Auguste Meyrat – American Freedom News May 5, 2022
A mental health crisis has been raging among today’s teens, especially teenage girls. In a recent essay in the New York Times, writer Matt Richter explores this disturbing trend, focusing on the story of M, an otherwise bright girl with potential who eventually suffers from gender dysphoria, anxiety, depression, and self-harm.
M’s problems began at the end of elementary school and quickly worsened as she began middle school. One of her peers, Elaniv, experienced the same thing, and eventually committed suicide at 15 years old. Understandably worried by this, M’s parents tried all kinds of interventions, including medication and therapy, because as one psychologist puts it, “it’s life or death for these kids.”
It is a sad story and one that has become all too common. For all the apparent advantages enjoyed by young people today—they are safer, richer, and much more comfortable than previous generations—they seem to be the most miserable.
So what happened? Why are young people breaking down like this? For me as a teacher and anyone else who works with young people, it is quite simple: screens and social media. Kids are given a smartphone or tablet and they spend more and more time on it. They consume immoral and harmful content that warps their understanding of the world and encourages them to be self-destructive. Consequently, they retreat from everyone around them, suffer extreme loneliness, and increasingly become untethered from reality.
Somehow this explanation never seems to occur to anyone in Richter’s essay. The dots are fairly easy to connect: M gets a phone at 10, her school reports that she can’t focus in class, she starts using different pronouns, she names herself after an anime character who stabs men with scissors, she has frequent emotional meltdowns and starts cutting herself, and she continually complains about being lonely.
And yet, when Richter even bothers to address this argument, he seems to dismiss it altogether: “The [mental health] crisis is often attributed to the rise of social media, but solid data on the issue is limited, the findings are nuanced and often contradictory and some adolescents appear to be more vulnerable than others to the effects of screen time.” In other words, the data on screens and social media are mixed, so it’s not worth considering.
It is difficult to know whether such specious reasoning is intentional or not. Either way, it is still an argument used by many people who defend kids having unrestricted access to screens. As such, it demands a thorough rebuttal.
Richter’s point that the science on social media and technology is “limited” and findings differ among individual uses is just another way of saying that correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation. Sure, problems started happening once M had a smartphone and started watching violent anime on it, but this doesn’t mean the smartphone caused the problems. After all, many other people have smartphones and also watch violent anime on them, and they’re not experiencing the same problems.
One does not need to infer from correlation, however, to conclude that the smartphone obviously caused M’s distress. The smartphone’s effects are clearly visible for everyone to see. This is where M gets her ideas and where she spends her time. If she didn’t have it, she wouldn’t know about adopting different gender identities, or violent anime characters, or cutting herself as relief. She would be innocent.
Another major fallacy that draws Richter and others away from blaming the smartphone is found in the way they misdefine the problem as “mental health.” This label has come to cover everything from debilitating schizophrenia to a person feeling a little stressed one day. When pampered celebrities from Prince Harry to Will Smith talk about their mental health, it is almost impossible to understand what they even mean. Applying this term to teens committing suicide and experiencing nervous breakdowns only obscures the issue.
Rather, what M and so many of her peers are experiencing could be better described as “screen addiction” and “consuming inappropriate content.” Sure, her poor mental health is a consequence of these two problems, but the nature of her struggle and the potential remedy is directly tied to her screen usage.
Finally, the inclusion of irrelevant statistics and useless testimonies from various “experts” all detract from the matter at hand. As if to justify the grim reality of mass dysfunction, Dr. Candice Odgers remarks, “By many markers, kids are doing fantastic and thriving. But there are these really important trends in anxiety, depression and suicide that stop us in our tracks.”
So what is worse? More teens drinking, smoking, taking drugs, and potentially getting pregnant, or more teens binging on social media, having nervous breakdowns, taking prescription drugs, and potentially committing suicide?
