How much are teenage alienation and estrangement still things today?

[Raphael]

For much of the mid-to-late 20th century, at least in the Western World, a lot of teenagers were feeling alienated and estranged from their surroundings. Often, they thought they'd rather be in any other place, or even at any other time, than the place and time in which they actually lived. I certainly sometimes felt that way when I was growing up in the 1990s, and many members of the generations shortly before mine clearly did, too.

But that was before the internet, or, in my case, during the early phase of the internet. Back then, if you knew few or no people more or less like yourself in real life, you knew few or no people more or less like yourself, period. If you had no one to talk to about your hobbies and interests in real life, you had no one to talk to about your hobbies and interests, period. If there was nothing to do where you lived in real life, there was nothing to do, period.

Now, you should theoretically be able to meet tons of people like yourself, who share your hobbies and interests, online, and also to spend a lot of time in online places if you don't know what to do in your place in real life. Of course, the internet is often dysfunctional, sometimes extremely so. But I wonder to which extent the frustrations of growing up have changed from being about isolation to being about internet dysfunction.

[azhong]

For much of the mid-to-late 20th century, at least in the Western World, a lot of teenagers were feeling alienated and estranged from their surroundings...

May I ask why? What happened in the big environment at the time? What factors brought that feeling to most of you?

[Raphael]

May I ask why? What happened in the big environment at the time? What factors brought that feeling to most of you?

That's a very good question, and I've got absolutely no good answer for it.

[Linguoboy]

But that was before the internet, or, in my case, during the early phase of the internet. Back then, if you knew few or no people more or less like yourself in real life, you knew few or no people more or less like yourself, period. If you had no one to talk to about your hobbies and interests in real life, you had no one to talk to about your hobbies and interests, period. If there was nothing to do where you lived in real life, there was nothing to do, period.

The mails were a thing then, you know. History is filled with stories of kindred souls who discovered each other through publications or the introductions of mutual friends and kept up a vigorous correspondence even if they may have never actually met in real life.

[Ares Land]

From what I hear -- mostly from parents of teenagers -- things are a lot worse now. Most teens I know are depressed, as in, clinically depressed. If anything, the internet and social media make things worse.

[Travis B.]

I grew up before present-day "social media" as they call it (back then there was Usenet, IRC, forums, and like), and I felt like the vast majority of kids my age in Real Life were not interested in computing as I was, whereas I found people with similar interests in that regard on the Internet. It was only when I came to college when I found other people my age in Real Life who were just as interested in computing as myself. Even now, now that I am out of college, most of the people I find interested in the same sorts of technical topics as myself I know from being online as oppposed to from being in person.

[linguistcat]

I think that while the Internet can help foster connections with people who are like-minded, it makes the mismatch with one's irl social sphere that much more apparent. On top of that, even exchanging letters gives you something physical to interact with; email and messages on social media do not unless you go as far as to print things out.

[MacAnDàil]

I agree with both Ares Land and linguistcat. Relevant is the bok iGen by the psychologist Jean Twenge in which she argus that smartphones are implicated in the rise in depression amng modern teens, and compares that to equivalent age people in previous generations.

[Linguoboy]

On top of that, even exchanging letters gives you something physical to interact with; email and messages on social media do not unless you go as far as to print things out.

I'm curious why this should make a significant difference.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

From what I hear -- mostly from parents of teenagers -- things are a lot worse now. Most teens I know are depressed, as in, clinically depressed. If anything, the internet and social media make things worse.

I can think of quite a number of things in the world (notably the present state of socioeconomic despair a lot of them seem to feel) that are more likely to be the cause of that than the Internet simply existing or being in wide use. It looks more like the start of a trend (at least in the United States) well underway by the time I was a teenager, and that's only continued to worsen in the face of the subprime mortgage crisis, ecological degradation, stagnating wages, various political crises, a pandemic, and the war in Ukraine. I don't find the children of a lost generation themselves being a lost generation too terribly surprising, especially when the factors that made the first group into one are now worse rather than better.

[Ares Land]

From what I hear -- mostly from parents of teenagers -- things are a lot worse now. Most teens I know are depressed, as in, clinically depressed. If anything, the internet and social media make things worse.

