I feel like it's more likely the dawning realization that the earth may not be suitable for human life in their lifetimes and that the economy and housing market may never support them owning a home or retiring. But yeah surely it's tik tok's fault.
As a middle schooler I was afraid that Al-Queda would carry out a terrorist attack in my hometown or that Saddam would use his WMDs on the US. In high school, my grandparents got laid off and lost the farm during the great recession. And yet I just had the local news that was telling me the bad news of the day.
My point being, it can't be healthy being bombarded with hours and hours of bad news every day doomscrolling as opposed to a 15 minute news broadcast in the evening. Especially for kids who don't have the perspective and experience to know its gonna be OK.
Except everything points to it not getting better. This isn't like a possible terror attack. We've known about climate change and have had 40 years to do something about it and it has been ignored. What evidence do they have to show it will all work out okay?
Edit: okay after re-reading your comment I noticed I got it wrong and then typed the text, but I’ll leave it here just because it took me way too long to type it.
We have science, geology to be exact! There once was a reservoir beneath what‘s today‘s Russia of ~2x the amount of fossil fuel currently existing. That thing got ignited by magma, exploding an area the size of Russia and covering Eurasia in 2 ft of lava and making the CO2 levels extremely high, even rising the temperature to an average of 200 F (IIRC). This resulted in Mega Hurricanes the size of a continent with wind-speeds at the speed of sound, acid rain, etc etc, that lasted about 200 Million years, effectively killing 99.6% of all life on earth. Only after that long time then the Carbon-Silicate was balanced again.
The earth doesn’t care about that, it will recover. But we won’t.
the e earth may not be suitable for human life in their lifetimes
Oh come on, that's a little exaggeration. There is less chance of that now than when we were kids and the USSR was going to blow up the USA and vice versa.
You do know that the threat of nuclear war is still being discussed right?
Yep
https://science.nasa.gov/resource/video-climate-spiral-1880-2022/
https://whyy.org/articles/un-ipcc-climate-change-report-uninhabitable-planet-code-red/
"By 2050, a billion people will face coastal flooding risk from rising seas, the report says. More people will be forced out of their homes from weather disasters, especially flooding, sea level rise and tropical cyclones.
If warming exceeds a few more tenths of a degree, it could lead to some areas becoming uninhabitable, including some small islands, said report co-author Adelle Thomas of the University of Bahamas and Climate Analytics."
I'm certain you can understand the difference between a claim like "the earth will be unsuitable for human life" and "parts of the world will become uninhabitable".
I'm just as concerned about climate change as the next guy, but hyperbole doesn't help our cause.
When one billion people can no longer live where they grew up on the coast, or islands, or tropical areas, do you think they will lay down and die in the ocean or try to migrate to habitable parts of the earth? Do you know what our societies will do with one billion refugees? Will they be peacefully resettled or turned away with violence? When crops start dying from overheating, lack of water, dust bowls, and wildfires, will the people who can't afford to eat lay down and die at their empty dinner tables, or will they take action to find food? Will mass starvation be peaceful or violent?
I think it's quite possible that human society will collapse due to global warming far sooner than the point at which human life is technically impossible. Human life may become untenable prior to the environment being unable to support human life.
Moreover, the important point here is not whether this is factually true, but what the future feels like for the younger generation. If young people feel like society may collapse when every coast and island on earth becomes uninhabitable, and polar ice cap melting reaches the runway tipping point of melting and greenhouse gas emission, and food scarcity becomes much worse, it will cause them anxiety. My point is that this feeling of foreboding about climate change may have a larger impact on mental health for today's youth than social media, contrary to the thesis of this article.
Many of the scientists envisage a “semi-dystopian” future, with famines, conflicts and mass migration, driven by heatwaves, wildfires, floods and storms of an intensity and frequency far beyond those that have already struck.
Numerous experts said they had been left feeling hopeless, infuriated and scared by the failure of governments to act despite the clear scientific evidence provided.
“I think we are headed for major societal disruption within the next five years,” said Gretta Pecl, at the University of Tasmania. “[Authorities] will be overwhelmed by extreme event after extreme event, food production will be disrupted. I could not feel greater despair over the future.”
I'm sure social media is having an effect on our kids. I'm also sure they're more tuned into the state of the world than I was when I was a teenager, and they see just how utterly broken everything is.
I suspect the total mental illness isn't significantly changed since the 1950s now we are just more aware of it and seeking help. That's a good thing.
I don't think that's a popular assertion amongst lemmy commenters!
I honestly don't know. The pressures of today are many and varied, but growing up in the 50s world have had its own challenges to be sure.
A place to talk about parenting.
Be respectful of others' parenting decisions.