One of the hallmarks of great literature is that it reminds readers that their feelings have already been felt, their despair suffered, and their hopes shared by people across time and place. In other words, they’re normal. One of the hallmarks of social media is that it teaches users that they’re not.
“You don’t have a crush,” a viral post on X reads. “You have attachment issues and someone is giving you attention.”
Your ex isn’t a jerk; he’s a narcissist. You aren’t distractible because you check your phone every five minutes; you have ADHD. You’re not thinking about what has to be done around the house; you’re carrying the mental load.
On social media, from X to TikTok, pathologies abound. Users are neurodivergent, autistic, or suffering from trauma. They are experiencing trauma dumping, codependency, and gaslighting.
You name a normal human emotion or experience, and TikTok has a new word for it. This isn’t to say that none of these labels is appropriate. But as diagnoses of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder rise and people rebrand “having a crush” as “having attachment issues,” it’s worth wondering what exactly is happening.
Skeptic Research Center sheds some light on this trend with an eye-opening finding: “72% of [Gen Z] women and 67% of [Gen Z] men agreed that ‘mental health challenges are an important part of my identity,’” per survey results collected in September.
Members of Generation Z are adolescents and adults, aged 12 through 27. For comparison, baby boomers are the least likely to agree with the statement that their mental health and identities are linked, with just 27% of boomer men and 34% of women saying so.
Today’s young people are more vocal about their mental health than any generation before them, yet they also seem to be suffering the most, belying their apparent belief that an ever-present discussion of these mental health problems is likely to improve them.
Abigail Shrier discusses this in her book Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up, which came out earlier this year. Parents are putting their children in therapy, thinking it can only have an upside. In fact, Shrier says, focusing on their own problems and worries may be making some children worse. “Parents who follow the therapists’ direction and embrace their children’s despair breathe life into the monster under the bed,” she writes.
Shrier also emphasizes how popular identifying with a disorder has become. “Teens today so profoundly identify with [their] diagnoses,” she writes, “they display them in social media profiles, alongside a picture and family name.”
Gen Z is attached to its attachment problems, its mental health struggles, and its “therapy-speak,” the type of diagnostic language that has left the therapist’s office, or Zoom screen, and entered our everyday lexicon.
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There are many reasons young people report more depression and anxiety than previous generations, from climate fearmongering in their classrooms to Big Pharma dispensing Xanax like candy. But one key reason is that they want to fit in. If everyone is talking about their mental health problems, you don’t want to be the one with a boring, neurotypical brain.
The good news for Gen Z is that they’re already normal in that they’re not alone in experiencing human suffering. Rather than go to therapy or pop an anti-anxiety pill, most could benefit from simply picking up a book — preferably by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
