They seriously underestimate their daughters’ distress
Miranda Green in the Financial Times points out a disquieting statistic.
[N]ews this week that one in four 14-year-old girls (and one in 10 boys of the same age) are experiencing the symptoms of depression should detain us.
I think the fact that far more 14-year-old girls than boys are experiencing the symptoms of depression should detain us a good deal longer.
It may be tempting to dismiss today’s adolescent moods, blithely, as something we have all endured. But the sources of young people’s anxiety seem to have changed quite fundamentally as growing up migrates online. The worst cases have serious real-world consequences. One MP told me of a visit from a family who wanted help to move not just out of the local school, but out of London completely. Images of their daughter, aged 13, engaged in what used to be called heavy petting, had been shared so widely that the neighbourhood had become a hostile environment.
Ah there it is. Images of a boy engaged in sexual activity don’t trash his life the way such images do a girl’s. It’s almost as if the double standard is not one bit less double than it ever was, decades of feminism notwithstanding.
“Teenagers live their life more in public,” ponders Justine Brian, director of schools at the education support network Civitas: “They are always one Snapchat picture or Facebook post away from someone slagging them off.” She and I shared the peculiar frustration of judging a debating competition for secondary schools, supposedly on a motion about fake news. It instead unleashed a torrent of anxiety from the teenagers about managing their online personas. Our attempts to steer the sixth formers back on to the topic failed — they were possessed, as Ms Brian puts it, by “the idea that something terrible might happen online at age 16 and the rest of your life is ruined”.
And they’re not wrong – it might and it could be.
This week’s report, part of government-funded longitudinal studies, shows that parents are no good at working out what is going on: they overestimate how depressed and anxious their sons feel, and seriously underestimate their daughters’ distress.
Decades of feminism, and still we don’t get it.
And failure to get help at this age could lead to long term consequences. If my parents had recognized my serious depression, and noticed my anorexia and attempts at self-harm, perhaps I would have been able to have accomplished much more of what I wanted in life, instead of spending most of my 30s locked in a dark room hiding from the world. Now I still struggle to find the right way to live in the world.
I hope those girls get the help they need (and the boys too). No one should have to go through life like that. There are already too many of us in dark rooms.
This is what makes much of the mockery over “triggers” and “snowflakes” so infuriating. Different people have differing levels of stress tolerance and vulnerability to developing mental illness which is the result of genetic inheritance and their life experiences (especially childhood stress/trauma). That’s not in their direct control. Yes, developing emotional resilience is important, but A) it requires laborious, sustained effort, which mood/anxiety disorders make extremely difficult, B) the world doesn’t wait until you’re ready; each moment spent developing resilience is a moment not spent actually living and C) it isn’t made easier by the constant mockery and derision from belligerent strangers. Maybe it wouldn’t be necessary to have such thick skin if there were fewer pugnacious pricks in the world whose primary source of amusement was the humiliation of others.
“perhaps I would have been able to have accomplished much more of what I wanted in life, instead of spending most of my 30s locked in a dark room hiding from the world. Now I still struggle to find the right way to live in the world.”
Ditto. That’s where I am now. Long-term mood/anxiety disorders leave a giant black hole where life ought to occur, and it’s especially disastrous when they devour what are considered one’s most productive years.
iknklast and Andrew B. – seconded, or thirded. My school (which had me there on scholarship) actually tried to help me. My Mum explained to them that it was ‘demons’.
“Maybe it wouldn’t be necessary to have such thick skin if there were fewer pugnacious pricks in the world whose primary source of amusement was the humiliation of others.”
It certainly doesn’t help that one of those pugnacious pricks currently occupies the Oval Office. His boorishness and misogyny normalizes boorishness and misogyny. He is a role model for abusive assholes everywhere. He’s done his bit to weaponise online shaming and abuse, has millions of followers and won the presidency to boot. Melania’s anti-bullying campaign should begin right there.