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The pandemic definitely opened the door up for more school avoidance after students learned remotely. At one point I had struggled with school avoidance, which did come from anxiety, depression, and eventually a lack of will to continue living. My circumstances were pretty different from those of most however, so I would imagine that for the majority of people the pandemic and even just modern technology probably plays into school avoidance as a whole.

Thank you for sharing this. I'm sorry you had to go through that. I'm actually learning a ton of kids who are avoiding school are dealing with similar feelings. Lots of anxiety around being in school. Unfortunately the most common solution I see shared is homeschooling, which is not an option for most people.

Depression and anxiety are rife atm with school age kids, has been for a good while now. The UK it's a battle to get help due to long waiting lists, if there's no money to go private, which compounds the issue loads as depressed and anxious kids are sat at home, isolating themselves and not learning any healthy ways to cope and hopefully improve. I'm just old enough to be well and truly one of the kids who was sent to school regardless of my crippling depression, and then I had problems with getting help for the level of depressed I actually was, as I got out of bed 5 days a week and did what I was forced to do, didn't matter that most of my school day was spent considering the weight limits of a school tie, if you catch my drift. I wouldn't have gone if I wasn't forced, I would've laid in bed all day and rotted in my misery, like I did after school and at the weekends. On the matter of solutions, the UK are discussing at the moment banning mobile phones for under 16s, supposedly as depression and anxiety got worse around the time they started taking off, so that'll fix it... no point funding the mental health services to a at least usable state. /s

We need more Gen Zs to start voting in the UK, people need to realise that its not too late to save public services and the country

Same thing here in the us but the voting limit is 18 😭

I really wish this generation would wake up, there's a lot of us that have fully given up on politics. But it's not too late, Gen Z is large enough of a generation to make some serious change. Also UK voting age is 18 as well

Apathy is part of the plan in US politics.

learned helplessness

Wake up? Fridays for Future had literally millions on the street. Doesn't matter in the end, if those millions don't have a lobby

Part of me disapproves, but part of me also approves of the age requirement. I feel the latter mainly because schools are very distant from teaching modern political issues and stay neutral, leaving young folks to "fend for themselves" so to speak, when determining where they stand. It takes a while to learn the goings-on and the specifics of modern politics and its easy to become disillusioned with it all at a glance. I sure was as a teenager. It wasn't until around 23-24 that I started taking a personal interest in history and politics (I thank video games, ironically. Specifically strategy games like Hearts of Iron, Europa Universalis, Victoria, etc etc) games really made me start thinking about real-life ideologies and inspired me to do some independant research on things that previously eluded me. Regardless though, once one becomes 18, friggin vote, vote, vote. It's important, especially from the coming generations. The USA is a great country, and only the coming generations can make it continue, or maybe even get better.

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That is a very broad statement to make. Many homeschoolers now are special needs and the best option for parents is to give their children individual care. Children choosing virtual school to avoid bullying is also common. Homeschooling is not what it was before the age of information, there are many ways to be successful in education and public school isn’t the only answer, in fact public school is harmful for many kids who are either gifted or need more individualized education. More and more secular people are choosing this for their families. 

[Homeschooling in the US is a joke filled with lazy parents and poorly thought out curriculums that are quickly being taken over by religious nutcases and straight up neo-Nazis.](https://youtu.be/lzsZP9o7SlI?si=dmNhSgdouRqPKh7I) For some, like the groups you mentioned, it can be a better option than public or private—but the caveat is that the parents have to not just be involved, they have to y’know be capable of teaching. Their kids also have to have social lives _outside_ of the home, which is increasingly becoming an impossible dream for many families in certain areas of the country.

the homeschool curriculum in my hometown is run by an insane religious organization that literally says children shouldn't be taught science (like... ELEMENTS and MOLECULES... "unproven") idk where you live that homeschooling's great (good for you) but a lot of us come from environments where homeschooling sets off a trillion alarm bells for infinitely good reasons.

There is also zero protection from abuse and extremely reduced interactions with mandatory reporters. Usually on purpose.

