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March 9th, 2023 
Awake Goy
According to research, liberal kids are more likely to experience depression than conservative children. Left-wing blogger Matthew Yglesias said that this trend may be a result of “bad conduct by adult progressives, many of whom now valorize melancholy affect as a sign of political devotion.”
Why Are Young Liberals So Depressed? is an article by Yglesias, co-founder and previous writer for the left-leaning Vox and current columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. The article looks at recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States that reveal alarming rates of sadness and depression among American teenagers, as well as data from another study that looks at the levels of depression among American teens by political affiliation.
The CDC poll doesn’t question teenagers about their political views, but the study discovered differences by political ideology in addition to gender. According to their analysis of the data by gender and ideology, liberal girls see the greatest rise in depressed symptoms, whilst conservative boys experience the least. Yet, conservative females are less sad than liberal boys, indicating a crucial independent function for political ideology.
Despite the importance of researching how technology and social media affect teenagers, Yglesias asserted that he does not “believe that liberal boys are experiencing more depression than conservative girls because they are disproportionately hung up on Instagram-induced body image issues — I think there’s also something specific to politics going on.”
Progressive politics have allegedly become “a more comfortable home for individuals who are miserable,” according to Yglesias, who gave some of the blame to what he called the “selection effect.”
Yet I believe that adult progressives, many of whom now value melancholy affect as a sign of political commitment, are also to blame for this bad conduct. But the problem with depression is that it hurts,” he added. “…I believe that some form of cognitive behavioral therapy at the level of society is necessary to persuade individuals that depression is not the solution to their problems, no matter what they may be. As a result, it never is.
The claim made by left-leaning academics that liberal teenagers are melancholy “because they rightly see unfairness in the world” was recognized by Yglesias. Nonetheless, he pointed out that in order to draw attention to “what they consider are the most significant problems,” progressives have “used their agenda-setting authority to transform structural racism, widespread misogyny, and chronic socioeconomic inequality into inevitable aspects of political discourse.”
Depression is just the unpleasant mental processing of unclear circumstances. It’s not wise to applaud this or encourage liberals that they are justified in doing it, he said, despite the fact that the discovery showing they are disproportionately prone to do it is intriguing and significant.
The left should “stop pushing people to catastrophize,” according to Yglesias, who also said that doing so might lead to young people “[dwelling] unproductively as issues fester.”
“It’s not just a cultural accident that current-era progressivism tends toward catastrophizing, depressive mood,” wrote Ross Douthat, a conservative columnist for the left-wing New York Times, in praise of Yglesias’s analysis. “Some of that unhappiness was baked in by the triumph of social liberalism that preceded the current era.”
Social liberalism is not legally opposed to religion, but in practice it is a secularizing force. It encourages self-invention and despises ‘normativity. The theme is to “create yourself in an uncreated environment,” which is a tough ask for anybody, but especially for teenagers let wild in a virtual reality. Douthat responded in writing.
He stated, “Yglesias makes a strong case against a gloomy and disastrous manner of political activity. Yet, some adolescent catastrophism is a transmitted dread of death, and some adolescent sadness is a reaction to having to continuously reinvent oneself and find one’s divine self by the age of 15. And it’s no accident that the biblical and Christian model of an upbeat, anti-depressive liberalism he uses to conclude is.
To be clear, the argument is not that conservatism always makes children happy and secular individualism always makes them miserable. Punitive religion and punishing normativity may both devastate a civilization, he added. But it’s not the type of culture that the iPhone was introduced into.
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