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44% of American teens are now persistently sad or hopeless

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member

"
The United States is experiencing an extreme teenage mental-health crisis. From 2009 to 2021, the share of American high-school students who say they feel “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” rose from 26 percent to 44 percent, according to a new CDC study. This is the highest level of teenage sadness ever recorded.

The government survey of almost 8,000 high-school students, which was conducted in the first six months of 2021, found a great deal of variation in mental health among different groups. More than one in four girls reported that they had seriously contemplated attempting suicide during the pandemic, which was twice the rate of boys. Nearly half of LGBTQ teens said they had contemplated suicide during the pandemic, compared with 14 percent of their heterosexual peers. Sadness among white teens seems to be rising faster than among other groups.

But the big picture is the same across all categories: Almost every measure of mental health is getting worse, for every teenage demographic, and it’s happening all across the country. Since 2009, sadness and hopelessness have increased for every race; for straight teens and gay teens; for teens who say they’ve never had sex and for those who say they’ve had sex with males and/or females; for students in each year of high school; and for teens in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

So why is this happening?

I want to propose several answers to that question, along with one meta-explanation that ties them together. But before I start with that, I want to squash a few tempting fallacies.

The first fallacy is that we can chalk this all up to teens behaving badly. In fact, lots of self-reported teen behaviors are moving in a positive direction. Since the 1990s, drinking-and-driving is down almost 50 percent. School fights are down 50 percent. Sex before 13 is down more than 70 percent. School bullying is down. And LGBTQ acceptance is up.

The second fallacy is that teens have always been moody, and sadness looks like it is rising only because people are more willing to talk about it. Objective measures of anxiety and depression—such as eating disorders, self-harming behavior, and teen suicides—are sharply up over the past decade. “Across the country we have witnessed dramatic increases in Emergency Department visits for all mental health emergencies including suspected suicide attempts,” the American Academy of Pediatrics said in October. Today’s teenagers are more comfortable talking about mental health, but rising youth sadness is no illusion.

The third fallacy is that today’s mental-health crisis was principally caused by the pandemic and an overreaction to COVID. “Rising teenage sadness isn’t a new trend, but rather the acceleration and broadening of a trend that clearly started before the pandemic,” Laurence Steinberg, a psychologist at Temple University, told me. But he added: “We shouldn’t ignore the pandemic, either. The fact that COVID seems to have made teen mental health worse offers clues about what’s really driving the rise in sadness.”

Here are four forces propelling that increase.

1. Social-media use

Five years ago, the psychologist Jean Twenge wrote an influential and controversial feature in The Atlantic titled “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” based on her book iGen. Around 2012, Twenge wrote, she had noticed that teen sadness and anxiety began to steadily rise in the U.S. and other rich developed countries. She looked for explanations and realized that 2012 was precisely when the share of Americans who owned a smartphone surpassed 50 percent and mobile social-media use spiked.

In the past few years, scientists have disputed the idea that social-media use itself makes teenagers miserable. “There’s been absolutely hundreds of [social-media and mental-health] studies, almost all showing pretty small effects,” Jeff Hancock, a behavioral psychologist at Stanford University who has conducted a meta-analysis of 226 such studies, told The New York Times recently.

But I think Twenge’s strongest point is misunderstood. Social media isn’t like rat poison, which is toxic to almost everyone. It’s more like alcohol: a mildly addictive substance that can enhance social situations but can also lead to dependency and depression among a minority of users.

This is very close to the conclusion reached by none other than Instagram. The company’s internal research from 2020 found that, while most users had a positive relationship with the app, one-third of teen girls said “Instagram made them feel worse,” even though these girls “feel unable to stop themselves” from logging on. And if you don’t believe a company owned by Facebook, believe a big new study from Cambridge University, in which researchers looked at 84,000 people of all ages and found that social media was strongly associated with worse mental health during certain sensitive life periods, including for girls ages 11 to 13.

Why would social media affect teenage mental health in this way? One explanation is that teenagers (and teenage girls in particular) are uniquely sensitive to the judgment of friends, teachers, and the digital crowd. As I’ve written, social media seems to hijack this keen peer sensitivity and drive obsessive thinking about body image and popularity. The problem isn’t just that social media fuels anxiety but also that—as we’ll see—it makes it harder for today’s young people to cope with the pressures of growing up.