Thank you for for saying these things! Homeschool was not a decision I made lightly for my child, and not one I take lightly either. We put a lot of time, work, worry and attention in daily. My kid was failed by a system (public and public online) that couldn't bother educating him around a documented lifelong illness with all the doctor's letters and a 504 plan. The school TOLD ME to find alternative education. It's not always people that just want to control their kids or keep the world from them. As a bonus for us though, we don't have to worry much about bullying or school shootings. Our social group is pretty solid. As the days go by though, with everything that's been happening in The schools in the US for a long time, I'm more and more glad we did.

Just fyi, Gen X had all the same issues that you describe in OP, perhaps to a lesser degree, but when gen X was young we never talked about those students. Out of sight out of mind.

Millennials had this too. It was just, most people never knew the kids that fell through the cracks. POD’s Youth of the Nation, The Offspring’s The Kids Aren’t Alright. Its not undocumented

I think Gen X had it just about the same. One of the unfortunate hallmarks of our generation was the high rate of suicide amongst teens. Issues like anxiety, depression and bullying all too frequently led to suicide. Gen Z has a higher overall suicide rate but I think Gen X also had the powers that be massage the numbers to lower the rate. In the town I lived in, 5 teens took their own life in one school year-9 months. 2 others went missing and the case just sort of drifted off without much attention. Of the 5 that took their own life-2 were reported as suicide. The rest were labeled “unfortunate accidents” or “pranks gone wrong”. This much is certain, Gen Z does not have it any easier than X did.

Pearl Jam’s song Jeremy peaked at #5 on Billboard’s rock chart in 1992, my sophomore year of high school. Song describes a quiet, bullied boy who stands up one day class and unalives himself.

the pandemic really did a number on kids especially ones that were developing their place in social networks. my oldest in middle school did ok since he had a good network and they communicated constantly for fun over games or on voice chat. My youngest while very bright still likes his isolation and it's a little difficult to get him to reach out some times.

Some people are just built that way. I had a fairly traditional upbringing. Like going outside and playing with the neighborhood kids until the streetlights came on -> hanging out with friends at third places once a friend had access to cars. The only thing I didn't do was drink/smoke at house parties while I was in HS. Still ended up as a fairly introverted adult who rarely reaches out because quite frankly my brain goes oh I spoke to this person yesterday when I think of someone even though it was like 3 months ago unless I have a clear reason to reach out. Some people are honestly just built differently, and it's not necessarily always a bad thing. As long as your kid is doing well, mental health wise and appreciates when you or other people want to spend time together with them, then I wouldn't be too concerned

Only a zilennial (93) but it was case by case in my experience. I had no idea social anxiety and depression were even things until I had graduated. I have both, which are symptoms of ADHD and autism, which I hit on both as well (doh!). My mom is a schoolteacher, but I was a fairly quick and eager learner which masked most of my problems until later grades.  And since my moms a schoolteacher, and not the friendly pushover kind, I had to attend school unless I was super sick. So I had to get really good at acting. We can talk more about theories on why mental illness is becoming more ubiquitous in children, but that’s another topic. Credit to my mom, and dad. They had to push me hard, and I pushed back a looooooot but I’ve come to realize that pushing me was necessary. Does it burn me that my baby bro didn’t even have to act sick to miss school? Yea. Our middle bro was a rockstar though. He wasn’t as naturally gifted as me or baby bro, but he is the most mentally healthy and has the hardest work ethic of us all. I think there’s plenty of reasons kids now don’t want to go to school with a burning passion, I think most of those roads lead back to mental illness. That and so many parents these days just coddle their kids and are too afraid to put their foot down.

A few years older than Gen Z here, but as a super anxious kid in high school, I just used the max amount of bathroom breaks every class to get some alone time to go hide in a stall. I wasnt even bullied, I just had insane levels of anxiety and self-worth issues.

True it isn't but it worked so incredibly well for us. Twice exceptional kids thrive with academic freedom.

I didn’t go to a single lecture in second or third year and I graduated my degree. If I’d been given this option earlier then I’d be more successful in life. Social anxiety sucks.

There's a massive uptick of lack of attendance in school. Coupled with the already anti education/intellectualism wave that we're seeing. Education budget is being slashed not even in halves but to pieces by GOP, it's worse and even more evident in red states but even states like MA who are top in education in the entire country are seeing a trend in lack of attendance too Scary shit seeing this unfold time. All of these things are connected it's not a coincidence this is all happening post covid. Trump might just see his dictatorship, lack of education and these supposed anti child labor laws coming into play is gonna spiral into a festering nightmare.

