Harvard Youth Poll of 18-29 year old people:
https://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/fall-2021-harvard-youth-poll
Item 5 on that page says:
It also has this:
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That’s awful. And sadly not surprising based on the young folks I know.
I would be curious to know how those numbers have changed over the past 30 years, especially compared to other age groups. My guess is it has spiked over the past 5 years, especially the last two years, and the effect is across age groups, but most pronounced in early 20’s down to pre-teens.
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These numbers make me sad 
. I wonder what factors contribute to young people feeling this pessimistic about their lives and what we as parents, teachers, mentors can do to alleviate their excessive worry.
Being Republican seems to be mildly protective to mental health. Can’t say I can rationalize this trend either but it’s interesting.
There’s lots to think about (and worry about) here.
My guess is that is more a function of race, although it may also be because of what issues the parties focus on. And also the role the college rat race plays in stressing kids out. Republicans are less likely to have a college education than Democrats, right?
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Gender sticks out as an obvious correlate from the above chart (much more so than race or education, although Black and AAPI stick out in terms of higher tendency to think about self-harm). However, even the less bad numbers for Republicans and men are still quite awful.
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Young people are clueless, and are fed twisted tales of reality from so many directions these days.
I’ve got a lot of thoughts on the female / male divide, but they would get me in trouble.
There is a shift toward Republican thinking as a population ages.
So will expressing thoughts about political persuasions. This is an interesting post, so let’s make sure we avoid stirring the pot please.
I’m older and still consider myself clueless. I was thinking back to my own teenage years pre-social media etc. and our concerns and worries were a lot more localized. An earthquake flattened a village within driving distance? We would organize drives for food and shelter etc. It seems than the attention of young people has been high jacked to worry about everyone and everything in the world. As we get older we develop a “there’s only so much I can worry about” filter regardless of our political persuasions.
Women’s higher rates of mental health problems are, in my experience, highly correlated to reproductive hormones, particularly at the beginning and end of the reproductive years.
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Interesting comment and while I don’t generally disagree I remember as a college freshman sitting in an auditorium watching a movie “The Day After” about a nuclear Holocaust. At the time I remember news stories discussing the mental toll on young people given their majority expectation of nuclear war during their lifetime.
I suspect that the vast majority of respondents to the Harvard survey would be unaware of the current Russian build up on the Ukraine border or China’s saber rattling with Taiwan.
I believe however there is a much greater awareness of our local societal challenges and political polarization even if they wouldn’t express it as such.
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I will be good & refrain from responding to the political bait.
I have a 29 year old son. I would say that the report sounds about right based on what he tells me about himself & his friends. Of course, I also have a friend in his 60’s who is struggling with similar feelings lately.
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If thoughts about political persuasion can’t be mentioned, how can any post contain the word “Republican”?
Posts can contain the word Republican, Democrat, or Undecided Cow Party. What they can’t say is “Republicans are (insert insulting term here),” or “Democrats (insert insulting term here),” or “Undecided Cows are responsible for all the (insert insulting term here) the country is facing.” And they can’t say a number of other things, most of which people are aware of when they write the words. That’s when they get flagged and reviewed.
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Global warming, COVID, stressful political situation, high expense and resulting debt for college, more young adults living at home because they can’t afford to pay for their own place, – I am not at all surprised at these findings.
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Personally when I was young, I might have said that I was down and depressed. Being young has it own pitfalls. I think with age, I’ve figured out that sometimes things seem hard but I know enough now to know that things get better also.
The difference between the young now and being young when I was is the ability to admit these things. And to be open about your own mental health.
So I’m not really sure that things are all that changed. But how we talk about them (and even admit to ourselves or some random pollsters) has.
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How does this differ from other age cohorts?
I think that the various medical interventions that prolong life have resulted in a small percentage of the “old old” who have a nice and satisfying life (good health, if they have mobility issues they are relatively minor, financial resources, family close by) and a really large majority who spend the last decade depressed OR bedridden (and sometimes in pain) and isolated and pretty miserable. I think a not insignificant chunk of baby boomers are starting to retire and are depressed. (don’t have a solid plan for how to spend their time, forced out at 65 but they don’t want to play golf all day or can’t afford not to work for $). And certainly parents of young adults and teenagers seem depressed and anxious.
So my question is- how is this study meaningful without a comparison to a generation ago, or without a comparison to other age groups? Maybe this is the human condition- we now know how to measure it.
Ask any gerontologist about depression in the elderly- yikes. Who wants that?
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Even if a comparison with other age groups or generations would make the results more meaningful, the absence of such does not make the results meaningless.
If it is indeed a common human condition across ages and generations or within an age group or generation, then realizing that it is a common human condition has some meaning in informing both personal and policy decisions.
This list looks like “adulting” to me, to one degree, or another.
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About 1/4 of respondents report thoughts of being better off dead or self-harming. I don’t know what your definition of “adulting” is but my guess is that the state of mind these young folk describe is not conducive to “adulting”.
@teleia I was talking about the list I quoted, not the self-harming aspect.
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Um, Covid. Isolation and claustrophobic sense of when will it end. Not to mention a long stretch of virtual learning with little in real life peer contact.
Then global warming, which adds to the apocalyptic mood, the helplessness and many are not going to have children.
And inabilty to pay for things and become an adult (loans, low pay, high rent etc.), loneliness (online dating doesn’t work for most)
Agree with @fendrock basically. I would add that we parents of whatever age share some of this right now, or at least the people I know.
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