2. Sociality is down

Both Steinberg and Twenge stress that the biggest problem with social media might be not social media itself, but rather the activities that it replaces.

“I tell parents all the time that if Instagram is merely displacing TV, I’m not concerned about it,” Steinberg told me. But today’s teens spend more than five hours daily on social media, and that habit seems to be displacing quite a lot of beneficial activity. The share of high-school students who got eight or more hours of sleep declined 30 percent from 2007 to 2019. Compared with their counterparts in the 2000s, today’s teens are less likely to go out with their friends, get their driver’s license, or play youth sports.

The pandemic and the closure of schools likely exacerbated teen loneliness and sadness. A 2020 survey from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education found that loneliness spiked in the first year of the pandemic for everyone, but it rose most significantly for young people. “It’s well established that what protects teens from stress is close social relationships,” Steinberg said. “When kids can’t go to school to see their friends and peers and mentors, that social isolation could lead to sadness and depression, particularly for those predisposed to feeling sad or depressed.”

This is important to say clearly: Aloneness isn’t the same as loneliness, and loneliness isn’t the same as depression. But more aloneness (including from heavy smartphone use) and more loneliness (including from school closures) might have combined to push up sadness among teenagers who need sociality to protect them from the pressures of a stressful world.
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More at the link.


We've known about the trend for a good while now, but 44% of high school students exhibiting signs of major depressive disorder, and 56% of girls, is a staggering number that can't bode well for the future of society.

Honestly, at this rate social media apps should probably have a minimum age of 18. But that doesn't address the underlying problem with these services: providing a hyper-addictive facsimile of human interaction without any of the fulfillment or genuine relationships, that mostly makes you feel like shit at the end of the day.
 
Corporate consumerism is also a major impact imo. You can easily tell even from most users on gaf as well. They eat up everything from social media, whether its leaks or spoilers or drama or whatever else that adds to depression. Instagram reality, facebook bs, twitter drama, it's all a cancer and if you are not strong minded these can easily impact your life. Funny how we like the Cyberpunk genre yet if we were to live in it(which we are slowly heading) it would be quite horrible.
 

sircaw

Banned
My two cents is, The news is a huge contributing factor.

No matter which channel it's on, it's always negative, from wars to covid, to climate change to everyone is racist/ misogynistic bla bla bla, its 24 hours a day of none stop despair.

Go to an airport, CNN is on 24/7, go on to yahoo to check emails, it's just none stop articles trying to make you pick a side and hate on someone.

And it's the same every single day, day in, day out, year in, year out.
 
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EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
Surprised lockdowns and pandemic are not listed as a cause in part.
The article addresses this somewhat. The data points to COVID accelerating the trend line, but the trend was still dire before the lockdowns. So we may not see the numbers bounce back much in the post-COVID interval.
 

UnNamed

Banned
These are First World's problems: when there is too much wealth, mind creates other problems.
It's something I've read somewhere: there are less cases of mental health during or after a war than in a rich society.

In fact, and I have some experience on this sadly, minds have to cope with problems everytime, our mind is meant to be trained to face problems, not avoid them.
But in a modern society, we constantly avoid problems since we can. Avoid problems is not good for your health.
That's the reason why on Retardera or other places you read the infamous "I don't feel safe" or "I'm literally shaking", these seem a joke, but they are actually a serious issues and people that were affected can recognize these symptoms as caused by avoid problems and situations.
 
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AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
I think the prevalence of music that wears depression and opioid abuse as some sort of glamourous trait or badge of honour is not helping. There's a whole wave of Soundcloud rappers like Lil' Xan who's entire identity is based around being a "sad boy" and being addicted to prescription medication. You've got Machine Gun Kelly, massive with the youth, who's latest album takes a whopping four lines before we get to "I don't want to live any more". Even if the artist's intention isn't for kids to feel like depression and medication is cool, even if the kids don't actively think it themselves, music is a powerful tool and if that's the sort of thing you're primarily listening to it's going to have a profound effect.

Maybe I'm off base, maybe I'm being a 29 year old boomer, but I've been feeling that way for a few years now and it doesn't seem to have gotten any better since it started.
 

Paasei

Member
Any kind of pressure from social (media). Kids spend too much time with technology that brings them news of any kind they shouldn’t (yet) have to deal with or even think about in their lives.

