Comment: I wear pyjamas during the day, fall asleep at 9.15 every night, and prefer the show Friends over living and breathing companions. A comment from my mum pointed to a sobering conclusion: loneliness
It was a standard Saturday night. My mum and I were engaged in a mindless squabble over which movie to watch. After exchanging a few gibes, Mum uttered the words every modern 19-year-old dreads: “You should be out with friends.”I’ve recently taken on the identity of a homebody. I wear pyjamas during the day, fall asleep at 9.15 every night, and prefer the show,over living and breathing companions.
Contrary to the attention-grabbing headlines, young people’s loneliness is attributed to normal life events, with the study identifying moving out of home, leaving high school and commencing higher education as possible explanations. Clearly, we aren’t the first generation to go through these transitions. So why are we feeling the strain?Hunger Games
Along with social stress, the academic pressure I experienced during the VCE exacerbated my loneliness and mental health problems. In my final year of high school, I developed a few OCD tendencies, which included determinedly shaking out my school dress 100 times before I put it on . I was "caring for excellence" – which was actually my high school’s motto – while at the same time sacrificing my soundness of mind.
I find it deeply concerning that social media is used as a scapegoat for mental health issues. We’re warned these sites damage young people’s wellbeing by promoting unattainable norms of perfection and encouraging us to compare ourselves with others. Yet standardised examinations do just this.While social media moderates our interactions through impersonal metrics – likes and followers – the VCE has conflated young people’s self-worth with an arbitrary number, the ATAR, for decades.
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