THE DETERIORATING SOCIAL SELF IN YOUNGER GENERATIONS

n the early part of the twenty-first century, data suggested that adolescents and young adults had strong psychological wellbeing often doing better than the generations immediately above them and about as well as seniors. However since then, evidence of the beginning of a serious decline in the mental functioning of younger age groups has emerged. In a nationally representative sample of U.S. adolescents and adults, increasing rates of major depressive episodes from 2009 to 2017 has been discovered, along with increased serious psychological distress and suicide-related outcomes from 2008 to 2017 among young adults aged 18 to 25. The authors did not find such increases among adults