You don’t need to have an opinion about everything.
 

Thirty7ven

Banned
Tear down family values, turn everyone into a career obsessed citizen that feeds into monster economic model we live in.

The individual has been ripped away from the family, and made to hunt idealized concepts of success that promote the individual into a state of isolation where he starts believing the brands he consumes, the social media influencers he follows, that somehow they and their fans are his family.

Absolute minority issues are placed at the forefront, when the only real problem keeps being ignored. Economic inequality is the only real issue that when solved would solve almost every single problem society has.

While that’s left for an imaginary future generation to solve, in the here and now we think accepting mental health problems and turn them into consumables that feed the market monster, turn social movements into Fortnite events, and continue to insist that you poor people don’t want a family, you don’t want children, you want a place in the ship instead, you want this imaginary thing that will give you all you ever wanted, a Tesla car, a trip to dubai, a thousand dollar watch, a two thousand dollar phone, etc here don’t forget to take your pills!
 
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RoboFu

One of the green rats
IMO it’s a mixture of this social media culture / wokeness political propaganda and because of it they are no longer allowed to be proud of anything.
In other words .. equity
 

quickwhips

Member
When I was a kid I smoked, drank alcohol and went on adventures in the woods. My life didn't revolve around a little internet box I took with me everywhere. Maybe a good emp blast would do the world some good. Basically I grew up in the 80s sorta like the movie stand by me even though that was what the 50s? teezzy teezzy want to see a dead body?
 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
When I was a kid I smoked, drank alcohol and went on adventures in the woods. My life didn't revolve around a little internet box I took with me everywhere. Maybe a good emp blast would do the world some good. Basically I grew up in the 80s sorta like the movie stand by me even though that was what the 50s? teezzy teezzy want to see a dead body?

I was doing that in 2006 at age 14. Nobody looked at their phones because internet browsers were awful, slow and data actually cost by the page. Things really did change dramatically when the first iPhone dropped and suddenly it was all about what hot new mobile game you were playing, even before Facebook dominated.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Modern media culture is toxic.

Honestly, I'm surprised the numbers aren't higher.

Its a constant bombardment of fear-mongering, hate-mongering, and social atomization. Everyone is divided into oppressor and oppressed, victimhood is aspirational, and worst of all there is no forgiveness or atonement possible.

If you are young and sensitive in this... You're likely fucked because there's no respite, no safe-haven.
 
Much better as in still on the edge of World War 3 and the planet slowly dying, but atleast no Instagram and Tik Tok?

You think social media and news only impacts teens? I'm more than positive the crazy ideas and whatever else Putin saw and thinks was due to social media and news and other crazy info he has received. You think any other politician is not influenced by social media? It's a scary tool.
 
Jonathan Haidt has been warning about the "coddling of the American mind".

The book makes a good point in favor of antifragility:

The results were stunning. Among the children who had been “protected” from peanuts, 17% had developed a peanut allergy. In the group that had been deliberately exposed to peanut products, only 3% had developed an allergy. As one of the researchers said in an interview, “For decades allergists have been recommending that young infants avoid consuming allergenic foods such as peanut to prevent food allergies. Our findings suggest that this advice was incorrect and may have contributed to the rise in the peanut and other food allergies.”

Our society has become overprotective of its children while stoic values have been replaced by hyper-caring entitlement and egocentrism. We keep our kids from making bad experiences and as such they never develop the mental fortitude to deal with life's many ups and downs. Even worse, fragility has gotten so much more attention nowadays, that fragile behavior is preferable over normal behavior.

The book also talks about social media and its impact on mental health:

Summary of the empirical evidence: multiple kinds of evidence suggest that there is a causal connection between heavy social media use and bad mental health, for girls, but the size of the effect is debated. We also don't know how social media affects pre-teens -- the group that shows the biggest percentage-wise increases in self harm and suicide. Light to moderate daily "screen time" (in contrast to social media) does not seem to be associated with harmful mental health outcomes.

