So says The Economist about the New York Times Bestseller:
Our young people are being placated in place instead of nurtured into adulthood.
I recommend you read this book. The authors wrote an afterword in the summer of 2021 to be added to the second addition but it grew so long that the publishers balked at the cost of adding it to the second addition.
It has been a tough three years — for universities, for many Western democracies, and for humanity — as we all adapted to a pandemic, an economic crisis, and political turbulence. Our goal in this afterword is to share with you nine things we have learned in the last three years so that you can better understand and respond to the trends that may already be affecting your family, school, workplace, and country.
The afterword has nine sections:
Gen Z’s Mental Health Continues to Deteriorate
It’s Social Media—More Than Screen Time—That Matters For Mental Health
A lefty scholar leaves a progressive think thank for a conservative one.
Ruy Teixeira
So writes the Editorial Board at the Wall Street Journal. Ruy Teixeira spent many years at the Center for American Progress (CAP), a progressive Washington think tank “that provides much of the agenda for Democrats.”
But he has had enough. And is now joining the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He hasn’t changed his mind about economic or political matters. And AEI in the spirit of diversity has decided to give him a new home.
“I’m just a social democrat, man. Trying to make the world a better place.
Ruy Teixeira
"Yet he said CAP is being warped by a junior staff for whom identity politics is everything."
“It’s become very hard to have a conversation about race and gender and trans issues, even crime and immigration. You know, ‘How should the left handle these?’ There’s a default assumption about how you’re supposed to talk about these things, even the language. There’s a real chilling effect on all of these organizations.”
Ruy Teixeira
And what is the default assumption?
“It’s just cloud cuckoo land. The fact that nobody is willing to call b—, it just freaks me out.”
Ruy Teixeira
That’s because kids fresh out of college have been trained to accept everyone’s version of “truth”, especially if it emanates from a ‘marginalized’ group.
Viewpoint diversity and its expression is currently out of style in many organizations these days. More people need to be willing to speak up about cancel culture, speech codes, etc.., and question unquestionable narratives, like Gender Identity.
Erica E. Anderson, Ph.D. is the former president of the United States Professional Association for Transgender Health, former board member of WPATH and is writing a book on the evolution of the science, practice and culture dealing with transgender healthcare; she is based in Berkeley.
Erica is also a Trans-woman.
Although I would not as a Christian affirm the idea that you can be born in the wrong body, I acknowledge that some adults like Anderson may choose Transition as an option to alleviate their discomfort with the body God gave them (and their earthly father as well) 1It is the male sperm that determines whether a child is born with XX or XY chromosomes.
I would hope they would not ask me to pay for that option which includes expensive surgeries and cross-hormone therapy for the rest of their life.
Anderson, a former president of the top transgender health organization in the U.S. is highly critical of today’s trans-lobby. Anderson has written an important opinion piece in the San Francisco Examiner.
[Standard link disclaimer2Links from this blog to online resources don’t necessarily mean I support everything found there. But as adults we should embrace viewpoint diversity. And make alliances where we can.]
Some grab graphs
As a trans woman and therapist to trans and gender creative people, I’ve worked hard to advance acceptance of trans identities, including those of trans youth. But increasingly I’m worried that in our zeal to identify and protect these special children and adolescents, we may have strayed from some core principles and we are in danger of losing our way.
In this extraordinary time during a global pandemic, we have all been subject to extra stress to stay vigilant and avoid COVID and all its variants. Young people have pivoted to remote learning and stayed at home for in many cases more than an entire academic year, depriving them of ordinary social experiences. As a result, most adolescents have also depended upon social media and the internet to an extent never before seen.
We are learning some worrisome things about this massive, unplanned social experiment. Even the tech giants have conceded in their own research that there is a new kind of addiction/attraction to certain content and a kind of contagion among select groups, especially adolescent girls. Increased rates of depression and suicide, declines in dating and sexual activity, more reported loneliness and feelings of being left out, lower rates of involvement in extracurricular activities and surprisingly less sleep all characterize the current generation of adolescents. These trends seem to be accelerating in the era of the smartphone.
There is little question that reliance on screens and devices has isolated adolescents who may be most vulnerable and susceptible to peer and other influences, intensifying their usage of and reliance on whatever messages and images they see. I am concerned that our computer-mediated, always online environment is creating isolated echo chambers that can work on adolescents in an insidious way. And I believe that it’s been worse during COVID.
On the one hand, I’m glad our society has evolved toward greater acceptance of all LGBTQ identities. On the other hand, some of the messaging has landed on vulnerable youth searching not just for keys to their own identity but solutions to other psychological and emotional problems, including serious psychiatric problems.