I can think of quite a number of things in the world (notably the present state of socioeconomic despair a lot of them seem to feel) that are more likely to be the cause of that than the Internet simply existing or being in wide use. It looks more like the start of a trend (at least in the United States) well underway by the time I was a teenager, and that's only continued to worsen in the face of the subprime mortgage crisis, ecological degradation, stagnating wages, various political crises, a pandemic, and the war in Ukraine. I don't find the children of a lost generation themselves being a lost generation too terribly surprising, especially when the factors that made the first group into one are now worse rather than better.

Oh, I do agree with you on the root causes!

[Travis B.]

To me the Internet, cell phones, and "screen time" are just convenient things to blame rather than actual root causes. Previous generations have had their own things to blame, ranging from TV, music with objectionable lyrics, and if one goes far enough back, even books. Trying to "turn back the clock" in such a fashion won't solve these problems.

[Linguoboy]

I can think of quite a number of things in the world (notably the present state of socioeconomic despair a lot of them seem to feel) that are more likely to be the cause of that than the Internet simply existing or being in wide use. It looks more like the start of a trend (at least in the United States) well underway by the time I was a teenager, and that's only continued to worsen in the face of the subprime mortgage crisis, ecological degradation, stagnating wages, various political crises, a pandemic, and the war in Ukraine. I don't find the children of a lost generation themselves being a lost generation too terribly surprising, especially when the factors that made the first group into one are now worse rather than better.

As someone who grew up in the 70s, I'm calling shenanigans.

To me the Internet, cell phones, and "screen time" are just convenient things to blame rather than actual root causes.

Are you familiar with any of the growing body of evidence that social media has negative effects on users of all ages, but particularly on adolescents?

[Travis B.]

I can think of quite a number of things in the world (notably the present state of socioeconomic despair a lot of them seem to feel) that are more likely to be the cause of that than the Internet simply existing or being in wide use. It looks more like the start of a trend (at least in the United States) well underway by the time I was a teenager, and that's only continued to worsen in the face of the subprime mortgage crisis, ecological degradation, stagnating wages, various political crises, a pandemic, and the war in Ukraine. I don't find the children of a lost generation themselves being a lost generation too terribly surprising, especially when the factors that made the first group into one are now worse rather than better.

As someone who grew up in the 70s, I'm calling shenanigans.

To be completely honest, and I didn't grow up in the 70's, I'd have to agree. Plenty of things were bad back then as well. It is just that if one did not grow up then, one is likely to not realize that.

[Travis B.]

To me the Internet, cell phones, and "screen time" are just convenient things to blame rather than actual root causes.

Are you familiar with any of the growing body of evidence that social media has negative effects on users of all ages, but particularly on adolescents?

There were quite a lot of "but"s in that, from giving it a read over. And remember that all kinds of things were said about the other sorts of things I listed too in the past. Yet somehow people survived TV, gangsta rap, and books.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I can think of quite a number of things in the world (notably the present state of socioeconomic despair a lot of them seem to feel) that are more likely to be the cause of that than the Internet simply existing or being in wide use. It looks more like the start of a trend (at least in the United States) well underway by the time I was a teenager, and that's only continued to worsen in the face of the subprime mortgage crisis, ecological degradation, stagnating wages, various political crises, a pandemic, and the war in Ukraine. I don't find the children of a lost generation themselves being a lost generation too terribly surprising, especially when the factors that made the first group into one are now worse rather than better.

As someone who grew up in the 70s, I'm calling shenanigans.

To be completely honest, and I didn't grow up in the 70's, I'd have to agree. Plenty of things were bad back then as well. It is just that if one did not grow up then, one is likely to not realize that.

"Things used to be bad at [x] time," and "Things being bad now are more likely than new media to be causing widespread social ills" are not mutually exclusive; the former also does not mean the latter. I was born in 1988, grew up during the rather optimistic but still problematic 90's, and then everything fell apart in the early 2000s, bringing about a sudden spike in existential anxiety (this is, at least, my own lived experience, and that of quite a number of people my own age) that never really went away (also note generational wealth and income gaps, and so on).

It is worth conceding people are also simply more aware of things than they used to be, and many cases of what we would now call depression, anxiety disorders, and so on, were often called other, usually more degrading, things (like "laziness"). The Internet can certainly make problems worse, and social media does seem to be harmful to some of the people who use it (though there were worries about Gothic fiction causing social problems, too, and it clearly was not the downfall of society). No, I think it more likely that existential angst, absent parenting, and so on, are the cause of the increase in mental illness, with some new media not necessarily helping, but certainly not being the most important factor.