Haidt also published an article for the Atlantic last year in November:

For several years, Jean Twenge, the author of iGen, and I have been collecting the academic research on the relationship between teen mental health and social media. Something terrible has happened to Gen Z, the generation born after 1996. Rates of teen depression and anxiety have gone up and down over time, but it is rare to find an “elbow” in these data sets––a substantial and sustained change occurring within just two or three years. Yet when we look at what happened to American teens in the early 2010s, we see many such turning points, usually sharper for girls.

original.png


Social media not only negatively skews self-assessment and self-perception, it also heavily promotes narcissistic and egocentric tendencies. Coupled with an aggressively hollow materialistic lifestyle and an unhealthy over importance of individualism, it can only be a recipe for disaster. Lastly, societal messaging has changed from positive to fatalistic with a constant oppression narrative, economic decline and the looming doom of global warming being compounded by a very misanthropic worldview.
 
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mxbison

Member
You think social media and news only impacts teens? I'm more than positive the crazy ideas and whatever else Putin saw and thinks was due to social media and news and other crazy info he has received. You think any other politician is not influenced by social media? It's a scary tool.

You think Putin is crazy because of social media? Come on man....

Of course it's a scary tool, but misinformation and propaganda has existed way before the internet.
 

LavosBit

Neo Member
Not to be flippant, but I saw that chart and was like “yep, that’s being a teenager alright.” Unless you somehow cracked the code of being a popular kid, the teenage years were frequently pretty miserable.

I have no doubt that being constantly online has exacerbated things though. At least back in the 90s, you could tune a lot of that shit out. You’re on constant blast these days though; it’s all doom, gloom and personal grievances.
 
You think Putin is crazy because of social media? Come on man....

Of course it's a scary tool, but misinformation and propaganda has existed way before the internet.

You just answered your own question. It has existed before the internet and now it exists on the internet. You think his information is physical only? Don't be ridiculous. News, media, social, and everything else has a HUGE impact on the political aspects of our planet. Now more than ever. Adults are influenced in different ways than teens but these depressed teens will turn into bitter adults and the world will be worse because of it.
 
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Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Social media not only negatively skews self-assessment and self-perception, it also heavily promotes narcissistic and egocentric tendencies. Coupled with an aggressively hollow materialistic lifestyle and an unhealthy over importance of individualism, it can only be a recipe for disaster. Lastly, societal messaging has changed from positive to fatalistic with economic decline and the looming doom of global warming being compounded by a very misanthropic worldview.

I'd disagree with the "unhealthy over importance of individualism" because it seems to me that what's generally pushed is what I'd describe as "identity consciousness", which is actually anti-individualistic as it stresses the idea of intrinsic kinship/tribalism between those who share certain traits or interests.

What this is doing is creating a pernicious sense of "otherness" when an individual's outlook diverges from the sub-group orthodoxy. This feeds into the social-status equation which is unbelievably powerful psychologically. Its peer-group pressure on steroids.
 
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I'd disagree with the "unhealthy over importance of individualism" because it seems to me that what's generally pushed is what I'd describe as "identity consciousness", which is actually anti-individualistic as it stresses the idea of intrinsic kinship/tribalism between those who share certain traits or interests.

What this is doing is creating a pernicious sense of "otherness" when an individual's outlook diverges from the sub-group orthodoxy. This feeds into the social-status equation which is unbelievably powerful psychologically. Its peer-group pressure on steroids.

Individualism in the form of egocentrism, i.e. the conviction that the world has to cater to your every whim. Social media promotes social solipsism by constantly putting you at the center of your own universe.
Group identity and adherence has always been important for teens.
 

Mistake

Member
You just answered your own question. It has existed before the internet and now it exists on the internet. You think his information is physical only? Don't be ridiculous. News, media, social, and everything else has a HUGE impact on the political aspects of our planet. Now more than ever. Adults are influenced in different ways than teens but these depressed teens will turn into bitter adults and the world will be worse because of it.
True. Everyone was joking about the college kids doing crazy shit before, saying “oh, they won’t get jobs like that.” Now look. Unless things start turning around soon, we’re heading for a real mess.
 

Thaedolus

Member
One of the reasons the Mrs and I likely won't have kids. There's just too much doom & gloom everywhere.

🙃

…but yeah, with having young kids these days it certainly seems like we’ll have challenges our parents didn’t have around the ubiquity of mobile devices. Even stuff that seems harmless like letting them watch Disney+ on the iPad for a bit is easy to let her out of hand without a conscious effort to find other activities to do. I could see the “what’s the harm in getting them a phone?” thing backfiring without tons of rules
 

AJUMP23

Gold Member
One of the reasons the Mrs and I likely won't have kids. There's just too much doom & gloom everywhere.
Children are worth every risk, and over coming every fear. Ever since the world began prospective parents have been depressed by the state of the world they are bringing children into. I worry for my children to, but I also know they are greater than the fears, and the joy is worth the struggle.
 

