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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Interesting article. On one hand, I agree with the premise that it’s a too pat and convenient to just blame phones, as if individuals restricting phones is the only answer. The discussion about the sharp rise in mental health issues in teens reminds me of the discussion of the sharp rise in obesity: it’s a universally recognized problem that just happened to happen to a whole bunch of people all at once, but somehow the solution is supposed to be entirely individual, and societal blame for the cause is entirely on the individual family. On the face of it, that’s logically absurd but yet we as a society are peculiarly badly suited to dealing with problems that go beyond the individual. “Teens shouldn’t be depressed and should just put down their phone” is about as ineffective a statement as “Fat people shouldn’t be fat and should just not eat junk food.” But despite the wildly obvious ineffectiveness of both those approaches to problems, it is where people reach first. I have a lot of thoughts as to why, but I think for the purpose of this post, I will agree with the author that “it’s the phones” is a spectacularly useless answer.

On the other hand, while the article is rambling and unclear on this point, one thing I strongly disagree with is the sense I get that the author seems to believe that eradication or reduction of adult-teen boundaries is a good thing that will reduce teen depression. At one point the author writes “Maybe having a professional dialectic behavioral therapist on call is less important than having a Mad Aunt around to nonjudgmentally answer weird questions.” And sure, it’s important for kids to have non-parent trusted adults in their lives. But the problem is that over and over and over, a lot of adults that step up to play that Mad Aunt role have turned out to be exploitative predators. I think a lot of today’s parents don’t want to give their kids much autonomy in the adult relationships in their lives because so many of those parents were horrifically victimized by adults themselves when they went through adolescence, but didn’t have the words to talk about it because when they were kids, that exploitation and abuse was accepted. As a society we are finally having a conversation about that, but it is still early days in acknowledging just how many current adults were the victims of predators as teens, predators they thought at the time were the “cool” adults or the author’s Mad Aunt. And this blurring of boundaries, this idea that teens should be reaching beyond the family and their parents without their parents knowing has already and is going to lead to some horrific exploitation. It’s delusional to think that places where kids are encouraged to go behind the backs of their parents for emotional support from adults are not going to draw exploitative predators like evil moths to an incredibly attractive flame. The author is rambling on this point, but this boundary-blurring is a common theme of a lot of more liberal parenting advice, and it’s one that I think is deeply problematic. [/quote]

I totally agree with all of this, except I don't understand the statement that boundary-blurring is a common theme of a lot of more liberal parenting advice. With liberal parenting advice I think you're told to do the dialectical behavioral thing rather than go to an aunt's house. That seems like a more conservative bit of parenting advice. [/quote]

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