The Coddling

The term came from https://www.thecoddling.com/ but here I refer to a specific aspect:

Suppose your reaction to discomfort is to retreat or isolate yourself from it. Having done so you will find that your calibration of comfort has changed and things you previously found at the fringe but normal now became clearly uncomfortable. If you repeat this process several times you will find that the field of acceptable things to do has narrowed itself to a single fine line of propriety that is surrounded by a vast field horrors and misdemeanors. Worse yet, the narrower the range of acceptable things, the more anxious you will be and the harder you will lash out at those recently (but no longer) normal things.

For a tame example, I have a number of friends who as they got richer retreated into more and more comfortable suburbs. Perfectly reasonable right? Well, they are now afraid to visit downtown because crime, dirt, and homeless. Not at all reasonable anymore.

I'm sure you can come up with more examples. In fact now that I told you, you can't escape seeing them.

I think it's parenting. Parents started to become overprotective somewhere in the late 90's and it's only getting worse. Kids don't learn to deal with setbacks anymore. So the real world overwhelms them.

There's a book, The Coddling of the American Mind, that explains the problem much better than I do.

"First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom from many cultures. Embracing these untruths—and the resulting culture of safetyism—interferes with young people’s social, emotional, and intellectual development. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life."

https://www.thecoddling.com

> From providing self estem from a different source from the local.

The article explicitly covers this and shows a net negative. So saying there are positive effects isn’t very helpful as any gains are more than offset by negatives.

I think your argument is better through quantification. As I don’t think anyone is making the case that social media doesn’t have any benefits at all, the argument is that the negatives outweigh the benefits.

Of course, I think it’s easier to quantify the negatives than positives. How do I quantify the positive effect that offsets the probably correlated increase in preteen girl hospitalizations? [0]

[0] sorry trying to find the easiest citation for the graph in Lukiakoff and Haidt’s book Coddling of America’s Youth [1] https://livingonparr.wixsite.com/livingonparr/single-post/2019/01/16/how-has-social-media-effected-girls-boys

[1] https://www.thecoddling.com/

It's not uncommon for wealthier families here in Guadalajara to have their 13-year-old daughter Uber around.

We sure do like our coddling in the USA, though, where it's even safer.

An example of someone writing about the problem: https://www.thecoddling.com/ -- Makes a good case how instilling these ideas in our youth that everyone is out to get them comes back to bite them (and us all) in the ass as they enter adulthood.

An example of an org trying to fix it: https://letgrow.org/

Of course, a self-driving car is even better than an Uber driver for various reasons, not the least because ape-driven vehicles aren't particularly safe.

> The school system is more of an industrial childcare operation for working parents, than an actual education system for the kids

Bingo. And, as the spouse of a teacher, there's not a lot of hope of that changing any time soon. The pay would have to change... the people currently working would have to be dismissed or, for those introspective and motivated, retrained... never going to happen.

And generally focused on creating followers not thinkers. I really enjoyed "The Coddling of the American Mind"

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/

https://www.thecoddling.com/

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure [1] by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt

I didn't necessarily agree with all of it but it helped me understand the changes I've seen across workplaces, colleges and beyond. It was also a nice way of thinking more "grey" in terms of the current political climate, and trying to understand the reasons behind people's actions regardless of their political stance.

[1] https://www.thecoddling.com/