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April 2, 2024 - 10:00am
New figures suggest nearly 500,000 antidepressant prescriptions are being given to children each year, with only one in four having visited a child psychiatrist before they were given the pills. This is despite guidelines recommending that they should only be used in the most severe cases, due to the severity of potential side-effects (including suicide ideation, impaired sexual function and withdrawal symptoms) as well as studies suggesting that in the vast majority of cases antidepressants only have marginal benefits in adolescents.
The scale of the problem is staggering: in 2022, over 170,000 teenagers were on antidepressants, including one in ten 19-year-olds. Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of the charity Sane, said that we have “created a generation of lost, lonely and disconnected young people” and “we should not be handing out antidepressants to children simply because there’s nothing else to offer.” This is true, but the key word here is “created”: this is a Frankenstein’s monster of modernity, made out of two fundamental changes.
The first is our modern societal tendency to pathologise normal adolescent experiences. Parents and teenagers have internalised this medicalised narrative of wellbeing: children who hate going to school now suffer from “school phobia” or “school avoidance”; GCSE students are not just nervous but have “exam stress” or “anxiety”. Everyday emotional responses have been rebranded in therapeutic language, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate between normal teenage sadness, angst and insecurity and real mental health problems. With no definitive diagnostic criteria or tests, the difference between the normal and abnormal now becomes a question of social convention (i.e. what TikTok told me) rather than medical convention, and we have ended up in a place where common behaviours are seen as a sort of dysfunction that needs medical attention.
Yet greater self-diagnosis or self-reporting is not the whole story behind this new mental health epidemic. For example, it does not explain why the rate of self-harm among teenage girls nearly tripled between 2010 and 2020, or why the suicide rate amongst adolescents increased by 167%. Jonathan Haidt, in his new book The Anxious Generation, argues that the loss of the play-based childhood and the rise of the phone-based childhood are instead responsible for this mental health crisis. Smartphones and social media have fundamentally rewired and revolutionised children’s social habits, role models, emotions, physical activity and sleep patterns, meaning that they now grow up in networks rather than communities, more engaged in the virtual world than the real one.
So on the one hand, we have overly paranoid parenting that looks for labels and diagnoses for normal (albeit sometimes difficult) emotions and experiences. On the other, we have laissez-faire parenting that gives prepubescent children a portal to an alternative universe in their pockets with virtually no legal limits. This paradox has led to a generation of digital guinea pigs who are not so much depressed as helplessly confused: undergoing all the usual trials and tribulations of adolescence (break-ups, peer pressure, self-consciousness and body image) with new challenges and dangers, while being told by everyone — schools, parents, social media — that they should constantly be checking in on their mental health.
This constant introspection and self-comparison, alongside messages broadcast on TikTok that glamourise and oversimplify mental illness (there is a whole TikTok subgenre called traumacore), is leading teenagers to question themselves and their feelings more and more. Antidepressants, though, are not the answer they should be looking for.
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SubscribeI wonder if the author or knowledgeable subscribers here more generally think that Jonathan Haidt’s call for no phones at all in classrooms by this September is in any real measure achievable. I hope so. I currently work as a tutor, with one to three students at a time, and often with kids who are blessedly too young and well-parented to have their own phones, let alone be sold-out to them yet (video games, different story). But I expect I may pivot to teaching a full class of middle-schoolers or something, and I wouldn’t want to be trying to keep eyes off screens without more institutional and cultural support than the current norm. It’s pretty ludicrous that we’ve let our kids (and ourselves) become such “content” junkies. Time for course correction and damage control.
Society has gone from one extreme to the other (though maybe we haven’t reached the extreme of this yet). From stiff upper lip and just carrying on to medicalised personality traits, therapy for any slight upset, on-hand entertainment to relieve any boredom, and pills for sadness.
While all of those can be useful when used sparingly, using them excessively is worse than simply getting on with it , talking it over down the pub or over a cup of tea.
Your post makes me think of Brave New World. It seems we’re getting closer and closer to Huxley’s dystopia.
With the proviso that I don’t accept any foregone or unqualified dystopian framework, I think we’re neck and neck between Brave New World and 1984: on one hand, bioengineering and the new lotus eaters; on the other, sinister language games and the surveillance state(s).
Given the choice I’d prefer Brave New World – at least that offered the possibility of a nice time. 1984 was just relentless hell.
I’m in general agreement, but with some evidence-enhanced hope that we have reached the overall extreme and the giant pendulum is inching back toward “mental-health sanity”. The impact of Abigail Shrier’s and Jonathan Haidt’s recent work represents a move away from the culture of fragility, toward one that’s at least somewhat more resilient.