If people have to choose—and it isn’t clear whether this is a choice, since this point isn’t explored—most should choose the former situation. In a screen-free setting, kids can enjoy far more freedom and parents can intervene much more easily if something happens. In a screen-saturated setting, kids are compulsively brainwashing themselves while parents look on helplessly.
At this point, it’s a very steep hill to climb for M and other kids in the same situation. The parents cannot simply take away the smartphone. This could in fact create intense trauma for her and likely push her over the edge. Already the mere criticism of “M’s pronouns and heavy screen use” from M’s grandparents makes her mother Linda feel “judged.”
Thus, some sensitivity and patience is in order when confronting the source of the problem, and to Richter’s credit, he does make this point in his essay. But a slow and steady weaning off the screen is the only way to recovery, however difficult it is to address a teenager’s attachment to her device.
Of course, preventing this attachment in the first place is the most effective response to the mental health crisis affecting teens. No one wants to acknowledge this. Most parents are attached to their smartphones too. But the sooner they do acknowledge this, the better off they and their children will be. After all is said and done, so much of our collective “mental health,” along with everything else that makes life worth living, depends on putting the screen away.
The parents are at fault. They give their children something to keep them busy and out of the parents’ hair. They should be teaching the children about life from the time they (the kids) start talking. Just do it at a level that is comprehensible to the child. Also encourage social interaction and sport especially Karate. You’ll need it in this society.
Poor little lambs. These are the future thicko sheeple, yawn.
Thank you for compiling this article.
Very interesting.
Perhaps it is personally time for some action.
“Give the natives glass beads and mirrors.”
once children learned to live by
playing + creat in a 3 dimensional dual
world . now they live in a 2 dimensional
dual world . thats the diference . and
did not learn to play creating . like a
dog learns from his adult dogs that he
is a dog + has to behave accordingly
the children have no traditional adults +
patterns anymore + have to take all kinds
of perversion + unnormality for granted .
“M’s parents tried all kinds of interventions, including medication and therapy, because as one psychologist puts it, “it’s life or death for these kids.”
LOL. Unable to talk to their own child they drugged it up to “fix it”. Then the “psychologist” moved in to fill his pockets.
The problem with the young is exactly the same problem as the older people (after all, these young will be part of those older people soon enough) == they have nothing to live for. Phones are part of it, but that’s just another window into the abyss == it’s this constant barrage of “you must be best”. In order to have a good life they need money, In order to do that they must “succeeed”. And you’ve defined “succeeding” as having lots of money. They can’t become happy being a basket weaver or a maker of glass ornaments or a musician. Instead, they must become a “manager” or an “accountant” or a “banker” or any of the numerous other brain destroying “jobs”, and to get there they have to crush everyone else in their path. Add to that pressure to be “attractive” and “popular” and to appear “happy” and the pressure simply crushes most of them. It’s like those people who send their brats to “cram” school – 80% can’t cope and become wrecks. All the endless pressure is the problem. If you want to fix it, leave people alone and allow them to do what they want and what they’re suited for — and pay them a fair wage for doing it — but there’s no chance of that, because there’s no money in it.
Also, you expose the children to all this filthy side of your “community” at a much earlier age. Instead of being told by their brain dead parents that they’re the “best little person there ever was” right up until they get their first job in a slave pen (when they very quickly wake up to the truth), they’re now exposed to what a train wreck their life is at a much earlier age — by going on “forums” and getting told they’re “scum”, or by posting something they did on the internet and being mocked for how “useless” it is, or by simply seeing all the other “perfect” people on the internet and realising that they themselves are ugly, talentless and alone (almost everyone is). You make the children want to be adults as quickly as possible and shove them down your predefined rut that will be their “life” and tell them to get on with it — or else. The ones above that decided to drug their brat into compliance — I don’t suppose it ever occurred to them to talk to the brat and find out why it’s unhappy, what it wants to do, where it’s interests and talents lie, and then try to help it get to a happy place? Instead, drugs and “doctors”. And how would that make it feel? “Happy”? “Better”? Would it “fix” it? I’ve been telling people for decades how completely broken your “society” is. The last two years have accelerated the destruction, but it’s always been there. Almost all people are unhappy, don’t want to go on the way that they are, can think of no way out, and are endlessly getting kicked if they show any sign of non compliance. Show me someone who “loves” the people around them or is “happy” in anything that they do. It’s not exactly a paradise that you’ve created is it? And now look — you have absolute control coming in to make it all even better than better. No one will be allowed to even say it’s crap. No one will be allowed to say they don’t like it or that they hate someone. Whilst being further impoverished and forced to live in smaller and smaller boxes. It’s all going to make everyone so very much happier isn’t it?
