By Samson Shen
The Crisis
Our generation has access to more technology and knowledge than any generation before us. We have the ability to communicate across the world in an instant, pursue jobs and careers that didn’t even exist a decade ago, and have the freedom to express ourselves in any way we desire on platforms that could potentially reach millions of different people. And yet, despite all of this supposed connection, there seems to be this growing sense of emptiness that comes along with it.
In the headlines and on the news, we often hear these terms, “youth mental health crisis,” “suicide contagion,” “meaning crisis” and “loneliness epidemic.” There really does seem to be a widespread struggle among young people to find purpose, direction, and fulfillment in their lives.
In an October 2024 study done by the Harvard Graduate School of Education, 21% of respondents reported feeling lonely, including 24% of young adults aged 18-29. The study finds that “high numbers of respondents reported existential loneliness, for instance, 65% of lonely adults reported feeling fundamentally disconnected from others or the world and 63% reported their place in the world does not feel important or relevant.”
A 2023 CDC report shows that the suicide rate among people aged 10–24 increased 62% from 2007 through 2021, from 6.8 deaths per 100,000 to 11.0 per 100,000. The CDC also states that “suicide is the second leading cause of death for this age group, accounting for 7,126 deaths.” Youth and young adults also have high rates of emergency department visits for self-harm where, in 2020, the ED visit rate for this age group was 354.4 per 100,000, compared with 128.9 per 100,000 among middle-aged adults ages 35-64 years.
And globally, a 2021 report from UNICEF concluded that more than 13% of adolescents aged 10-19 live with a diagnosed mental disorder and that suicide is the fourth and third leading cause of death for young people aged 15-19.
So why is this happening? What has changed so drastically in just the past couple of decades?
The Social Media Crux
There are obviously a bunch of factors in play that I actually think all tie in together with each other and especially with social media and technology. But wait, according to a 2022 Pew Research poll, only 9% of US teens believe that social media is mostly negative to them personally, and for the 32% of teens that believe social media to be mostly positive, they cite connectedness and socializing as their main reason.
Social media is a broad category and this is why I want to split it into two because using social media to talk and connect with friends is much different than using social media to consume content. For example, giving someone your Instagram handle and directly messaging them is a way of socializing and connecting with someone. In comparison, watching TikToks or YouTube videos is a way of consuming content. In this same Pew Research survey, these same teens say that social media is more negative to people their age than to them personally. I think this presents the distinction that I’ve made regarding social media as a category.
The internet in of itself can not be described as harmful or beneficial as it is merely a tool. It can be used in a beneficial or harmful way. In the same way, a hammer can be used to create benefits or harm, but in of itself isn’t inherently either. The 32% of teens that say that social media is mostly positive to themself, use social media as a way where they can learn new information and socialize with new people. However, these teens most likely recognize that not everyone is able to do this.
The Perpetual Open Door
In a little bit of a brief swerve from the current topic (but it isn’t really), I want to bring up a 2024 Politico survey asking 1,400 clinicians on what they believe to be the driving factor in mental health issues in the youth. It concluded that there is a consensus that social media drives these issues. But I wanted to actually focus on what came second place: “External events outside their control, such as school shootings, climate change, war and political instability”.
I believe that “external events outside of our control” and social media are directly connected, because of the internet’s ability to constantly remind us of these external events that are beyond our control. The news and social media always show us terrible events such as school shootings, natural disasters, war, economic instability and political polarization, around the world, forcing us to recognize that not only are there so many aspects of our life and future that are uncontrollable, but that there is needless and heinous suffering everywhere in the world.
Social media is an open door for the youth to walk into and what’s on the other side constitutes an eye-opener for many children. The constant feed and content we consume is littered with these terrible events around the country and the world. Take the average American teen from the 1990s before the World Wide Web was commonplace. This teen is completely removed from the suffering of others in the world. Sure, this teen could hear about events such as the Rwandan Genocide, read about it in the newspaper or even see grotesque pictures on TV, but they are not constantly reminded about this event every day. It’s similar to someone knowing that children get murdered in war, and then seeing the corpse on the internet or seeing the broken families, listening to their stories.
Imagine a 14 year old child opening up X - formerly known as Twitter - and seeing videos and pictures of these horrific world events. Now imagine every day, on YouTube or TikTok, they continue to see more and more human suffering. In a sense, for a teen nowadays, seeing such needless suffering in the world has to provide some sort of introspection. If the suffering I see is meaningless, then what about my own suffering? These existential thoughts can quickly spiral into depression, anxiety and a sense of passive nihilism, which is what we are seeing in today’s youth.
Pragmatic Dread
But it doesn’t have to be existential. External events also include practical aspects such as getting a good job, a family, or a house. A 2021 Pew Research survey showed that a vast majority of youth adults believe that their financial situation is extremely more difficult than previous generations. These hardships are well known within our generation and the youth which means that existential dread combined with pragmatic hardships are pushing youth into a darker place. So what is the solution to all of this?
Founding Meaning
For those who follow philosophy, the existential and practical dread that the youth face sounds very reminiscent of Søren Kierkegaard’s concept of angst, which is a paralyzing yet transformative awareness of freedom, possibility, and the burden of choice in the face of life’s uncertainty and the absence of inherent meaning. The internet’s “perpetual open door” bombards the youth with limitless possibilities and limitless horrors, exacerbating what Kirekegaard would call existential dizziness. So what was his solution to this problem? A leap of faith.
The Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Survey, released in February of this year, revealed that 46% of young adults aged 18-24 identify as Christian, with only 27% praying daily and 25% attending religious services at least monthly. Compare these figures to those of people aged 74 and older, where 80% identify as Christian, 58% pray daily, and 49% attend religious services at least monthly. It is often said that religion as a whole, whether Christianity or others, brings a sense of direct purpose to life, as the existence of God implies that life has objective meaning bestowed by Him. So yes, it does seem to me, as an agnostic (call me an atheist without a backbone if you so desire), that this recent decline in religious faith and its institutions is contributing to the youth-meaning crisis. Although correlation is not causation, I cannot deny that, despite my skepticism toward the metaphysical claims of religion, the practical benefits of a life with the direction, morals, community, philanthropy and existential grounding that religion offers, could help the youth who are adrift and feel as if they are stumbling through life. Reviving our religious communities to play a larger role in our lives could help alleviate this crisis, as suffering can be imbued with purpose, and faith provides both comfort and a sense of agency for selflessness.
So for the fellow skeptics who are unable to fully embrace religion for whatever reason but still share my appreciation for it, I offer an alternative. Instead of wallowing in despair or falling into the pits of passive nihilism regarding the lack of action in, for instance, diminishing world suffering, one can construct meaning in their life by, crudely speaking, doing something about it. Religion might offer scaffolding for meaning that’s harder to construct alone but for you, there isn’t a need to find some grand, objective meaning to life. It’s about creating meaning through our actions as actions are themselves meaningful despite there being no objective foundation. Instead of taking a spyglass and searching the depths of human nature for a deep objective meaning, I wish to think that meaning is not found, but is built brick by brick. If it is true that there is no foundation, then we build our own so whether you leap toward God or build your own foundation, the act itself defies despair.
This Op-ed reflects the views and opinions of the writer, not Westwood Review as a whole.