“Parents, Stop Talking About the ‘Lost Year’” (NYT, April 11, 2021) contains 7 occurrences of the word “experts”
Teenagers and tweens will be fine, experts say — if adults model resilience.
Experts say some of their worries are justified — but only up to a point. There’s no doubt that the pandemic has taken a major toll on many adolescents’ emotional well-being. According to a much-cited report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the proportion of emergency room visits that were mental health-related for 12 to 17 year olds increased by 31 percent from April to October 2020 compared with the same period in 2019. And there’s no question that witnessing their loneliness, difficulties with online learning and seemingly endless hours on social media has been enormously stressful for the adults who care about them the most.
Yet, as the nation begins to pivot from trauma to recovery, many mental-health experts and educators are trying to spread the message that parents, too, need a reset. If adults want to guide their children toward resilience, these experts say, then they need to get their own minds out of crisis mode.
Despite all of this, Ms. Fagell, much like the dozen-plus other experts in adolescent development who were interviewed for this article, was adamant that parents should not panic — and that, furthermore, the spread of the “lost year” narrative needed to stop. Getting a full picture of what’s going on with middle schoolers — and being ready to help them — they agreed, requires holding two seemingly contradictory ideas simultaneously in mind: The past year has been terrible. And most middle schoolers will be fine.
What factors keep adolescents from tipping from one state to the other? Mental health experts point to a few: their connection to at least one good friend; any underlying vulnerabilities like mood disorders;the adversity in their daily lives; the availability of adults to help them cope with hardship — and whether their parents are keeping it together.
“Social media is mitigating some of the effects of isolation,” he said.
That message, frequently repeated by experts and educators, should offer some relief to the many parents who feel guilty about the amount of screen time they’ve allowed their children this past year.
So much great stuff in here! Facebook, formerly associated with making adolescents (and everyone else) worse off mentally, is now recommended. But that’s a minor joy compared to the idea that people can be “expert” in predicting the effect of something that had never previously happened, i.e., coronapanic and associated mass school closure, the shutdown of social life, travel, jobs, gyms, etc.
Credentials are a big help in prophecy as in other areas. One of Dr. Jill Biden’s colleagues:
Rabiah Harris, a public middle-school science teacher in Washington, has a doctorate in education, which permits her, as the mother of an almost 12-year-old, to take a philosophical view.
(If it is “Dr. Jill Biden,” why isn’t it “Dr. Rabiah Harris”? Her LinkedIn page shows that she has the same Ed.D. degree as Dr. Biden.)
Even more interesting to me than the editors of the NYT thinking that readers would buy into the idea that experts could predict the long-term effects of the Great Panic of 2020-2021-2022-…(?): the experts’ idea that teenagers listen to their parents.
What we all do without experts to tell us how to feel, what to think, what we need to know, how to act, what ‘mode’ our minds should be in, which facts to believe, what evidence is important, and when we’re permitted – by dint of accredited expertise – to take a “philosophical view.” I’m going to have to ask an expert if I am permitted to have one.
I have to ask the New York Times one of those old, dumb questions my (decidedly nonexpert) parents hit me with when I did something stupid because someone “told me to”:
“If experts told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?”
And there are experts in jumping off of bridges! At this link, three expert BASE jumpers “…Matt Blank, Joseph Webb, and Mike Naddor are here to analyze the jumping, gliding, diving, and grappling you see in this game! [Just Cause 4]”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma7rVuEYRJ0
Apparently some people who try wingsuit BASE jumping aren’t listening to the experts! Here’s another article from National Geographic: “So, why are so many BASE jumpers dying?”
“The simplest answer is wingsuits,” says Webb. “Right now, wingsuit BASE jumping is, globally, the hottest thing going for the impressionable, 18- to 35-year-old single-male demographic.”
I don’t know about you, but the first time I saw anyone jump off a mountain wearing some goofy suit – expert or not – trying to make themselves into a bird, but with no form of propulsion and no parachute, I said: “These people are out of their freaking minds.” That was my non-expert opinion, and I’m sticking to it.
NatGeo article. If you’re going to try to be a postmodern Icarus, better listen to the experts!
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/why-are-so-many-base-jumpers-dying
“This year’s constant, gruesome news has spurred some BASE jumpers to rebuke their wingsuiting counterparts. “Sketchy Andy” Lewis, one of the world’s most accomplished BASE jumpers (and hardly a model of prudence himself, as evinced by his nickname), wrote a scathing post on Facebook that, among other things, called for the BFL to be split into two separate lists: one for wingsuiting and one for regular BASE jumping.”
Finally, maybe it’s not so much the NYT’s overreliance on “experts” that bothers me so. I think in some cases it’s just the experts they choose. For example, on subjects like firearms and gun control, they tend to pick experts who have probably never owned a gun, are not interested in owning one, and want to see them as restricted as possible. They almost never talk to the firearms experts who actually shoot them, collect them, own them and advocate that others should be able to, based on decades of expertise and experience.
It’s all about the experts you choose to believe.
Go to your local Barnes and Noble’s periodical section and you will see whole shelves taken up with magazines catering to the audience that the New York Times disdains. If the latest issue of Modern War doesn’t bring you an appreciation for the competent bearing of arms, I don’t know what will.
“Getting a full picture of what’s going on with middle schoolers — and being ready to help them — they agreed, requires holding two seemingly contradictory ideas simultaneously in mind”
Great to see NYT and their experts quite literally preaching doublethink! One small article for NYT, one giant leap towards 1984.
The writers kids are screwed. Same old story, doesn’t matter what you tell the kids, it matters how they see you behave. Believe and act like it is all nonsense and your kids will be alright.
“Expert” is an euphemism for “pompous windbag”. If you want to be polite, of course, which by now is something I’m considering giving up on when somebody references an expert in a conversation.