Opinion: We often spend too much time eliminating discrete sources of harm rather than creating supportive environments.
One of my earliest memories is being dropped off for a birthday party at the home of Mame O’Neill one summer afternoon. There were dozens of kids there, running about the lawn. I remember lots of balloons, some cake and ice cream. Mostly I remember the confusion of it all, not quite sure why I was there or what I was supposed to be doing.
People are also reading… We talk a great deal today about the negative impacts of traumatic experiences on children, and we should never underestimate the lasting harm that incidents of abuse, bullying, taunting and ridicule can do to a child’s self-regard. But I’m not sure we fully appreciate the importance that certain kinds of positive experiences play in building up a child’s confidence.
One clue to the paradox is a study showing that liberal teens are much more likely to experience depression than conservative teens. This makes sense, because as Matthew Yglesias pointed out in a recent column discussing this study, “the people who run progressive institutions have cultivated this depressive mindset” as a way to achieve political goals.
As Jonathan Haidt has pointed out, reports of depression, anxiety and self-harm among teens has been trending sharply upward since 2011, which is coincident with the availability of smartphones and the widespread adoption of social media apps, particularly Instagram. There is so much from the liberal point of view that is problematic about Mame singing “Jesus Loves Me” to children: religious indoctrination, going unsupervised into the home of a stranger, the message that children need a strong male protector. Yet, I do not know how you remove everything problematic from a community without tearing apart the fabric that comprises it.
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