Have in risk-taking behaviours, such as binge-drinking, caused Zoomers to become depressed?

No.

Why are Zoomers drinking less? Bc they’re socialising less

https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1285156158345535488?s=20

Zoomers are lonelier than previous cohorts & this is partly why they’re more depressed imo https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1321373727251144704

So the question should turn to why Zoomers are lonelier & why they are socialising less.

My thoughts? our leisure time has trended towards becoming more & more individualised since the invention of the radio & TV - TV was the villain at the heart of Robert Putnams’s ‘Bowling Alone’ lest we forget & that book was written 20 years ago.

But since the intro of the internet & the iPhone & advances in gaming this process of individualised leisure has accelerated. Read Erik Hurst’s (no relation) paper ‘Video Called the Radio Star.’ But I dont think this is the only thing going on.

We have less children than we used to. Boomers were more likely to have more siblings & more cousins. Hard to be lonely when you have about ten million cousins. This is much less likely for Zoomers. They’re more likely to have 0 siblings or maybe 1 & less cousins than Boomers did

We have less children than we used to. Our leisure time is much more individualised than it used to be &, yes, Haidt has a point about the rise of ‘safetyism’ (read his last book ‘The Coddling of the American Mind’) being a contributing factor to all this too imo.

& when you socialise less & stay in the house more you end up exercising less & eating more food, growing fat. The mountain of evidence pointing to the anti-depressant effect of exercise is humungous.

Kids/adolescents need to be outside more but for a variety of different reasons they are stuck inside more and consequently they end up fatter & more depressed.

The rise of the car is part of this & the decline of cycling. There are lots of factors that have contributed to this situation, its not just one thing, but the main takeaway is this: kids/adolescents need to be outside more, they are stuck inside FAR too much.

Recurrent self-harm is a separate issue. Thats more related to child maltreatment.

‘Be not lonely, be not idle.’

That was Robert Burton’s summation of his ‘Anatomy of Melancholy’ written nearly 400 years ago.

He was right then & he’s right still.