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Criminalizing the Disease of Addiction is Wrong Approach
As reported by apple.news/AboIG8hxxRZ-, an NBC news story indicates that 38% of the school districts in the US will be doing some kind of screening for drugs, up from 25% a year ago. At the same time the money being spent on prevention programs at the elementary level is declining. The bottom line is that we have decided to spend scarce dollars on law enforcement instead of spending it on medical prevention. This same approach is also being used to address the issue of school shootings where we are devoting billions to hardening schools to protect students from alienated outsiders while slashing budgets for student services. Fear is a potent force and protecting children from bogeymen is a powerful narrative. We need to use medical science and data to guide our decision making… not fear and compelling stories.
Suicide Rates, Suicide Ideation, and Depression Rates Are Higher…. and so is Cell Phone Use
A recent article in Philly Voice by Jeanne Twenge, Professor of Psychology at San Diego State University, provides data supporting her assertion and that of many of her colleagues that the mental health problems among today’s youth are skyrocketing. Among the facts she presents:
The National Survey on Drug Use and Health, administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services… surveyed over 600,000 Americans. Recent trends are startling.
From 2009 to 2017, major depression among 20- to 21-year-olds more than doubled, rising from 7 percent to 15 percent. Depression surged 69 percent among 16- to 17-year-olds. Serious psychological distress, which includes feelings of anxiety and hopelessness, jumped 71 percent among 18- to 25-year-olds from 2008 to 2017. Twice as many 22- to 23-year-olds attempted suicide in 2017 compared with 2008, and 55 percent more had suicidal thoughts. The increases were more pronounced among girls and young women. By 2017, one out of five 12- to 17-year-old girls had experienced major depression in the previous year.
Ms. Twenge dismissed the idea that these data were the result of survey respondents being more forthcoming, noting that the increase in the percentages in the surveys is matched by a corresponding increase in admissions to hospitals and actual suicides. She also dismissed “the usual suspects”: the bad economy and joblessness (the economy improved during that time period); and the opioid epidemic, which affected those over 25 much more than those younger than that cut-off. So… what’s the cause? Ms. Twenge posits it is social media:
…there was one societal shift over the past decade that influenced the lives of today’s teens and young adults more than any other generation: the spread of smartphones and digital media like social media, texting and gaming.
While older people use these technologies as well, younger people adopted them more quickly and completely, and the impact on their social lives was more pronounced. In fact, it has drastically restructured their daily lives.
Compared with their predecessors, teens today spend less time with their friends in person and more time communicating electronically, which study after study has found is associated with mental health issues.
What is the fix? Person-to-person engagement would make a huge difference, but even more important would be some direct instruction on how to communicate civilly and compassionately with each other. My personal observation with social media like FaceBook is that putting people down seems to be a default means of communicating with friends… particularly when the person being put down is universally seen as despicable by your group of friends. It is not hard to see how a middle school or high school student could feel diminished if they became the butt of jokes on line.
Another fix would be to explain to students who use social media that the metrics they use are unimportant in the cosmic scheme and that even the happiest and most exciting “friends” you read about on line experience sadness and depression at some point. On FaceBook everyone is having awesome experiences… which can be depressing if your experience consists of reading social media posts about classmates who seem more glamorous, more attractive, more adventurous, and more popular than you are. When your impact on-line is measured by “likes” and the number of “friends” you have it can be depressing if no one reacts to your posts or accepts you as a friend when you ask.
Maybe the best fix would be to limit one’s time on Facebook to, say, 15 minutes per day and to block anyone whose posts you find aggravating or make you depressed. Instead of using the phone to connect on-line and read about the fabulous lifestyles of classmates, students might use it for FaceTime to engage in face-to-face conversation with friends … it isn’t the same as being with friends “in person”… but that virtual contact is FAR superior to the delusional world one reads about on FaceBook.
Artificial Intelligence, Robots, Mental Health and Well Being, and the Limits of Efficiency
As a Buddhist practitioner, a retired educator who witnessed the expansion of technology in public education, and a blogger who has “efficiency is the enemy” as a tag, I was drawn to a Medium interview by Brian Walsh titled “The Chinese Buddhist Billionaire Who Wants to Fix Your Brain“. This billionaire in question is Chen Tianqiao who founded the online gaming company Shanda in 1999 and cashed in a decade later in large measure because he had a cancer scare, multiple panic attacks, and a sense that his life had no meaning.
The article opens with a response to a question that offers a brief biographical sketch of Mr. Tianqiao, which also includes an overview of his perspective of Buddhism.
Mr. Walsh follows with a series of questions that yield some thought-provoking insights. His response to one of the questions posed by Mr. Walsh was particularly compelling:
Right now we teach machines only one value statement: efficiency. The machine optimizes the efficient. The machine always knows how to quickly find the best way. But if the machine ruled the world, it must say, “Kill all the old men and sick people because of their weight on resources,” right? So we have to teach the machines fairness and compassion. But how do we do that when we don’t know how to define them?
Later Mr. Walsh explores Mr. Tianqiao’s ideas on the relationship between technology and our general well being… and Mr. Tianqiao’s perspective is that technology is outpacing humanity’s adaptability and that, in turn, is leading to an increase in mental health problems.. including suicides.
You have a phone in your hand that can connect you to anyone. You can get a thing done in one minute that 10 or 20 years ago would have taken you a month. This is the pace we live at now. But I believe people have a limitation on their capacity for connection. You don’t know how to handle these relationships. The speed of information. There’s so much information flooding into your brain, and your brain has to judge yes or no, because more and more people, with the help of a blast from technology, they also have a voice. There are so many different views flooding in your brain, and you have to judge what you like, what you want.
I say you run too fast. I cannot chase you. I just want you to stop. I want to stop you, right? This is technology. But we cannot just stop.
The article concludes with this question about the future of technology and Mr. Tianqiao’s somewhat pessimistic response response:
Ultimately, do you feel optimistic about the direction we’re going with technology and the brain? Do you think we’ll be able to make ourselves fitter and happier?
I cannot find an answer to this. That’s why I’m a little pessimistic. I think there are so many problems that are generated by technology. What I can do is try to use scientific ways to mitigate the possible consequence of that technology. But if we don’t do that, it could lead to very bad consequences.
When I gave money to an American university [CalTech], the Chinese media criticized me. But I think the current debate or current conflict is not between the people of one country and the people of another. This is our humanity.
In an era of tariff wars, the dissolution of longstanding alliances that stabilized relationships among relatively free countries, and the opportunities for technology moguls to make billions it is east to share Mr. Tianqiao’s pessimism… here’s hoping we can all see the our humanity is at stake as we continue expaning our use of technology.
Vote even if you think it doesn’t matter…. and be grateful you still can!
Network Schools - Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for 