When I was about twelve years old, I walked into a room where my mother and father were talking softly. As I entered, they ceased talking, their expressions seemed guilty as if they had been caught. It was clear that my presence had been an unwelcome interruption, so I left the room. As I left, I heard my mother say, “Do you think he heard?” My father said no.
I was absolutely certain they had been talking about me, specifically about some shortcoming of mine they were worried or disappointed about. I had no reason to suspect this, let alone assume it. Logically, the range of discussion topics they might want to prevent me from hearing was extraordinarily wide. Nevertheless, at that moment I was convinced they were talking about me and that what they were saying was overwhelmingly negative. I wasn’t at all curious; rather, I was horrified and embarrassed. So I fled.
My memory of that feeling fifty years later is solid, almost palpable. However, I don’t remember dwelling on it at the time. Instead I submerged it somewhere with all other such feelings and went back to some distraction, perhaps a book or playing an Avalon Hill wargame or being with my younger brothers. In fact, I suspect that my memory of that long ago feeling as I write this is much stronger than it was a minute after I left my parents.
Whether my assumption about my parents’ topic of conversation was correct doesn’t really matter. My young adolescent brain assumed the worst and then to protect myself I plunged into distractions. In other words, having probably self-deluded myself in a negative way, I quickly pivoted to a protective self-delusion as if the event hadn’t happened. I forced myself to forget it.
For me, that ability to leave many of my feelings unexamined and buried in deep mental caverns, seemed crucial to my well-being, even if it made me oblivious to many things and likely less resilient to future disappointments. Distractions allowed me to live in the fantasy worlds of Middle Earth or imagining I was one of many combatants in tabletop simulations of wars, or playing with my appreciative younger brothers, six and seven years younger, wonderful substitutes when peers were unavailable. All of this afforded me a surface happiness even if underneath I had what I suspect was a not uncommon adolescent self-loathing.
Self-delusion can be both a form of ignorance about seeing the world as it is and a survival skill. So many aspects of reality are troubling. A run through of a few true cliches: many tragedies happen every day, bad things happen to good people, there’s always someone whose fabulousness of life seems Olympian compared to yours, everyone is going to die, including ourselves. To see the world clearly can be an awful burden.
Last year I wrote a post critiquing Jonathan Haidt’s Atlantic article, “Why the Past Ten Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.” He blamed social media. I disagreed about the “uniquely stupid” part. Recently, Haidt and many others have written about a CDC survey that shows that American high school students have become increasingly anxious and unhappy. This trend started in 2010 when the prevalence of both the internet and social media took off.
I have a different take and it has to do with self-delusion. I think the proliferation of information about the world on the internet and on cable television makes protective self-delusion and willful ignorance much harder. I wonder if the prevalence and availability of information has in fact made modern teenagers better informed about the world, not more stupid, with a greater grasp on reality and reality’s miserable aspects. While a smartphone is a portal to much that is warped and misleading and at times dangerous, it’s also an omnipresent portal to the real world with all its true violence and true crudeness.
(I note as well that the more that teenagers are told that that their use of social media is making them miserable, or otherwise deficient, the more miserable and self-deficient they will feel.)
Some of my happiest memories as a parent were watching my children be completely absorbed in some world outside of reality. My daughter yelling at me for daring to knock on her door during the sacred weekly hour of the TV show, “The O.C;” my older son trading baseball cards or being the “commissioner” of a fantasy baseball league, my younger son battling imaginary warriors for hours in our living room. Did any of it make them “smarter” about the world as it exists? I don’t think so.
Of course my own experiences as both an adolescent and as a parent are highly idiosyncratic and singular. So for me to draw any conclusions from those personal experiences is speculative at best.
Still, I think it would be highly unfortunate if in our discourse we condemned the “social media generation” to an inevitable and permanently higher prevalence of misery and “stupidity” by assuming this is their fate and repeatedly telling them so. In fact, it would not surprise me if, contrary to all assumptions, this generation emerged into maturity with a greater sense of both reality and resilience. Perhaps they will discover at a much earlier age the value of the stoic approach–––we can’t control most events, but we can control our reaction to them.
At the age of sixty, I’m still struggling to be more of a stoic. And when I’m upset about something, I still retreat to imaginary worlds, mostly by binge-watching television series. That doesn’t feel quite like stoicism to me.
To add a 21st century gloss on a famous quote by the Stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius,
“Choose not to be harmed–––and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed–––and you haven’t been.” And if that doesn’t work, you can forget your harm by binging “Game of Thrones, except for the last season, which will make you unhappy.
Link below to my critique of Jonathan Haidt’s article from April 2022
I think this is an interesting take, though I'll quibble about teens being smarter. I don't think smarter is the correct word and I think it matters. I think they are more aware, more informed but that does not make one smarter and, unfortunately, they are more aware in negative ways. To quote Inigo Montoya, let me explain. Statistically, the country is a safer place than it was when we were kids but it does not seem that way. Why? Awareness. Information. I live in the NYC suburbs and 65 years ago, if a shooting took place in OR or WA I was unlikely to hear about it. I was unlikely to hear about crimes in 49 other states or even 100 miles away in NY. The world seems less safe today because we are aware of a murder in towns we never heard about back then. While there are fewer murders, more news of fewer murders reaches us and, in the 24/7 news cycle, it is repeated over and over and over. So, bad news, even while there might actually be less, seems omnipresent and I use murders as only one example.
Teens, and the parents and grandparents, are more informed so life seems more perilous and that can, and does, cause anxiety. Then there are discussions about these things so there is more talk of anxiety. Here is a favorite (not exactly) example. After Sandy Hook and a few other school shootings, the local school district decided it was important to lock the doors to the schools. I was raising a grandson and did, occasionally, have to go to the school to meet with various staff members. Suddenly, I had to stop outside and announce myself to an intercom and then, once the door buzzed open, I was greeted by a security guard. That wasn't the environment I wished for, but it was secondary to what this meant to the kids. They were aware of the security and they had lockdown drills. Of course, nearby school districts were all doing the same thing (to cover themselves more than to protect the kids) despite the odds of it happening were infinitesimal. However, it sent a clear message to the kids. Be afraid! Be afraid!
So, we are seeing a generation grow up with taught anxiety -- taught by the news and by the schools. Are they smarter? No. Their reading, writing and math skills are no better than mine at their age. But, are they more informed and more aware. Yes, and that is not entirely a good thing.
Last example. There were kids in the community who did not play pick-up ball games because there would be no adult supervision. An attorney friend of mine lamented this fact because he understood that unsupervised games were places kids learned conflict resolution. Again, kids were made aware of certain risks but denied some good life experiences.
More aware, more informed, not smarter.
Your hypothesis is that the constant brutal information revealed by the internet contributes to anxiety and depression. I think you have a good point. You could label it the 'ignorance is bliss' hypothesis. I visualize how people living in small towns across America in the 1950's who only got a little bit of news from the radio were probably much less stressed than your average American teenager is today. Many people have told me that they are reducing their consumption of new online for this very reason. But, as Dr. Haidt points out, it is unlikely that a single reason accounts for the rise in teen depression starting about 2010.