Quote:
Originally Posted by tophcfa
Guns have been around forever, but the problem at hand has grown very bad much more recently. Connect the dots, these shootings have increased exponentially along with the growth of social media.
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^^^This. There has been a significant increase in mental health problems amongst teens (and the general population as well). A normal, mentally stable person will never (or extremely rarely) just go out and kill people.
I don't recall the article but the author stated that teens today, because of social media, spend an exorbitant amount of time maintaining their identities than past generations. It used to be kids would only have to maintain their identity during the 7–8 hours they were in school. Now, it is almost 24/7. The level of anxiety this produces is enormous and one wrong post, picture, or video can haunt a kid for a very long time. In someways, I empathize with them because I didn't have to deal with that when I was a teenager.
This problem with identity stems from what Charles Taylor, the Canadian philosopher, called "expressive individualism". It's the idea that you are what you feel on the inside and that society or culture cannot place boundaries on individual expression. It's no longer "individual liberty" but "individual sovereignty". It's the water we swim in today and why we are so fragmented and so full of anxiety.
It would take me too long to connect the dots in this post but they are connected...