Catphish

Member
Children are worth every risk, and over coming every fear. Ever since the world began prospective parents have been depressed by the state of the world they are bringing children into. I worry for my children to, but I also know they are greater than the fears, and the joy is worth the struggle.
I respect this sentiment and, ultimately, agree with it. But do you think there's a threshold where, when maybe there's enough humans and enough of their bullshit on the planet that we might want to pump the procreation brakes a bit?
 

Ownage

Member
Not surprising. There's aconstant news cycle talking about how they're all going to die before 50.
Boy, this is true. If you don't know any better you'd think only of gloom and doom. I have several friends who are mid 40s, have families, good jobs and solid income, and they're choosing to go social media cold turkey. They say it's a great feeling.

This is why you need a network of people who can keep you on an even keel.
 

Toots

Gold Member
Thanks Obiden !

More seriously, social media and 24/7 news channels have a huge responsability in this.
The way social media makes everyone compare not with everyone else, but with the staged version of everyone else or just deliberate lies presented as reality (influencers) is a "feel bad machine" on its own. Add to that the anxiety-provoking news and you get a generation of sad human beings.

I have a theory of how the boomer generation, which took power from their elders (see the students movements of the 60s and early 70s in the US or in France), relegating them to a secondary role social role, doesn't want the same happening to them. So instead of being like a wall that the next generation has to pull down in order to emancipate itself, some "benevolent obstacle" the young have to tear down in order to gain autonomy and power to create a society they want, they try real hard to be friends, compagnions, attendants, thereby preventing their children to emancipate from them, and keeping control of society for themselves, at the expense of everyone else, especially those they claim they want to help.

monde2merde
big.png


edit : "The way social media where" to "The way social media makes"
 
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Aesius

Member
Not to be flippant, but I saw that chart and was like “yep, that’s being a teenager alright.” Unless you somehow cracked the code of being a popular kid, the teenage years were frequently pretty miserable.
Not hard to crack that code.

Be attractive, rich, or good at sports.
Don't be socially awkward.

Boom, you're popular!
 

Aesius

Member
Boy, this is true. If you don't know any better you'd think only of gloom and doom. I have several friends who are mid 40s, have families, good jobs and solid income, and they're choosing to go social media cold turkey. They say it's a great feeling.

This is why you need a network of people who can keep you on an even keel.
I only use anonymous social media like this forum and reddit. I have a FB but I've unfollowed probably 80% of my friends list. I also rarely post. And I have a Twitter account but only use it for news and sports updates.

I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. I was already jaded by social media during the MySpace-era. Back when people tried to get as many "friends" as possible and Top 8 friends lists were a thing (including the order you arranged your friends in).
 

tommib

Member
I think the prevalence of music that wears depression and opioid abuse as some sort of glamourous trait or badge of honour is not helping. There's a whole wave of Soundcloud rappers like Lil' Xan who's entire identity is based around being a "sad boy" and being addicted to prescription medication. You've got Machine Gun Kelly, massive with the youth, who's latest album takes a whopping four lines before we get to "I don't want to live any more". Even if the artist's intention isn't for kids to feel like depression and medication is cool, even if the kids don't actively think it themselves, music is a powerful tool and if that's the sort of thing you're primarily listening to it's going to have a profound effect.

Maybe I'm off base, maybe I'm being a 29 year old boomer, but I've been feeling that way for a few years now and it doesn't seem to have gotten any better since it started.
Not sure about this. I was a depressed teen and if it wasn’t for the misery in Nine Inch Nails it would’ve been much harder. It’s quite comforting to have a musician as role model that in some way is going through similar shit. It’s a bit empowering in the way that you think: look that guy is fucked up but he made it, he’s powering through it.

Don’t know.
 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
Not sure about this. I was a depressed teen and if it wasn’t for the misery in Nine Inch Nails it would’ve been much harder. It’s quite comforting to have a musician as role model that in some way is going through similar shit. It’s a bit empowering in the way that you think: look that guy is fucked up but he made it, he’s powering through it.

