By a variety of measures and in a variety of countries, the members of Generation Z (born in and after 1996) are suffering from anxiety, depression, self-harm, and related disorders at levels higher than any other generation for which we have data.
By a variety of measures and in a variety of countries, the members of Generation Z (born in and after 1996) are suffering from anxiety, depression, self-harm, and related disorders at levels higher than any other generation for which we have data.
I have to disagree with most of that.
Raising a kid right now is weird, the way they interact with tech is nothing like when we were kids. I was lucky growing up in the 90s with a computer, I could play with it all day and never get into any kind trouble it was just video games and poking around, seeing what it could do. I think having access to a computer at such a young age was transformative and wonderful.
But today, there’s so much trouble to get into, it’s crazy. I need to lock down that computer for my kid, there’s not enough parental control software in the world to make it safe for a defiant child, so I just can’t give him free access to the computer. I log him in for every session and make sure he’s monitored the whole time (which is exhausting).
He had access to some public Minecraft server for a while and initially I was like “this is fine”, but it was like 5 days before he was telling people to kill themselves in the chat and yelling ethnic slurs into his headset… he’s 7.
I truly dread having to deal with him interacting on social media. It’s going to be ugly.
Edit: I should clarify, this article is garbage, I’m not sticking up for it. The problem is not kids these days or bad parenting, it’s just a more complicated world. Social media, predatory tech companies, consumerism, polarized politics, all this crap adds up to a more complicated world, more riddled with potential landmines than ever before.