresponding smaller effects in conservative girls, bring up medical gaslighting that young women often face as an argument(how??), etc.
A vastly more plausible case seems to be that liberal women entered the "culture war" and started becoming polarized much earlier, in addition to the fact that the ideals liberal people identify with - such as reproductive rights, freedom and safety for LGBT and disabled people, security of housing and healthcare - have in fact been under assault for most of that timespan.
The way I see it, early 2010s and social media created a rise in self-awareness of just how discriminated young women are against, possibly shifting the lens through which they evaluate their experiences and eventually dragging everyone into this culture war, but most likely primarily just increasing exposure to harmful technology.
> In CBT you learn to recognize when your ruminations and automatic thinking patterns exemplify one or more of about a dozen “cognitive distortions,” such as catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking, fortune telling, or emotional reasoning. Thinking in these ways _causes_ depression
The past decade these three beliefs have grown in prevalence:
1. What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker
2. Always trust your feelings
3. Life is a battle between good people and evil people.
They are all cognitive distortions and many schools today endorse them. Rather than teaching students skills of critical thinking, they encourage the distortions (reverse CBT).