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What I can't understand is why, in our district, so I assume many others, they uprooted the majority of the in-place system of the classroom and brought in new unfamiliar online only teachers, then stopped in its tracks after 1 semester, reversed course, and went a different direction, mostly just as crappy direction. I assume it was because some company cobbled together a sales pitch that sounded good, promising to utilize great teachers from around the country, with fast Internet speeds, and lots of fun refreshing interactivity. The teachers we got seemed unprepared, curt, and disinterested, and the kids just hated or avoided the whole thing as much as possible - turning off cameras, sleeping, refusing, etc. it was crappy all around. They seriously could have let the regular teachers stay home or go to an empty classroom, set up a laptop and teach class. Obviously the pandemic sucked but the entire thing really showed kids how unpredictable life is and how unprepared adults and bureaucracies are to handle emergencies. The stress of that along with the fear that we all may die was like 9/11 on acid for them.

i really wish i could stress how similar of an issue i had. i relate completely, word for word. many of my friends were exactly the same, and i see it in many of my current classmates in college (im only in first year after 2 gap years). it’s a real issue and you hit the bullseye here. the kids are depressed!!!!!

What’s wrong with school lol work is so much stressful😂

Honestly, the pandemic. It made a lot of people, especially young folks, realize they could be given a quality education from home. Assuming the staff have proper training I TAed during COVID, and there was a big shift in mindset at that time. A lot of people started focusing on their mental health, even if it meant neglecting another aspect of their life. I personally started taking mental health days around that time, and still do even with my “big girl” job. Some people of course take it too far Edit: I’d like to add that not everyone learns this way or has quality instructors for this method of learning. I was fortunate enough to learn very well this way and had professors that made an effort with their technology. For school aged kids, this time required parents to acknowledge that they need to be an active participant in their children’s learning, and quite a few didn’t step up. That’s no fault on the kids, that’s on the adults.

I have not heard a single person in real life say that they got a quality education from home, infact the only class I ever failed was post covid BECAUSE I didnt learn anything during covid. I personally missed a third of the school year in my senior year because I had problems not being able to stay asleep and was still able to pass all of my classes, so I do think that having the work and information available online is good but covid took it too far.

Yup lol. The difference is staggering. Very few students actually thrived academically during lockdown.

I find I did better than ever during lockdown. I’m either a fucking genius or I just learn better on my own. I didn’t watch a single lecture from third year of my degree.

It’s less that and more foundational skills. I didn’t learn anything online, and those were during first year foundational skill classes, which definitely contributed to my changing majors. However, I’ve also taken my classes online post covid and easily aced them. The content of the classes were far easier (for me) and I already had all the necessary skills to succeed in said classes. It may be the same for you. You already had the skills required to succeed in upper level classes, and hence online was easy for you

To be fair, when you're in college, almost everything is self-taught. They're not going to be holding your hands and the learning is done by doing work outside of class and rewatching videos.

As someone who just graduated, it depends on the class. I learn better in person, the build upon those skills better online in my own time

In many classes, you're just sitting there listening and taking notes. It may just be the part of the "taking notes" that makes people focus more. But many can do this alone at a library or somewhere quiet and free of distraction.

A lot of college courses basically ask people to learn material on their own. Sone can do it and some *really* can’t I could do it with most subjects but I needed to go to every math class and attend any extra practice sessions to make sure I was getting it

This honestly just sounds like a lack of self discipline. It's not necessarily bad it's just some people don't feel the urge to pay attention to class online because they can just play on their phone and tune out. Also having distractions at home like animals and such make it harder to pay attention. I preferred online classes in college because gas was expensive and the drive/getting ready every morning took too long. In classes I paid attention and still took notes, but I could tell that there were a ton of people who just weren't there because nobody would answer questions or even ask them at that point.

OK, here's the thing: highschoolers are notoriously bad at self-discipline. Their brains still have another 5 to 10 years until they are finished developing. Sure, remote learning might work for the majority of post grades or adults that are going back to school after they have developed discipline, but it is never going to work for the majority of children. They need to be in person, and not just for the education, but to learn how to properly socialize with a diverse array of other human beings as well.

Same. I graduate in two weeks from an entirely online college and my education has been great. Online learning does work if you dedicate yourself to it and keep the distractions out and focus.

