Bad Parenting, Not Social Media, Causes Mentally Disturbed Youths
We recently had a dismaying spectacle of demagogic, ignorant or illogical senators blaming social media for our mentally disturbed youth instead of blaming incompetent parenting. There can be no doubt that 99.999% of troubled youths are the result of bad parenting by incompetent parents, who are also most probably mentally disturbed. The scientific research and statistics the senators cited, showing a correlation between psychologically disturbed youths and their following social media, should be seen as coincident indicators, not causal indicators. Rigorous counter-research would no doubt show that all youths with good parenting are psychologically well-adjusted and never become mentally disturbed by following social media.
There is no way youths brought up by competent, truly loving (but not permissive!), psychologically well-adjusted parents will ever become mentally disturbed by social media, or by violent video games for that matter. Or become drug addicts. That’s just common sense and logic, which many of our citizens sorely lack. The statistics relied upon by the senators most certainly did not investigate whether the troubled youths had competent parenting. Those statistics must be reviewed to reflect the quality of parenting they received. The results would undoubtedly absolve social media from causing mentally disturbed youths, and violent video games from causing violent youths. The results would also absolve foreign drug smugglers from causing addiction, clearly indicating that the real cause is bad parenting. Do psychologically well-adjusted youths ever end up becoming addicts? Of course not.
The reason blaming social media and video games for causing mentally disturbed youths is so widespread, as well as blaming Chinese and Mexican drug smugglers for causing fentanyl addiction, is that most Americans do not want to acknowledge that bad parenting is the problem, that many American parents are incompetent parents, probably due to their own psychological problems. The American way is to blame others, not parents, for their children’s emotional problems. Blaming parents is taboo, especially for demagogic politicians who are only interested in votes and are therefore reluctant to alienate voting parents. Much better to blame Facebook and video game producers, and foreign drug smugglers. But banning social media and violent video games will not result in fewer mentally disturbed youths, nor will getting rid of foreign drug smugglers result in fewer drug addicts or alcoholics.
Youths with psychological problems preexisted social media and violent video games. Addicts and alcoholics predated foreign drug smugglers. The real cause of increasing numbers of mentally disturbed youths over the past 20 years is not social media or violent video games. Rather, the real cause is the increasing number of incompetent and mentally disturbed parents. That in turn is partly because of a much more complicated and alienating society which undereducated parents and youths have difficulty navigating. The problem is that all too many of our public schools are very mediocre and have deficient curriculums. The sustainable solution is preventive measures, mainly having excellent public schools with an enlightened curriculum, one which specifically includes four-year psychology courses in every single high school accompanied by group therapy and good parenting workshops. Also essential are four-year high-school courses in logic, critical thinking, and empathy. It is pathetic that we do not have such high school courses now, and have never had them. That reflects an undereducated society, with undereducated politicians.
The common refrain of “teach a hungry man to fish, don’t give him a fish” applies to our society, burdened by many mentally disturbed citizens of all ages and much poverty. The reason we have severe social problems is that all too many of our public schools are mediocre and have not given our youths the tools to successfully deal with life. We must urgently upgrade our public schools so that they are as good as the best private schools, and run like the best private schools, meaning strict class discipline, school uniforms, lots of homework and study hall, individual attention for students having academic or psychological difficulties, and an enlightened curriculum. The current curriculum of all public schools, even the best ones, is sorely deficient.
An enlightened high school curriculum would include the following four-year courses: 1) psychology (taught in conjunction with group therapy and good parenting workshops); 2) economics/finance/investing, putting mainstream theories to the test of statistical correlation and rigorous logic; 3) detailed, analytic 20th and 21st Century world history; 4) history of art/architecture/design; 5) history of music; 6) the United Nations’ Charter and its Universal Declaration of Human Rights; 7) the world history of human rights violations; 8) comparative religion studied through direct, analytic readings of the holy books along with the history of the major religions; 9) logic, critical thinking, and media literacy, with case studies; 10) ethics and empathy, manners and individual responsibility, with case studies; 11) foreign languages and cultures; 12) introductory and Constitutional law; 13) Latin; 14) the major mistakes in economic, social, and foreign policy of the past 100 years in the United States, Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, and which would have been the correct policies. 15) marketing and advertising; 16) discussion of current affairs, domestic and foreign, as reported by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other prestigious newspapers. (I personally would have greatly benefited from such a high school curriculum, getting an invaluable head start in understanding the world in all its complexities. How about you?) For uniformity of public school excellence nationwide, we need an enlightened, ambitious national core curriculum along with a prestigious national high school graduation exam.
Had the above public high school reform been implemented fifty years ago, today we would have citizens with a much higher cultural level (of crucial importance, even transformative), hardly any poverty, addiction, violence (including gun violence), crime, social strife, political strife, racism and other violations of human rights, dishonesty, unwanted pregnancies. We would have very few mentally disturbed citizens. With educational parity at a uniformly high level, integration would have progressed naturally and not been met by the widespread resistance which occurred with government enforced integration. We would have no budget deficits or accumulated federal debt. We would have much lower tax rates. We would have widespread economic and social prosperity. There would have been no January 6. Our politicians would be much more qualified and honest, only running for office because they had real, intelligent, knowledgeable solutions, not superficial, demagogic, hypocritical, nonsensical solutions, as is and has been all too often the case. How can we continue to not require high knowledge and character standards for all our political candidates? How can we continue to allow undereducated candidates to run for office? Why do we not require political candidates to obtain a prestigious graduate degree on economic, social, and foreign policy before running?
The political choice and commitment to make sure every single public school provides a truly excellent education to every single youth should be unanimously understood as the right choice. If we are to finally eliminate our severe social problems, we must get rid of denial and hypocrisy, and stop blaming others. Rather, we must start blaming ourselves and squarely face the ugly truth. And then we must have the will and commitment to adopt logical, effective solutions.
© Edward Sonnino 2024
February 5, 2024
