I was 12 when I started using Twitter (shh, don’t tell them https://venturebeat.com/2018/05/29/twitter-is-locking-out-th...)

I was 14 when I had to loan my parents some money, and was acutely aware that I would not be able to afford college.

I read the news every day and was smart enough to realize that things were not going so great (according to the news).

To say that kids are blissfully unaware of the world they are born into is just wrong. Social media makes it even more apparent.

This awareness helped me make the right decisions for myself (deciding to not go to college, for example), but I am fortunately mostly optimistic. The weight of the world crushed some of my peers.

"The things you are listing don't concern "teenagers" in their young teens, at all. They start being a problem for young adults, maybe"

That's just not true, though. I'm over 40: My first formal 'current events' portion of a social studies class happened when I was 12, IIRC. The first gulf war was the current topic.

Middle schoolers would be told now that they need to think about going to college, how doing well in high school is their only hope of a scholarship, and so on.

They know about political extremism: They just might not use those words. They might know someone that is queer and see the hate they get. Heck, they might be spewing the same hate as their parents.

They likely know about inflation even if they don't know what it is. Poverty - or even a tight budget - affects you as a child especially in the pre-teen and younger teen years. Parents stress over money, after all, and some of their peers might have struggled with homelessness, depending on where you live.

At 15, I had started to care about politics. I mean, I knew they were a thing since elementary (and the mock elections they held), but I saw how it affected me.

And of course they know about the fun things.

You probably didn't successfully forbit FB and Instagram if their friends don't use it: This is more common with younger folks than their parents. Plus, if they are out playing in the yard (Which I quit doing during middle school and there was no internet) they might be too young to care right now.

With all due respect, please don’t trivialize how the pandemic impacted youth because your family was fine.

Especially because many of their parents (if they’re fortunate enough to have both) probably lost their jobs.

What about kids who didn’t have a yard where they could play? Those whose parents lost their jobs? Those that have been evicted because their parents could not pay ever increasing rents?

Besides, living in an economy that moves from recession to recession has an impact on the mental health of their parents, especially in economies with little or non-existent safety nets (see UK and US), and I’d be very surprised if that didn’t have repercussions on their kids’ mental health.

> they aren't politicized, don't care about house prices, and don't know what "inflation" even means.

Those things are heavily affecting teenagers mental health even if they don't give a flying about them. Poverty, uncertainty, and anxiety in the family home have serious and lasting, even generational consequences.

The "I'm alright Jack"-ness of that statement is making me actually angry. You think forbidding the social media of 20yo's from your teenagers is making a difference? You put "suffered" in quotes? Gross.

>What they do know is what TikTok is, and what it means to be excluded from a Whatsapp group, and to spend hours each day wondering how they should reply to a perceived slight on some Discord channel.

>I successfully forbid FB, Instagram, Snapchat..

If exclusion is what you believe is causing them to be unhappy then forcing them to be excluded seems like an almost sadistic (though likely just misguided) response. I definitely hated when my parents did things like that.

> Mmm, what? The things you are listing don't concern "teenagers" in their young teens, at all.

Except from the very privileged, I'm pretty sure they are at least exposed to adults discussing those subjects, or at least from medias. If the volume of concerning subject is large, they will internalize it and build up some anxiety, and that will impact mental health.

recessions - see parents with less disposable income so teenages get less things global pandemic - saw a couple of years of curfew at a time when teenages thrive outside and conditioned them towards a more online life and exposed and engaging more with the news of the day rising inflation - again multiple impacts, less pocketmoney is depressing at any age housing - quality of home, shareing bed space with siblings are never helpful for anybody education getting more expensive by the day - fear of the future as teens, exams and beyond start to become more and more in focus and the prospects of life are also taking hold, can be a bummer, more so with the cultural changes of 2 years pandemic.

But many factors and to pin them upon a singular aspect is hard, also geographic and more so financial backgrounds play a factor that needs to be eliminated to see a more common root cause.

But hey, social media since Elon brought twitter a seen a resurgance in news about it, so more and more social media focus aspects will pop up and been a lot of ongoing debate and concerns on rollover for a while now as is.

As an anicdote how things have changed, a friend in his mid 40's was at some event and found some marbels so was playing a game with another friend for nostagia and some teens came up asking why you throwing stones about - as they had never seen marbles, let alone played it. Yet for decades and decades prior, everybody would instantly recognise marbles. Times change, not saying people who grow up playing marbles less prone to mental health. You find everybody has some aspect and there own coping ways.

Perhaps it may well be a case that we are looking into things like mental health more in a more detailed way and then looking at patterns of our times. After all, earthquakes have increased but equally the sensors in play to measure them have also increased so you have to balance out the more you see and compare to seeing less with less in the past very varefully as easy to see patterns that may not be there and come to conclusions.

After all, TikTok has been around less than any teenager era, let alone generatioins to get a clear picture.

But then, isn't social media for many mental health issues across generations, with it's echo chamber avenues and bombardment of all you care or dislike, it can be a dangerous rabbit hole for an angry or angst mind of any age.

But your approach to block it, safest and smartest way, like keys to the house - you need to have trust built before you let them loose and until then, block. Worse case they will educate themselves in how to get around the block.

Of course they didn't suffer during the Covid lockdowns. Only those who obsessively consumed news and social media suffered.