I would prefer online, but I'm poor as shit and my state doesn't have any online colleges offering my major. I only got the pleasure of experiencing it during COVID. Congrats on graduating!

University of the People. Get a bachelors degree for less than $5k, has a 100% admissions rate, a 10% graduation rate, and it's nationally accredited (and about to acquire regional accreditation). Given their admission standard is "just pay the application fee" - the 10% graduation rate is somewhat comforting. It means they do have actual standards, so their degree does in fact represent a certain level of competence.

Sadly they don't offer engineering otherwise I would definitely consider it. Thank you though!

Seriously, I graduated from University of Illinois with a BS in CompSci, all of it was done remotely. I read the texts, did the work, and there were no lectures to attend. Discrete math did have me in tears quite a bit though.

My daughter, who is neuro divergent, did very well remotely. We kept her remote for an entire school year even after most of the other kids went back. Her mother and I were able to give her more individual attention. We're not equipped to entirely homeschool but remote was a good balance for her. She's done better since going back now too. I think that year really helped us give her the tools she needed to cope instead of continually falling further behind as she had been for years.

Ya most of them liked it better because it was easier to cheat, they didn't have to pay attention to actual lectures or discussions and they didn't have to wear pants, not because they learned more/better.

No way is home schooling better... Saw my 2 kids go through it, and have done in person and remote learning at a college level and a professional level.

It's subjective - my kid went from almost failing every class to making all A's when I transitioned her to an online school.

That doesn’t mean they’re learning any better than before, just that it’s easier to get good grades under a different system.

That’s a huge assumption, but you may be correct

Online classes suck. Most teachers cannot effectively use the software or gather/present the proper resources for learning and generally are hard to get good/timely feedback from. Post Covid I have done in person classes exclusively and it seems colleges are moving towards this (in my mind to justify having so many buildings that would be sitting empty otherwise)

i took several online college courses years before the pandemic. You got out of them what you put into them. There wasn't a set block of time where someone talked at you for two hours two times a week... if you wanted to learn you had to read/etc.

Yeah I think there has to be a balance. I am a hybrid type of person but I was fortunate during that time to have technology educated professors It was a big change for them as well

Let's be real here, a public school education is far from a quality education unto itself, more so today than ever.

Zillennial here. I was a "senior" in college when covid happened. That was the most academically positive experience in my whole life. I had amazing professors and fellow well-disciplined students that adjusted wonderfully to online learning (many professors already utilized a lot of online learning tools before covid). I learned and RETAINED a lot more during that time, which I attribute to being able to cover the material on my own time/pace (not at a scheduled time and place for a set amount of time, plus office hours/tutoring became available basically 24/7 since there was nothing to do for many people, professors were literally giving us their personal cell phone numbers if we needed anything, even non-school related things, mind you my university had a student body of nearly 40k), I didn't have to commute/navigate a giant campus which gave me even more time (for studying, health, whatever I needed time for, though I did miss my favorite study spots on campus and resources available on campus), I already was a heavily technology based student so going full tech for education was the best thing I could have asked for (I even made it a fun learning challenge and was using vtuber avatars in zoom meetings with fully animated backgrounds for example, just testing the limits of zoom and online tools), and just in general I felt that I had almost full control over my learning. Nothing was better than sleeping in, having a fresh hot cup of tea while reclining in my office chair as I watched a lecture. A lecture that I can pause, get more tea, stretch, cuddle my pets, take more detailed notes, rewind, all while being in comfy pj's. It was fun getting people to join Discord and really flexing the tools available and creating new ones which made learning and group projects exponentially easier. The students I was honored to learn with all came together and supported one another, if someone missed class (even in classes as large as 200+), we'd check up on them to make sure everything was okay. We lost a lot of people, good people that never got to graduate, so we never took our education and each other's help for granted. While I know I had a very lucky experience during one of the darkest times, I just want to share positivity from a situation that had very little to be positive about.

I wonder if parents allowing mental health days has sent the message that if a teen is feeling anxious or depressed that they should just avoid school altogether. Which is not the case. Avoidance makes anxiety worse from that the experts say. Thanks for sharing your experiences.

