Teenagers and Mental Health
If anyone is old enough to remember the times before social media, it is easy to remember when we used to grow up anonymously. The time when we fail in life and the only ones there to judge our actions were our family and friends, maybe some neighbors. Idiocy was perceived as naivete, and bullying was just “growing pains”. Nowadays, the world is more united through information, and so we grow publicly, with the bully many times being a stranger and the nosy neighbors being groups who label themselves as righteous. But what is the difference between living in a day where you didn’t fit in with the other members of the neighborhood gang versus living in a generation where maybe you don’t even know your neighbor? Is the social pressure the same, or is there an increase in social pressure because we’re constantly bombarded with information? It is no secret that anxiety and depression during adolescence have skyrocketed since social media’s debut.
Wages and Working Hours
The same can be said about business sales when, back in the day, depended on the clientele revenue from worth of mouth, radio, television, and a few flyers. Now it seems we can reach and sell to the uttermost corners of the earth with a click of a button. The question is: are we really creating enough revenue with an outreach that seemed impossible before? Is everything so pricey that we get to work harder with our clicks and likes to achieve the same revenue-wage ratio as back when computers were only used in specialized fields?
According to the Fair Labor Standards Act, the hourly minimum wage in 1990 was $3.80, and the average gallon of milk was $2.43, making it 63% of such wage. In contrast, the hourly minimum wage is now $7.25, with the price per gallon of milk being $4.17, 57% of an hour of work. The data shows that companies are keeping the product less expensive, maybe by reaching a broader market, but technology has not facilitated an easier lifestyle, according to the US Bureau of Statistics. Its data show that the average full-time American works 8.53 hours a day (42.65 a week), compared to the average 38.1 hours per week in 1993. That’s a 4.5-hour difference, or half-a-day’s work, that we are giving away in exchange for a very similar amount of goods, or gallons of milk.
The Housing Market
The housing market paints an even grimier picture, an added weight on the average American’s shoulders. According to the Federal Reserve of Economic Data, the median home price in 2022 is a staggering $428,700, versus the average home price of $121,500 in 1990, a startling difference. Besides the regular theory of world domination, from the investor’s point of view information technology has also changed the way investors decide on their portfolio. Back in the 90s, a regular investor -in real estate, stocks, or anything else- would probably hire an expert who wouldn’t be as efficient in receiving information as the average joe is today. The presence of immediate information generates an immediate decision, hence a more volatile market. The investor now has 100% control over his/her holdings, with the ability to buy a sell from anywhere, anytime. One could only dream in 1990 to have such power. But what happens when we all do have the power to sell and buy in seconds? Investors now feel -and rightfully so- that real estate is the least volatile investment, so now where we live is also tainted by the information era, driving the real estate market costs up while first time homeowners compete against all-cash buyers. The skeptic might say that real estate has historically being the safest choice, that there’s nothing new there. But even though real estate has always enjoyed of its steady reputation, the investor now fears more: he/she fears the constant cycle of news, every minute, changing the direction of market. The average investor has much more to fear nowadays, not because there’s more factors to the investment equation, but because the perception of those evils and their ever-changing effect is more prevalent.
The Common Denominator
What, then, do teenage mental health, wages, working hours, and house prices have to do with each other? The answer is technology. Now we live in a society were everyone’s information is in our face, let it be their achievements versus our failures, their wars versus our peace, their product versus our money. But what about housing prices you might ask? Simple, because all the information from around the world imparted to us everyday shapes also the way we invest. We opened our eyes to the unpredictability of this world, and we want safe harbor for our assets, making where we live the safe place to invest. So, for now we are stuck with a job that doesn’t pay for a home, a son whose anxiety translates into anger, and a portfolio whose older ‘expert’ receives information on a weekly basis. God saves us all from the overexposure to technology and its nefarious consequences.
Sources:
U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Median sales price of houses sold for the United States. (2022, July 26). Retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. August 31, 2022; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS
Rones, P. L., Ilg, R. G., & Gardner, J. M. (1997, April). Trends in hours of work since the mid-1970s – bureau of labor statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved August 31, 2022; https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1997/04/art1full.pdf
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2022, June 23). Charts related to the latest “American time use survey” news release. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved August 31, 2022; https://www.bls.gov/charts/american-time-use/emp-by-ftpt-job-edu-h.htm