Don’t know.

Sure, emo was big when I was a teen - My Chemical Romance, all that. But bands like NIN were rarely ever chart toppers, if I had to guess you were already depressed and sought out music like NIN as a comfort blanket - I'm talking more about the way in which this modern sad music is the mainstream, the norm, it's everywhere and you can't get away from it. I like Billy Eilish fine but she's undeniable moody, it's part of the appeal.

If you think back to popular music in 2005 when NIN were at their biggest, it's swagger hip-hop like 50 Cent and upbeat pop like Black Eyed Peas. Here in the UK it was the great indie rock wave, Kaiser Chiefs, Jack Johnson etc.

Again maybe I'm just old man yelling at cloud, but it feels like so much popular music today is often misery-centric in a way that it's never been before.
 

Draugoth

Gold Member
Honestly?

I would be very happy if i could move to the states.

(Btw, dont use Facebook or Instagram like other people said, it's a fake storefront for happiness)
 
Thanks Obiden !

More seriously, social media and 24/7 news channels have a huge responsability in this.
The way social media makes everyone compare not with everyone else, but with the staged version of everyone else or just deliberate lies presented as reality (influencers) is a "feel bad machine" on its own. Add to that the anxiety-provoking news and you get a generation of sad human beings.

I have a theory of how the boomer generation, which took power from their elders (see the students movements of the 60s and early 70s in the US or in France), relegating them to a secondary role social role, doesn't want the same happening to them. So instead of being like a wall that the next generation has to pull down in order to emancipate itself, some "benevolent obstacle" the young have to tear down in order to gain autonomy and power to create a society they want, they try real hard to be friends, compagnions, attendants, thereby preventing their children to emancipate from them, and keeping control of society for themselves, at the expense of everyone else, especially those they claim they want to help.

monde2merde
big.png


edit : "The way social media where" to "The way social media makes"
I think this is a really interesting point. I think there has certainly been an unprecedented change in the way the generations relate to each other. As well as the boomers trying to be friends with their kids there is also another side to it where, once young people leave home to go to uni they lose almost all contact with elderly relatives. They might grudgingly phone their grandparents on birthdays and at Christmas and occasionally visit their parents but multi-generational living has ceased for most middle class people. As a result, the young no longer get the benefit of the wisdom and experience of their elders.

The main consequence of this is that they struggle to keep things in perspective. When you are young and hormonal with no life experience your problems can seem like the end of the world. The truth is that whatever you are going through (heartbreak, job loss, falling out with friends, not knowing who you are or how to find yourself) your grandparents will have also been through. They should be there to counsel you and encourage you to keep going by explaining that this is just a universal part of the human experience. Instead of this, the young only have each other to turn to for advice so they end up catastrophising everything.
 
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Kenpachii

Member
Step 1: put your mobile down and disconnect from social media and ban political shit out your life + news ( well little news is acceptable )
Step 2: go to a gym
Step 3: talk with people around you and meet up with them, do board games or whatever with them, eat, etc etc.
Step 4: go to lots of festivals
Step 5: plan for small vacations, make pictures for yourself don't show it on social media.
Step 6: enjoy life.

Problem with youth is they compare themselves to all the fake standards on social media and constantly are riled up about shit that doesn't effect them because u gotta be outraged, they see all there friends have incredible lives which they don't have and the end result is u can never be happy. While the reality is, that other person on the other side of the screen is just as miserable as you.
 
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LordCBH

Member
Some of the reasons I have would be considered “political”, so I’ll avoid those.

But it isn’t hard to see why? The prospects for being successful like the generations before are grim. It’s borderline impossible for most people to afford homes these days, among other things.

One of the other reasons is, face to face socialization is on life support, and that’s not a good thing for the mental health of people, ESPECIALLY of younger people who are missing out on important aspects of life. All that is only being compounded by bullshit lockdowns over s virus that largely unaffected the young and otherwise healthy. We never should’ve been locked down like we were. Never.
 

Maiden Voyage

Gold™ Member
I respect this sentiment and, ultimately, agree with it. But do you think there's a threshold where, when maybe there's enough humans and enough of their bullshit on the planet that we might want to pump the procreation brakes a bit?
Yeah. Over population is probably the biggest reason for me personally.
 
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