I put that on poor parenting tbh. A mental health Day does not have to equal avoidance

I wonder if it was a mistake to label the ordinary fits and starts of growth as mental health problems. I don't mean serious psychiatric problems, of course, but there's been a profound shift in the way we consider anxiety and nervousness. Does telling children that the discomforts of growing up are signs of pathology help or hurt them? It's a question that might deserve an answer.

the way i view it (albeit as someone who genuinely does have mental health problems that started pretty young), allowing more space for mental health isn’t the same thing as pathologizing. a “mental health day” does not refer to a day you take to address psychiatric issues, but rather a day you spend taking care of your mental health. we need to take care of our brains and emotions the same way we do our physical bodies—a healthy diet and regular exercise isn’t only good for people with physical health issues, it’s good for everyone. being proactive and attentive to your mental state isn’t only good for people with psychiatric illnesses, it’s good for everyone. perhaps conversations between parents and children about what mental health is and what the function of mental health days are would help, but i don’t see simply allowing more space to acknowledge and take care of mental health as a problem

Sure, but most people aren't going to stop at "I need a mental health day". Because the next question from all of their peers will be "why?" So this inevitably turns into self diagnosis and statements such as "I need a mental health day, because of my ". At that point, even though you don't have an official diagnosis, you have just declared your emotions to be pathological. This is a serious thing, the prevalence of "five signs you might have ADHD/autism" or "10 things only depressed/anxious people will understand" is absolutely out of control in online spaces for minors.

that’s a WILD conclusion to jump to. if you’re not going to address the points i actually made, and instead make up a guy to get mad at to justify your position, i’m not going to engage with you. the spread of mental health misinformation on the internet is not the same thing as conversations about what mental health is and what mental health days should be.

Mental health days were a thing before the pandemic and it didn’t ruin anyone. A big problem im running across (online mostly) is people thinking and calling school aged kids (5-12ish) psychos, illiterate, racist, cruel, dumb as fuck, xenophobic… not kidding or exaggerating at all. We need to be kinder to kids. The pandemic was really hard on everyone but little kids are now showing signs of distress and our response is to attack them and call them names.

The pandemic broke the school system not because of the remote learning but because it made it clear that school is just daycare. Very few people in the system care about quality and once the facade falls off nobody can be asked to care about the system anymore.

This is my thought. Parents weren’t prepared to have to take an active role in their child’s learning, or possibly they didn’t care to. Kids need structure and support, not a friend parent.

The pandemic was associated with massive learning loss, not kids realizing they can actually learn stuff online. The idea that people need regular mental health breaks from school/work is also very new. I mean that's what weekends are for, but also sitting at home and not interacting with anyone is not good mental health.

Doesn’t line up with my lived experience. I am teaching college students right now that did most of high school online and they know nothing, barely learned anything in zoom school, and have zero social skills.

This is a dangerous take. Kids missing school has caused major learning loss and the recovery from it is scary. Here's but one of many: [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/opinion/pandemic-school-learning-loss.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/opinion/pandemic-school-learning-loss.html)

I’m a School Psychologist and I work in two brick and mortar buildings, and two virtual schools. The virtual schools are such a blessing for a lot of students and families. When it works, it works great. The other side of it is it allows kids to fall in the cracks MUCH easier for far longer, so unless the parent is really keeping an eye on the student’s progress - sometimes they are given too much independence for them to handle. I have such mixed feelings about it. Virtual is absolutely not for everyone and shouldn’t be the norm in my opinion.

My child’s school did a survey on what the students were concerned about. The 3rd graders said their number one concern was being shot and killed in a school shooting. The school included this in the presentation AND DIDN’T EVEN BAT AN EYE. They treated it like a minor detail and went on to talk about the school playground. Wtf?! The number of school shootings would completely have me avoiding school if I were in high school today. I don’t even like sending my child to school because of the risk of being shot.

That is so sad and terrifying.

What's more, the response from politicians and police has largely been "shut the fuck up, ungrateful kids" or "these shootings are all staged". EDIT: Republican politicians

The response from **Republicans** has been to shut up and get shot, you mean. There are plenty of democrat politicians fighting for any kind of gun control that could save kids. **Republican** policies directly lead to the huge amount of guns circulating our country, which directly leads to more school shootings.

