People have stopped socializing, at least not in a real, meaningful way. Discord groups of other shut-ins feeding off each other’s insecurity doesn’t count.

The lack of socialization means a lack of social validation so to feel any value at all, we all have to figure out how to carve out new identities in a much more lonely and dark world. Self-diagnosis of conditions and syndromes can give you insulation from criticism and give you a sense of community and belonging, so less effort is placed on managing or treating the condition and more effort is placed on affirming and defending your condition.

I’m not saying the conditions aren’t real, they exist on a large spectrum that almost everyone falls on to some degree, but what’s changed is the view of the conditions or syndromes as an obstacle to life that needs to be managed or beat. Instead it’s a badge of identity that people work to justify and preserve, often without realizing it.

I’ve been in and out of the mental health system for years, I’ve done it to beat depression and anxiety and have made great strides by accepting the hard truths of the things I need to do to make it easier to live with problems outside my control. But these are tools I embraced because I wanted to go outside, meet people, be more social and have more opportunities.

Not a lot of young people want any of that, they’ve been disillusioned by the promise of the future because the internet just feeds them the bleakest picture of the world that it can, and people don’t generally seek out balancing perspectives on their own, and even resist any attempt to tell them that there’s a lot of important reasons you might want to stretch your mental and social muscles.

Nearly everyone I talk to under the age of 25 or so says they can’t imagine living past 40, with many saying that they actively have plans to not live past 40, which blows my goddamn mind.

Every single one of you whiny, nihilistic shits out there is going to hit age 40 and say “Oh fuck, what have I done with my life?”