[zompist]

For much of the mid-to-late 20th century, at least in the Western World, a lot of teenagers were feeling alienated and estranged from their surroundings.

I think we can bring this back to 1918, at least. Veterans returning from the war felt pretty darn alienated and wrote sad books and poems to prove it.

Two big caveats though. One, discussions of alienation usually focus on privileged groups— the classic US case is Catcher in the Rye (1951), about a neurotic suburban white boy. Unprivileged groups naturally feel far more alienated and always have, but this is of less interest to the literate elite.

Two: we don't exactly have good statistics on alienation. Maybe it's a product of modern life, but maybe it just took different forms in premodern life. (Like, all those elite women who refused to get married and joined a nunnery instead. Or, to use an example from Graeber and Wengrow: Native American young people who left home and wandered across the continent before making a new life in a strange tribe.)

But that was before the internet, or, in my case, during the early phase of the internet. Back then, if you knew few or no people more or less like yourself in real life, you knew few or no people more or less like yourself, period.

I don't want to minimize the importance of the Internet in connecting nerds. I didn't know a single person who was interested in conlangs (except for auxlangs) until the Web appeared.

Still, I'm not sure that the Internet actually reduces teenage alienation. One, you still may be out of touch with your family, your school, and your hometown. Two, social media can also increase alienation. When I was a kid, you were beyond the reach of school bullies when you were at home. And three, making friends still takes time, and may not have happened (say) when you're 13 and really need it.

[Raphael]

Thank you, everyone, very interesting discussion!

To some extent, I'm simply wondering about in which ways today's Western teenagers are different from how I and people my age were like when we were teenagers ourselves. And I guess a lot of the main changes are probably connected to the internet in some way.

[Moose-tache]

I am the perfect test subject, because the internet appeared while I was becoming an adult, and it changed my life, mostly for the better. But that revolution is complete, and today's young people aren't happy about the internet any more than they're happy about the invention of the diphtheria vaccine. Instead, the poor sons of bitches and daughters of bitches (man it sounds worse when you do both genders) have to live in the aftermath, and that's clearly doing them no favors.

Suicide rates among teens have remained stable, but other indicators of mental health are worsening. One under-appreciated fact is that teenagers aren't fucking each other any more. I reject any attempt to reframe this as a good thing. Linguoboy already mentioned that social media and always-connected technology is anxiety inducing for young people and is disastrous for their mental health.

Plus, being a teenager is just inherently miserable to begin with. Prior to the modern age, this wasn't an issue because a) being a teenager overlapped with your mid-life crisis, and b) any unhappiness would be drowned out by the general misery of losing a toe to gangrene or being eaten by boars. These days we have time to pay attention to what teenagers feel, and quelle surprise, it ain't pretty.

I think Raphael's question is inspired by the fact that traditional outlets for teenage rebellion like playing unwholesome music or occupying Kent State are less visible, but adults are doing those things less, also. I think if you showed today's wage statistics to a factory worker from the 60s, their next question would be "how does anybody function with the constant rioting and daily fire-bombing of government buildings?" Teenagers aren't lashing out in traditional ways because no one is. The Left has been trying to figure out why that is for decades, to no avail. But teenagers still feel awful, as they should.

[Travis B.]

"Things used to be bad at [x] time," and "Things being bad now are more likely than new media to be causing widespread social ills" are not mutually exclusive; the former also does not mean the latter. I was born in 1988, grew up during the rather optimistic but still problematic 90's, and then everything fell apart in the early 2000s, bringing about a sudden spike in existential anxiety (this is, at least, my own lived experience, and that of quite a number of people my own age) that never really went away (also note generational wealth and income gaps, and so on).

It is worth conceding people are also simply more aware of things than they used to be, and many cases of what we would now call depression, anxiety disorders, and so on, were often called other, usually more degrading, things (like "laziness"). The Internet can certainly make problems worse, and social media does seem to be harmful to some of the people who use it (though there were worries about Gothic fiction causing social problems, too, and it clearly was not the downfall of society). No, I think it more likely that existential angst, absent parenting, and so on, are the cause of the increase in mental illness, with some new media not necessarily helping, but certainly not being the most important factor.

You are ignoring another possibility - things have always been bad, in one way or another, but people have bad memories, so they have rose-tinted views of the past, and they find things such as social media (or TV) (or gangsta rap) (or books) to blame what they perceive as being a bad present on. Sure, some things have been better in the past, but other things have been worse, but people only remember the parts that were better.