April 19, 2019
Slacker Stress
Timothy Birdnow
In our era of unprecedented peace and plenty, in a world of undreamed-of wealth and pleasure, in a time when people work less, own more, and don't have to worry so much about disease or hard-scrabble living, college students are suffering an anxiety epidemic.
The snowflake effect is in full force.
According to the article:
The article continues:
While Scheffler said he cannot firmly establish the causes for the rise in anxiety, he found strong correlations between anxiety disorder and financial instability, the amount of leisure time spent on digital devices and the level of education attained by a young adult's mother.
"The correlations and the data are pretty powerful," he said.
Specifically, the findings show that:
* Young adults who come from families that have trouble paying bills are 2.7 times more likely to have anxiety than students who come from families that have no difficulty paying bills.
* Young adults who spend more than 20 hours of leisure time per week on digital devices were 53 percent more likely to have anxiety than young adults who spend fewer than 5 hours a week on digital devices.
* Young adults with mothers who had at least an undergraduate degree had a 45 percent greater chance of having anxiety than young adults whose mothers had less than a college degree. The surveys used in the analysis did not ask about the fathers' level of education.
Scheffler also found that anxiety is associated with other serious problems beyond the overwhelming feelings of worry or nervousness associated with the disorder.
A student with anxiety is 3.2 times more likely to abuse alcohol or drugs, the findings show. Other negative outcomes correlated with anxiety included increased probability of having been sexually assaulted or attempting suicide.
End excerpt.
Of course, broken families play a part in this - something not mentioned but alluded to by the fact that the study looked at the education level of the mothers but completely ignored the fathers. Broken homes cause a lot of stress to children, and that stress is not something easily forgotten.
And it is hardly surprising that kids with educated mothers are more stressed; likely these woman are maleducated social justice warriors or a man-hating feminist who teaches her kids to be self-loathing. That is quite stress-inducing.
The researchers are absolutely correct; young people have their minds going in multiple directions thanks to those electronic gadgets they are attached to, and this is very stress-inducing. Why wouldn't it be, considering that these kids feel compelled to obey the siren-s song of multiple conversations at once and are in immediate contact, facing bad news at all times from all over the world. Oh, and the social media they are so fond of seems so important when in fact it is of zero value and should be of no concern.
And let us not forget the horror of global warming, which is essentially a panic over hot air. Most young people think the world is going to end because of a fraction of a degree temperature rise that may or may not have anything to do with human activity (and likely is a natural variation, as we have witnessed both a warmer and colder period in the last thousand years.)
Years ago I wrote an article about cyber-bullying (which got in a college textbook, btw). I had a conversation with some young people who bemoaned being cyber-bullied "I changed my account and they followed me" was the rejoinder. I asked if they didn't consider simply turning the computer or I-phone off, and was met with incredulity. They just can't fathom being out of the artificial world and in the real one.
If you believe the cyber world is reality you are going to be very very stressed. Few people can avoid being upset when they get flamed, or especially fisked by a group. I know; it has happened to me in the past, and even though I predate this it was still unpleasant. To someone who has grown up with the cyber world as their primary filter, it would be horrendous.
All of this goes back to cultural changes promoted by the Progressives, though. Pushing self-esteem as a primary goal of education, as they did in the eighties, pushing the sexual revolution which brought with it rampant divorce and out-of-wedlock pregnancy, pushing an end to Christianity (which taught that there are eternal truths that far overshadow your personal viewpoint or desire), and the endless severing of personal and national ties while at the same time promoting an endless busybody intervention into your affairs has created a situation that is deconstructing the personalities of the young - and this was in fact intentional. It's how you break down a society to leave a vacuum for the New World Order you are pushing.
Progressivism did that. And it won't be cured as long as we double down on what caused this in the first place.
Academia won't be the answer; they caused so much of this problem.
In our era of unprecedented peace and plenty, in a world of undreamed-of wealth and pleasure, in a time when people work less, own more, and don't have to worry so much about disease or hard-scrabble living, college students are suffering an anxiety epidemic.
The snowflake effect is in full force.
According to the article:
The percentage of all students nationally who reported being diagnosed with or treated for anxiety disorder climbed from 10 percent in 2008 to 20 percent in 2018, according to the findings by a research team led by Richard Scheffler, a professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy and School of Public Health.
