Are We Teaching Young People How to Be Depressed?
In the Coddling of the American Mind, First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt talk about how what they call “reverse CBT” has woven itself into American childhood and education. They call it reverse CBT because CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) is designed to correct faulty (i.e. untrue) thinking when people are depressed in order to help heal from depression. Unfortunately, current ways of thinking amongst young people–especially young progressives–does the reverse. There is a promotion, by current child-rearing practices, cultural tropes, liberal arts colleges, and social media, of faulty ways of thinking that causes young people to become depressed and anxious. This way of thinking has also caused a rise in intolerance, cancel culture, estrangements, echo chambers, and hate-crimes.
Lukianoff and Haidt have identified what they call three Great Untruths as central to this reverse CBT:
- What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker,
- Always trust your feelings, and
- Life is a battle between good people and evil people.
As they say in their book, these untruths are incompatible with basic psychological principles and ancient wisdom from many cultures, they interfere with healthy development, and they make navigating life, complex issues, and relationships impossible. They are harmful psychologically and they shut down the possibility of constructive, thoughtful, conversation. In other words, in order to be healthy in life and relationships we have to be able to work through feelings that emerge when we hear or see difficult things, understand that our feelings are not the same thing as facts, and gain the insight that people are never simply good or evil–we are complex and nuanced.
The authors look at many causes of this phenomenon, including the rise of fearful parenting, decline of unsupervised play, the new world of social media in which young people are engulfed, and others. I believe that the pandemic may also have played a part–a generation of young people had their lives, and thus their development) disrupted and became isolated from a diversity of thought and experiences.
The causes are well-worth looking into in our quest for better mental health for young people. The truth is, difficult experiences and feelings aren’t just unavoidable, they are necessary for healthy development. We all have to learn that we can survive difficulty, our feelings are never the whole story, and, most importantly, good people sometimes cause harm and people who cause harm can also have good in them. Others may not share our values or beliefs, but we can still learn from them. All of this is necessary to create an experience of mental health, resilience, hope, and, maybe most importantly, a better world.