I don’t know whether we’ve reached the extreme or not, personally I suspect not – things always seem to go on for far longer than seems possible. But swing back it will eventually.
Makes sense. Not everyone swings farther out or back in at the time time though–despite the general trend.
You are taking the 0.66% who are transgender and telling them they are worthless to you. Not doing that would fix about 1/15th of your problem right there.
0.66% if we include Bradford Muslims who filled out the Census incorrectly.
Prove it.
I don’t understand your comment.
1 in 150 people are transgender, including children — and it is attempted official UK policy to treat them as being worthless.
It seems hyperbolic to characterise one of the most trans-right friendly societies as one that treats transgender people as worthless. But I’ve upvoted you for providing some clarification.
Perhaps I’m wrong, but the totality of your own comments suggests that you consider well over .66% of people–for example, social conservatives–to be lesser human beings, whether they are in fact hostile to you or not.
“one of the most trans-right friendly societies as one that treats transgender people as worthless” <– Nonsense. You are a nation prohibiting their proper healthcare, trying to mandate that some boys grow up with breasts and periods and some girls do so with beards and deep voices. You have a clear case of imam envy.
Social Conservatives choose to do evil for the sake of their moral vanity and behavior has such moral significance, biology does not.
I’m not sure you can « mandate » what would simply happen in the natural course of things. The most you can really say is that we are failing to take action to set nature right when she has gone awry.
Mandating that no medical intervention takes place on the basis of the lie it is never warranted is exactly this — forcing some boys grow up with breasts and periods and some girls do so with beards and deep voices.
I’m an American/Canadian dual citizen who lives in California. Can you name for me the countries that are more supportive of trans-rights than the UK, U.S., or Canada? (There may be a few more in Europe or elsewhere, but let’s hear the rankings, since you’re the expert–at least according to your lived experience).
Social Conservatives run the gamut from good to bad, and most are a complex mixture–like Social Liberals (me, mostly) and Social Radicals (you, I’m fairly sure).
If you think, for example, that questioning intensive chemical or even surgical interventions for children equals outright evil and hatred on the part of the questioner, I think that says more about you than them.
You come here almost solely to rant and condemn, as if you are doing so in the name of Tolerance and Inclusion. I’ve never seen you try to engage in anything like a discussion or good-faith exchange.
Those who disagree with you in any way are not only mistaken but evil. But THEY are the Intolerant Ones. To me you seem like an ironic mirror image of the most stereotypically intolerant and judgmental Conservative.
“Can you name for me the countries that are more supportive of trans-rights than the UK, U.S., or Canada?” <– More supportive than where in the US? Where in the UK? In the UK generally and in many US states, the proper healthcare for transgender people is being made illegal — which is near or is in fact genocidal.
“If you think, for example, that questioning intensive chemical or even surgical interventions for children equals outright evil and hatred on the part of the questioner, I think that says more about you than them.” <– If that were all that were true, you would have a point. You do not, because the answers to all such questions are already in hand, and justify no such prohibitions as I mention above. Persisting with such false “questions” says only bad — and I mean evil — things about those questioners.
“You come here almost solely to rant and condemn” <– I say factual things which show the “gender critical” are vile child abusers.
You present no factual counterargument to that.
I see. So the entire world is at least “near-genocidal” towards trans-people, but you admit the U.S. and UK are, objectively, less genocidal than most places.
It begins to seem like you’d be happy to see quite a high percentage of the world die or go to hell in order to protect against the purported genocide of the .66%. Are “gender-critical” people sub-human to you?
This is no factual core to counter in your claim that someone with questions about so-called gender-affirming care is “a vile child abuser”. That’s just a passionate, extreme opinion that you treat as a truth.
“you admit the U.S. and UK are, objectively, less genocidal than most places.” <- But more than they used to be, and on the basis of no factual excuses whatsoever.
“It begins to seem like you’d be happy to see quite a high percentage of the world die or go to hell in order to protect against the purported genocide of the .66%. Are “gender-critical” people sub-human to you?” <– Nonsense you have no possible excuse to claim. Equally, you have no possible excuse to claim to won the lives of others such that you rule them.
“This is no factual core to counter in your claim that someone with questions about so-called gender-affirming care is “a vile child abuser”.” <– Until you could find any facts to support you, there could be no such “counter” — you are such a vile child abuser.
“That’s just a passionate, extreme opinion that you treat as a truth.” <– I observe factual measured reality is far more stubborn even than I am, and you are only pretending you know what it is, where I have regularly cited it to you.
You’ve “cited the truth” have you? I see mostly opinion and fervent belief treated as though it were fact.