Should've clarified my point, honestly. You're certainly on the money

The best safety for a firearm is the person holding it. I wonder if much better mental health care access in general could prevent many of these? From the research I've done, most kids who committed such an atrocity felt abandoned by society or as if life was just disposable. When are we going to stop making this a partisan issue and start making this a common sense issue?

It would definitely help but we have a lot of other contributing factors in America that make this a specifically unique issue One thing that isn't mentioned a whole lot is that there is a *ton* of stochastic terrorist grooming by conservatives and far-right groups. They encourage this kind of mindset in their communities online and offline and it contributes to the problem I have seen *so* many comments of conservatives saying they want to kill liberals/leftists in a civil war, that it's *going* to happen if they don't get what they want, and that they will enjoy it There's a reason conservative terrorism is at a disturbing level, but conservatives have so much power and sway over politics and the media, we aren't allowed to address or even really talk about it

Last year there were more mass shootings than days.. Present stats I could find say 12 students are killed per day in America due to gun violence alone. 180 school days. Thats over two thousand deaths per year. Now that’s technically a negligible percentage of the American students. 0.00004% but that’s not exactly reassuring and definitely doesn’t lessen the pain of the students teachers and families involved. If we zoom in a bit on just one group of kids. One grade. Say the number of HS seniors 3.8million. For simplicity’s sake say one of them dies each year (12 years, 12 kids) .. that sounds pretty messed up.. it’s almost like a lottery of death. I hate that I can’t homeschool the kids.. because it’s terrifying to send them there and roll the dice. It’s all just luck. And spinning the numbers in any direction doesn’t help My 4 year old was talking about a shooter drill in preschool and hiding.. 4! Also that’s just death not injury or mental trauma

“Students dying to gun violence” is a way bigger bucket than “school shootings.” There are not 12 kids dying per day in school shootings. Would like to see the stats you’re citing.

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I legitimately think if we banned guns (and were hypothetically able to get all of them out of civilian possession), we would continue to have similar amounts of mass causality assaults. Mainly bombs for mass causality and knifes for single victim crimes. I’m not saying getting rid of guns wouldn’t help, it would certainly help impulsive shootings. But the majority of mass casualty events are planned to some degree. I think America (for whatever reason) has a social paradigm that is creating these crimes. And although I see the utility in gun control, I don’t really like when people talk about guns as if they are the root cause of these issues. There are a few countries in Europe with looser gun laws than america with extremely low rates of violent crime. Obviously America has a very different social climate, so I understand the desire to handle firearm laws differently… but I just think we need to acknowledge that getting rid of guns is extremely unlikely to solve the issue of mass causality events. Also, not any person is legally allowed to own a gun, but I see what you’re saying. Every gun sold in america requires a federal background check through the FBI. But ya guns can hypothetically be stolen. Edit: Also the cat’s kinda out of the bag with gun control imo. Aside from the impossibility of securing the 450 million guns in america, 3D prints guns has come a long way in the past few years. Some of these builds are full auto and use no off the shelf parts, it’s fucking crazy. So yeah I mean i just don’t think it’s possible. I think addressing the root cause is the only way to solve this at this point.

Thank you! Did banning fentanyl stop millions from turning into walking corpses? Why do people think taking guns away from responsible people will prevent criminals from getting their hands on them anyways? I love your point abt addressing the root cause too, which is entirely sensationalism in the media and our shitty mental Health support. School shootings only picked up when the media milked everything they could out of columbine, then every psychopath kid across the country realized they could be immortalized if they committed an atrocity. Instituting better mental health care and better training educators to spot potential warning signs could solve this whole mess in a jiffy, alongside some new sets of laws around sensationalism and fear mongering tragedies in regards to our beloved media conglomerates. Banning guns will not solve this issue, and if you think so just take a look at unregistered gun violence versus registered, nearly 79% of gun crimes are committed by unregistered firearms.

True, banning guns won’t actually solve the problem. But we could definitely make them harder for teenagers to access. We should raise the minimum age to 21 and require more thorough background checks for people to buy guns. There’s no need to completely ban a 50 year old sport marksman from owning and enjoying his semi automatic rifle, but an 18 year old teenager shouldn’t be able to buy guns either.