The child is brain-washing himself while the parents look on helplessly? I never bought a smart-phone but I was given one in 2012 and it was soon solved with a hammer.
What did you expect to happen? These ‘smartphones’ are simply a CIA-Mossad creation/tool to transform the moronic masses into Communists, lunatics, porno fiends, & race-mixers..
@ MEME
therefore i always praise the old
primitive tribes way of living .
the women cooked planted +men
were hunters, wariors, fisher .
everybody had his skill + had
time to teach children accordingly
+ so they became adults like their
forfathers . people had the time for
their children because they were no
slaves of any boss, state or Rothschild .
FU…k STATES;KINGS;EMPIRES;
BOOKS;PRIESTS;CIVILISATIONS !
I have a flip phone only, and only used when absolutely necessary. If I had any say and influence on this modern scourge, I would outlaw smart(stupid) phones except for emergency workers.
The slippery slope, not really probed by this article and one certain to never be mentioned in the Jew Yoik times.. is the necessity for statist regime out reach,’help’ and interventions once that THEIR definitions of ‘mental, ahem health’ are applied liberally and politically.. (used as a tool of censorship and of course control)..
Obviously the statist corporate regimes aim is to emotionally and mentally and probably physically wreck the youth… something they seem to be excelling at with the help of their parents and teachers.. and in this way the younglings may advance through life broken and passive.. of limited function..
those that remain sensible and that object to any of this nonsense will of course be thrown into asylums (physical and drug induced no doubt)… on mental health grounds (they are ‘mad and dangerous’ but really eminently sensible) and forgotten… because these people were always the target all along..
Stalin loved this sort of thing… there are no dissidents just ‘patients’ and of course ‘victims’..heheh..
NB I should of course clarify.. this is simply more of the bio-security tyranny they seek to impose …
because when these children are hitting twenty after the screen and vaxeens. the perversions and subversions…it really is game over..
for any kind of useful society that is…
What, exactly, are people doing on their phones when you see them staring at them in the street and on buses and (presumably) when they’re on the toilet?
It is my guess that the people of the West may soon discover whole and truer religions on which to engender societies and institutions with a spiritual basis and with mechanisms designed to feed the soul with illuminating particles or truth. Westerners, now, particularly, have built their fortunes on the more opaque particles that veil their souls, creating, perhaps, unknowingly, spiritual dysfuntion.
Without the direction of the soul, we feel an emptiness within, and this can be a constant irritant that can drive one crazy. The souls within is so important that without it, the body itself would collapse.
@call me baby….They’re viewing porno.
“Smartphones Are Killing Kids” … Just wait until the 5G energy weapons come online on a larger scale and mix with the toxic sludge Jew jabs so many unfit procreators allowed their children to get injected with by rabid maniacs and blithering imbeciles.
Good piece and some excellent commentary above by many who are far more insightful than I.
@ HELL
this universe is HELL !
it dont needs another hell !
and it looks beautyful from far
away but its a trap !
im old anough to know it .
Smartphones are not ‘killing kids’. Joe Sixpack and Sally Soccermom – their pathetic, defective parents are.
I had a bad day or two emotionally last week as if someone had died and it was clearer than usual that we need to maintain God-connection or else we are adrift. I won’t try to define God just now, but it’s beyond Space and Time.