The article is about an increase in mental health problems. Are you saying that the mental health of trans kids was better before all this attention was paid to them? Before it became politicised? Before the clinics were set up, and the web sites, and the high profile activism. In short, when it was all pretty much in the closet?
The clinics were in operation without difficulty for quite a while, and those able to avail themselves of proper medical care benefited accordingly. If you are actually concerned about improving mental health, stop prohibiting or rationing that proper care, under rubric it is not known to be proper — which assertion is already proven to be a lie. That 1 in 15 who currently have excellent reason to be depressed will then be no more likely to be depressed than is anyone else.
They may be less likely to be depressed than they are now, but still more so than the general population, on average. The idea that profound unhappiness with the body you have can be removed by hormonal or surgical means is not backed up by , data, statistics, or human experience.
It’s hard to cut off body dysmorphia. And many who take extreme measures end up wishing they’d settled for the bodies nature gave them, wrongly or not.
No adult in the UK is prevented from accessing transition hormones or surgery. Are they? At a government and whole-society level in the UK and U.S, it’s now only a debate about adolescent access and how much the government should subsidize these procedures.
If you can, please tell me how I’m wrong without making me out to be especially wicked or laughably ignorant.
“They may be less likely to be depressed than they are now, but still more so than the general population, on average” <– So what, even were it to be true? You are reduced to arguing improvement is not improvement because you disagree with the means, although you have none better.
There is no dismorphia involved in being transgender. Dismorphia is a delusion, transgender people have no such delusion. They have dysphoria for a physical reason, not a psychiatric one. That means there is no possible psychiatric fix or psychiatric problem to be fixed pertaining to their being transgender.
“No adult in … subsidize these procedures.” <– As much as any healthcare problem is subsidized, and for youth the same as for adults because anything else is forcing some boys to have breasts and periods, and forcing some girls to have beards and deep voices — and by some I mean I have already shown the rate of false positives is below 1%. So you are forcing 99 children into that circumstance for any 1 you are preventing from regretting medical transition.
“please tell me how I’m wrong without making me out to be especially wicked or laughably ignorant” <– Yet you are so deliberately ignorant and wicked. You don’t even bother to know the terminology involved.
You just fully unmasked your self-righteous zealotry. I’m not forcing anyone to do anything. What insane rhetoric!
That’s an assertion, not a fact, nor the assessment of the vast majority of the medical professionals with expert or first-hand knowledge about it. Many transgender people use the term body dysmorphia themselves–or did until yesterday. Please don’t be deliberately obtuse.
Though I’m often not too nice or gentle: I’m pretty kind and fairminded overall (granted, that’s not an established fact either). I don’t detect that you are these days.
I’d like to see the good in you–and I do see traces–but you make it very hard. I do hope you’re under 30 right now as that would give you a better prospect of ageing or growing out of some of your rigid radicalism and fixed assumptions about the motives of those who don’t share your entire worldview. If you think (or in your own mind, know) that I’m wicked and extreme, someone who needs to be shouted down and condemned rather than corrected or reasoned with…wow, you’ll have a hard time doing anything but alienating even those you might otherwise reach.
Incidentally, I don’t object to the choice of an adult to transition, hormonally or surgically, nor for insurance to cover some portion of that based on a person’s ability or inability to pay for the procedure(s). Following a psychological assessment and modest waiting period, that is. Even an adult who wants a circumcision for non-medical reasons, for example should probably have that too.
Good luck. Talia.
“You just fully unmasked your self-righteous zealotry. I’m not forcing anyone to do anything. What insane rhetoric!” <– Yes, to the extent you have success in forbidding transgender youth from dealing medically with their problem you are forcing them to have that problem — and to a degree lifelong. You either want the consequences of what you say you want, or you are insane.
“That’s an assertion, not a fact, nor the assessment of the vast majority of the medical professionals with expert or first-hand knowledge about it” <– That is a lie. The vast majority of medical professionals to agree with it, to the extent that for example the quack opposition group ACPeds represented only 1 in 800 at most of American physicians — and you have never presented any evidence for what you claim is real.
“Many transgender people use the term body dysmorphia themselves–or did until yesterday.” <- Nonsense. Very very few are as ill-educated as you pretend many are.
“I don’t detect that you are these days.” <– I am in opposition to your pigheadedly preferred atrocities, I should not coddle you.
“I’d like to … might otherwise reach.” <– You can’t even admit I am the only one here who has any evidence to offer, you can’t tell the difference between opinion and fact, and you apparently believe the fallacy their is a difference between a sin of commission and omission. If there is good in you I have seen here nothing of it.
“I don’t object … have that too.” <– Which excuses not at all your goal of forcing children to undergo the puberty of their birth sex even when they meet the 99%+ accurate criteria finding they should not do so, and you pretend your opposition is not your seeking to force such on them.
