Why Wealthy Kids are the Most Depressed

Dive into the shocking reality of affluent youth's mental health crisis. We explore groundbreaking studies revealing higher rates of depression, anxiety, and substance abuse among wealthy teenagers compared to their less privileged peers. Uncover the paradox of privilege and its unexpected consequences on mental well-being.

Key points discussed:

* Surprising statistics on mental health issues in affluent communities

* The role of parenting styles and societal expectations in creating these issues

* The concept of "urban monoculture" and its impact on youth development

* Comparison of risk-taking behaviors between affluent and inner-city teens

* The importance of resilience and coping skills in child development

* Celebrity culture and its influence on parenting trends

* The potential dangers of overprotection and lack of real-world experiences

Join us as we challenge common assumptions about wealth and happiness, and explore how traditional values and experiences might be key to raising mentally healthy children in today's complex world.

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Hello Simone. Today we're doing another research heavy episode because our audience loves these. I love counterintuitive research and I love. on the urban monoculture the, the, and the, and the tragedy it has created in this society. And the, well, there's

Simone Collins: just something that there shouldn't fraud from specifically luxuriating in the misery of people whose core value is not misery and who fail so badly at it while also dumping on us [00:01:00] constantly.

It's just amazing.

Everything else, every other value that a human could have in the name of

Simone Collins: happiness. And then they're miserable,

not, not happiness, but being able to seek after every biological instinct. They have

Simone Collins: anything

that they think will make them happy. They go pursue it. Anything that they would make them happy to believe about themselves.

They have to have it affirmed. And they say we're monsters for not creating that, that, that cultural structure for our own children. They say, how dare you live the life you want to live. And then. We look at them and they live a life of horror, even when they're successful, even when they achieve everything they want.

It's still a life of existential horror. And that makes me so, I, I would be so hard to live in a world where you, the people who are unjustly oppressing you are living great lives. Yeah. Like, I, I, I, I don't know if, like, God worked this out for [00:02:00] us or whatever, but yeah. So this is something I decided to dig into after I noticed in a study when we were, like, looking for other people.

Causes of fertility collapse, blah, blah, blah. And I noticed in one study that it showed that the demographic of young people who had the highest rates of depression, anxiety, and substance abuse were in families of over 120, 000 of average income, which is right. And you see this too.

Simone Collins: Like you're going to be hard pressed to find a Spoonie, which in other words is a like hypochondriac internet denizen, like the modern version of a hypochondriac, they are pretty much upper middle class young women again.

Yeah.

So, we're going to go over a few studies on this and then discuss hypotheses around what could be causing this. Okay. Let's do it. The first study here is called. Children of the Affluent. Challenges to well being. And this came out in 2005. So affluent youth showed higher rates of substance use, anxiety, and depression [00:03:00] when compared to their inner city counterparts and national norms.

By 7th grade, some affluent students exhibited clinically significant depressive symptoms and substance abuse behavior. This was particularly pronounced in affluent girls where these symptoms were twice as high as in normative samples. So literally 200 percent higher in the affluent cohort.

Simone Collins: And, and, you know, of course, these are people with parents who assumed that because they had more money, their children would be better off and so many parents or would be parents thought that.

Don't have money or put off having kids because they think I need more money before I have kids. Meanwhile.

, in one cohort suburban affluent teens reported significantly higher use of cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, and hard drugs than their inner city counterparts. So the suburban teens are doing more hard drugs than the inner city teens.

Simone Collins: I went to on the island where I grew up outside [00:04:00] San Francisco, Alameda there was the rich side high school and there was the less rich side high school. And the joke was that we always. We sold the drugs. And Sunil high school sold the drugs to Alameda high school.

It's funny. You mentioned that I'll continue because I, I went to boarding school.

Yeah, long story. I'd been basically kicked out of my family. I hadn't, I hadn't lived with my family after the age of 13. I lived off of a education trust. One of my ancestors set up at boarding school. And. at a boarding school. So I wasn't like living there because I had everything. I was living there because I had nowhere else to go.

I didn't go home over the summers either, really. So, I, I, it wasn't one of the best boarding schools. Okay. Enough throat clearing, get to the story. But it was known, like, I remember that at one point I was going to be sleeping with like an Andover girl and like my roommate in the same way, when like, You so people who I don't know, Andover is like the best.

It's like the [00:05:00] Princeton of boarding schools. Okay. In the same way that you had some of your friends when you were moving to Texas and they were like, watch out, like you're going to get shot if you move to Texas, like they have guns there. Like they were like genuinely afraid for you. And, and he was like.

You know, make sure she doesn't offer you hard drugs, like, like genuinely concerned for me, you know, and this is somebody who even like did drugs, but like, you know, and over and over is a different thing into the hardship, like heroin and cocaine and like, you know, she's like, you should probably get her tested if you're going to sleep with her, you know, like you're imagining them like sharing needles and stuff and like, this is just, this Well, but I

Simone Collins: thought there was something to it.

Like that the kids at my high school, yeah, we're actually known for selling the drugs, but not really necessarily for doing them. And that the kids from the wealthier high school who were known for buying them maybe had more problems in many ways. And I feel like a lot of tropes and jokes. You know, they're funny because they are surprising, but they make sense.

And there's something to that. I think that's part [00:06:00] of this dynamic here of wealthier kids also kind of having the money and the leisure and the ennui necessary for drug use. If you know what I

mean? Oh, they're so ennui. They're so ennui. I always call it the what was the woman from Great Gatsby's name?

Daisy. Daisy the daisy effect and I dated. Some girls like this because my mom wanted me to marry an heiress, right? And she's like marianne eris marianne eris marianne eris. She goes the easiest way to get rich is to marry rich It'll be the easiest money you've made in your entire life.

Simone Collins: She's right.

She's right.

Yeah I tried it. Their level of ennui was too much for me. When they didn't come from, you know, my cultural group of my cultural group is small. And, you know, there weren't many what I'm saying here is my nieces and nephews grew up