Rates of anxiety disorder grew at higher rates for students who identified as transgender, Latinx and black, and they increased the closer all students got to graduation.
What a bunch of hothouse flowers, spoiled children. They are stressed because they are going to have to get a job and provide for themselves! This is what the coddling of college kids has wrought. When you start by telling kids as children that they are special as a birthright, then give them trophies for "having fun and doing their best" and make competition a four letter word you are guaranteeing that you are going to have people psychologically maladapted, unable to cope with the basic trials of life. In short, you create a bunch of crybabies.Rates of anxiety disorder grew at higher rates for students who identified as transgender, Latinx and black, and they increased the closer all students got to graduation.
The article continues:
While Scheffler said he cannot firmly establish the causes for the rise in anxiety, he found strong correlations between anxiety disorder and financial instability, the amount of leisure time spent on digital devices and the level of education attained by a young adult's mother.
"The correlations and the data are pretty powerful," he said.
Specifically, the findings show that:
* Young adults who come from families that have trouble paying bills are 2.7 times more likely to have anxiety than students who come from families that have no difficulty paying bills.
* Young adults who spend more than 20 hours of leisure time per week on digital devices were 53 percent more likely to have anxiety than young adults who spend fewer than 5 hours a week on digital devices.
* Young adults with mothers who had at least an undergraduate degree had a 45 percent greater chance of having anxiety than young adults whose mothers had less than a college degree. The surveys used in the analysis did not ask about the fathers' level of education.
Scheffler also found that anxiety is associated with other serious problems beyond the overwhelming feelings of worry or nervousness associated with the disorder.
A student with anxiety is 3.2 times more likely to abuse alcohol or drugs, the findings show. Other negative outcomes correlated with anxiety included increased probability of having been sexually assaulted or attempting suicide.
End excerpt.
Of course, broken families play a part in this - something not mentioned but alluded to by the fact that the study looked at the education level of the mothers but completely ignored the fathers. Broken homes cause a lot of stress to children, and that stress is not something easily forgotten.
And it is hardly surprising that kids with educated mothers are more stressed; likely these woman are maleducated social justice warriors or a man-hating feminist who teaches her kids to be self-loathing. That is quite stress-inducing.
The researchers are absolutely correct; young people have their minds going in multiple directions thanks to those electronic gadgets they are attached to, and this is very stress-inducing. Why wouldn't it be, considering that these kids feel compelled to obey the siren-s song of multiple conversations at once and are in immediate contact, facing bad news at all times from all over the world. Oh, and the social media they are so fond of seems so important when in fact it is of zero value and should be of no concern.
And let us not forget the horror of global warming, which is essentially a panic over hot air. Most young people think the world is going to end because of a fraction of a degree temperature rise that may or may not have anything to do with human activity (and likely is a natural variation, as we have witnessed both a warmer and colder period in the last thousand years.)
Years ago I wrote an article about cyber-bullying (which got in a college textbook, btw). I had a conversation with some young people who bemoaned being cyber-bullied "I changed my account and they followed me" was the rejoinder. I asked if they didn't consider simply turning the computer or I-phone off, and was met with incredulity. They just can't fathom being out of the artificial world and in the real one.
If you believe the cyber world is reality you are going to be very very stressed. Few people can avoid being upset when they get flamed, or especially fisked by a group. I know; it has happened to me in the past, and even though I predate this it was still unpleasant. To someone who has grown up with the cyber world as their primary filter, it would be horrendous.
All of this goes back to cultural changes promoted by the Progressives, though. Pushing self-esteem as a primary goal of education, as they did in the eighties, pushing the sexual revolution which brought with it rampant divorce and out-of-wedlock pregnancy, pushing an end to Christianity (which taught that there are eternal truths that far overshadow your personal viewpoint or desire), and the endless severing of personal and national ties while at the same time promoting an endless busybody intervention into your affairs has created a situation that is deconstructing the personalities of the young - and this was in fact intentional. It's how you break down a society to leave a vacuum for the New World Order you are pushing.
Progressivism did that. And it won't be cured as long as we double down on what caused this in the first place.
Academia won't be the answer; they caused so much of this problem.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
11:57 AM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 1019 words, total size 7 kb.
25kb generated in CPU 0.0409, elapsed 0.4597 seconds.
35 queries taking 0.4541 seconds, 157 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
35 queries taking 0.4541 seconds, 157 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