You have not made nor can you make an honest argument about it.
This has been a pretty fruitless exchange for both of us hasn’t it?
I tried to generate some kind of discussion or debate, but you adhere to a sacrosanct orthodoxy in which all who even question your hardline views are ignorant at best, but usually complicit in youth suicide.
That’s rhetorical bullying and hocus-pocus argumentation. You seem every bit as intolerant as hate-motivated as a militantly homophobic Christian Fundamentalist. I haven’t prevented anyone from doing anything–let alone caused their deaths–and my views are not hardened into place like yours. Admittedly, I am not as personally affected and invested as you clearly are.
I don’t know if you’ve transitioned yet, but if so, it doesn’t seem to have made you happy or content in any way. Perhaps you get some catharsis or toxic juice from “sticking it to the con-tards”, or moderates like me, but I continue to think you are hurting your own cause.
I hope you find something that makes you a bit happier, and kinder. Don’t believe everything you think.
*IF there is good in me?
I taught high school for 30 years and the last three years were a nightmare. Every single kid in my classroom were hopelessly addicted to their phones. Teachers at my school were trying everything to control it, but administration would do nothing about it. What I saw over my career was disturbing. I taught Gen x, Millennial and Gen Zs. Gen Zs were a different breed of cat. They were uninterested in classes and didn’t seem to care if they were failing. Their online lives were all that mattered. I lost five girls the last three years because of anxiety and depression. All of them were seniors, and because they failed my class, they wouldn’t get a diploma. Gen Zs basically bored me. They wouldn’t participate in class discussions, unlike previous generations, so I gave up. Trying to lecture about a book was just me talking to myself. All their attention was focused on their phones. The other high school banned phones there were serious consequences for students who were using them. Their teachers were happy. I decided to retire in large part because I just couldn’t connect with Gen Zs. Again, they bored me. Gen Xs and Millennials were fun and serious students.
This is so sad to hear.
I see it with my relatives’ kids. One is a soon-to-be 12-year-old boy. My cousin and her husband stupidly got him a smartphone for his birthday last year and also let him move his PlayStation into his room. The kid is now listless, unable to muster interest in much of what’s around him. My cousin said he’s a mediocre student despite being fairly intelligent. He does play football, which gets him out of the house doing something physical. But the rest of the time it’s TikTok, Instagram and video games through and through.
Playing devils advocate: what are the options available to him? At a year older than him I headed off to the Lake District with a friend. No parents and no phone contact for two weeks. By his age I had basically been running amok with friends and taking all sorts of risks for years. There were gang fights involving clods of earth and sometimes stones. Cycle rides miles away from home. Digging tunnels which could have collapsed and killed the lot of us. Pretty dangerous looking back – but exciting. Phones aside – is the modern child’s life exciting?
My Gen-Z kid hates his generation. He was mostly home schooled.
Children need a meta narrative thar draws them into communal purpose. Individualism, anti-nationalism, decline of traditional Christianity, progressive attacks on white ethnic celebrations. Ie being proud to be indigenous English. Despair among younger generations should drive us to reembrace Western cultural values is opposition to the poison which is progressivism.
Not sure I had any of that, though I’m sure it formed part of the background. I did get to run riot a lot of the time though. Looking back, it’s astonishing how much of our behaviour was just dismissed as kids being kids. Definitely things that modern parents, teachers and social workers would see as signs that we had something wrong with us.
Thank you for a piece which talks about what Haidt actually says, unlike the Timandra Harness one.
Depression is the fourth stage of grief (any kind of loss causes grief: eg – loss of my friendship group, my job, my health, my business, my home, my identity, my reputation, someone I love, etc).
Pathologising a normal and natural process to “avoid pain” is kicking the can down the road.
Exercise offers double the relief over antidepressants.
Human beings are naturally lazy and want the easy option. Sadly, cutting corners with your mental health will usually backfire long-term.
It is beyond concerning that we are teaching children that the answer to your mental health requires taking no personal responsibility, no real effort and is found externally in the shape of a pill.
This is perhaps an odd term for parents who may allow their children to use phones excessively (just like mum) but who are otherwise anything but laissez faire. Laissez faire is what most parents were when kids were allowed to run pretty much wild.
And what if the children look up from their phones wanting to engage and just see their parents engrossed in their own phones? And what kind of role model is that?
I’m not sure we can just point at the phone.
Children’s lives have been changing for decades in so many ways perhaps the chickens are just coming home to roost. Perhaps the real story is a previous generation of messed up kids who are now incapable of effective parenting.
It is the medical industry driving this via its puppet politicians and media