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540 points drankl | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.224s | source
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parpfish ◴[] No.44485690[source]
Decades ago in my first abnormal psych course, the prof warned us that there was an almost iron-clad law that students will immediately start self diagnosing themselves with “weak” versions of every disorder we learn about. In my years since then, it has absolutely held true and now is supercharged by a whole industry of TikTok self-diagnoses.

But there are a few things we can learn from this:

- if you give people the chance to place a label on themselves that makes them feel unique, they’ll take it.

- if you give people the chance to place a label on themselves to give a name/form to a problem, they’ll take it.

- most mental disorders are an issue of degree and not something qualitatively different from a typical experience. People should use this to gain greater empathy for those who struggle.

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Aurornis ◴[] No.44485973[source]
> - if you give people the chance to place a label on themselves to give a name/form to a problem, they’ll take it.

This one is widespread among the young people I’ve worked with recently. It’s remarkable how I can identify the current TikTok self diagnosis trends without ever watching TikTok.

There’s a widespread belief that once you put a label on a problem, other people are not allowed to criticize you for it. Many young people lean into this and label everything as a defensive tactic.

A while ago, one of the trends was “time blindness”. People who were chronically late, missed meetings, or failed to manage their time would see TikToks about “time blindness” as if it was a medical condition, and self-diagnose as having that.

It was bizarre to suddenly have people missing scheduled events and then casually informing me that they had time blindness, as if that made it okay. Once they had a label for a condition, they felt like they had a license to escape accountability.

The most frustrating part was that the people who self-diagnosed as having “time blindness” universally got worse at being on time. Once they had transformed the personal problem into a labeled condition, they didn’t feel as obligated to do anything about it.

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BiteCode_dev ◴[] No.44487357[source]
I think after a few expressions of time blindness, they'll discover that their contracts have continuity deficiency and their career vertical expression challenges.

The feedback of reality will fix it, like for all young people.

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FirmwareBurner ◴[] No.44487762[source]
>The feedback of reality will fix it, like for all young people.

"A child who isn't disciplined at home, will be disciplined outside of the home" - old African proverb.

The issue is kids growing up without being taught accountability, but instead that they're perpetual victims of "the system" created by evil old white men, and therefore nothing they do is ever their fault. This is the fault of the parents, school system and society as a whole who coddles kids giving them the false sense of security that they can always have their way, right until they hit the brick wall of adulthood featuring employment, bills, debt, responsibilities and self sufficiency.

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dgb23 ◴[] No.44489697[source]
I've seen this kind of thing and it annoys me to no end. However that seems to be a small minority among many.

But the majority of young adults are rightfully asking hard questions.

Why should they suffer the consequences of political and corporate mismanagement ? Why is accountability rarely invoked when it comes to people in power? Why is it OK for old disgruntled people to yell at them for things they have nothing to do with? Why should they take us seriously if we don't take them seriously?

Again, I agree with you that some are hiding behind these things in order to deflect blame, but let's not pretend that the young don't have every right to be mad at us.

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1. nradov ◴[] No.44495578[source]
Who is "us"? Youths are welcome to get as mad as they like but seething with impotent rage and posting hot takes on social media isn't going to get them anywhere. If they want to improve the world then first they'll have to work hard and pay their dues just like every other generation before them.

Or they could try to start a revolution, but frankly most of them are too weak and fragile to attempt anything that involves real sacrifice and risk.