One in five youth are affected by depression; but what does that even mean? Depression is a term we use regularly in our modern day and age, but its origin dates back to 14th century France with much more of a scientific connotation compared to how we use it today.
From the jokes, to the texts, to the talks, we hear it everywhere, and many of us feel it as well. It's sadness, hopelessness, withdrawal from normal life. It's a term that we often use colloquially, but when we use it we don't always realize what it really means.
The connotation that depression has nowadays allows us to throw it around lightly "I'm depressed" is a common phrase we use to a somewhat sarcastic degree. Maybe the reason that we joke about it is to cover how truly depressed we are. That begs the questions, why are we all depressed? America has some of the highest depression rates, even though most children live comfortable lives here. So it isn't necessarily caused by lack of comfort, lack of food, lack of death; unlike the many children around the world in countries who may face these issues that would give them reason to lose hope. Yet these people are some of the most grateful, just for the chance to get to live another day. So what is it that we as a society, and in America specifically, are missing?
The answer is passion.
The daily lives of most American youth have become extremely mundane and shallow. We spend endless hours of our lives scrolling on screens and when we finally take our eyes off the screens, the few hours we are forced to be at school, we don't have the attention span to learn or grow. All we try to do is get attention from those around us to release the same dopamine from our endless scrolling. This cycle continues, and we stay content in our shallow lives, until we snap. Until we are unable to scroll away our problems, and until our friends don't give us the attention we crave. Then we crumble, leading us to recognize the shallowness within our lives once hidden from us by the rushing dopamine.
Yet, we continue to tell ourselves that we can't be depressed because there are so many youths out there just like us who aren't depressed. Not only that, but they have the perfect life, the perfect grades, the perfect friends, the perfect everything. This further submerges us into a depressed state, not only do we feel sadness within ourselves, but jealousy starts to brew. As we continue comparing ourselves to the lives and achievements of others, we create an unrealistic idea of perfection that we will never reach. In fact, no one has reached it, because unbeknownst to most, no one is perfect. Everyone is flawed, everyone is depressed in some way. It isn't pessimistic to believe so, rather by understanding that no one is truly perfect we can be more content with our own lives.
Ok, so now what, we're all depressed then?
Yes, we are all depressed, but depression isn't always a bad thing. It's a chance to think critically about our lives, a chance to consider who we really are, it's a chance to re-evaluate ourselves. We become depressed for a reason, to warn us that maybe those hours on the screen or materialistic aspirations aren't the best for us. Maybe, we can instead use depression as a fuel to be better and as a chance to learn more about ourselves.