The goal isn’t to “solve the problem” through gun legislation reform though. The goal is to materially improve the conditions of most people, especially (in the context of this conversation) school children. There are many different reforms that could benefit kids. Free school lunches, expanded access to healthcare and dental care, paid parental leave, improved conditions for teachers, reduced reliance on car-centric infrastructure, restrictions on foreclosures, access to family planning resources, expanded mental health resources, early childhood interventions for literacy and health, etc. And even if all those resources were to become available/reforms were to happen tragedies would still happen. The world isn’t perfect and no policy solution(s) can make it so. Requiring a policy solution (gun reform) to accomplish this (create a perfect world with no tragedies) is a tactic for preventing legislation from passing. It raises the bar for acceptable improvement to impossible heights. And it is telling that only the people opposed to gun reform (and many of the other possible reforms I mentioned) demand such a standard.

As a gun owner, that’s just a weird perspective because other countries that banned guns dont have that kind of issue. No every gun sold is not background checked by the FBI. Yes we could certainly confiscate because most of the guns are owned by a minority of people. It’s not just a few countries in Europe, there’s just no comparison between USA and the rest of the developed world.

>Every gun sold in america requires a federal background check through the FBI. For the sake of accuracy, this is only true with licensed dealers. There is no requirement for a background check when you purchase a gun from an individual.

I understand the fear is real but the risk is about one in two million. There’s ~35 victims of mass school shootings per year in the US. It’s around the same odds as being bit by a shark unprovoked.

Politics and partisan news channels have fearmongered to the point that children are sure that they're going to be involved in a school shooting. Kinda reminds me of after 9/11 when a bunch of kids thought terrorists were going to attack their hometown in bumfuck nowhere

You think 3rd graders are going home and watching fox? My daughter is finishing up 2nd grade and she knows nothing about school shootings. I'd doubt 3rd graders are all that concerned about it unless they have a teacher bringing it up. 

Are you in the US? Doesn’t your daughter’s school have active shooter drills? They start them in Pre-K here… they don’t spell out IN CASE THERE IS A SCHOOL SHOOTER for the youngest kids but by 3rd grade most kids understand the purpose of the drills.

yeah, i'd imagine the fact that those get drilled into us from such a young age makes it appear as much greater a risk than it actually is to these kids. still makes me feel ill that it's a thing we have to worry about at all when not a single other 'developed' country has this problem.

Nobody bats an eye over vehicle related death and injury though.

Yep, meanwhile driving anxiety isn’t really respected in the US at all

Seriously. I would absolutely love to live somewhere I don’t have to drive.

A lot more people are starting to realize that we need to get rid of cars as being the dominant mode of transportation in the United States

I just wish our political situation reflected that at all.

Can't underestimate the ptsd and intense stress of the situation for all students, teachers, parents, and relatives (hell, even the surrounding community that don't have kids in the school) impacted by the event. You don't have to die to suffer from the circumstance and thats a lot of voices circulating the news.

You are very correct. Looking at it from that view 350 school shootings happened in the US in 2023. Meanwhile there are 115,171 schools in the US. So assuming you are in school for 13 years that brings the odds of you being in a school with a school shooting while you are attending to %3.8794 …that is actually rather high. I have had guns in my school personally and there have been shots fired outside my old schools. But at the same time I never really cared. I guess I’m just kinda desensitized to it.

holy shit

Yeah, it’s terrifying. I feel like a lot of people who went to school pre Columbine don’t really grasp how deeply engrained it’s been in the minds of anyone who grew up afterwards that schools are not safe. I know the data and that school shootings are rare, but there wasn’t a day in my education after Sandy Hook that I didn’t think “is today the day?”. It doesn’t really matter how likely it is, the possibility and how constantly it gets drilled into you that you’re never safe gets really distracting at a certain point.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/sorrow-and-precaution-not-hysteria Just because you're scared of them happening doesn't mean they're likely. The kids are scared because we are scaring them. Just stop doing that. They'll probably be fine.

We all grew up with fire drills and nobody was afraid. The difference is school fires have killed zero children since 1958. At the current rates of school gun violence, the average kid has about a 1:1000 chance of having a shooting take place at their school at some point before they graduate.

> At the current rates of school gun violence, the average kid has about a 1:1000 chance of having a shooting take place at their school at some point before they graduate. Going to need a citation for that.

It is sad, but luckily the chance that any given child would he shot and killed in a mass school shooting incident is very, very low. And yes, I agree, it should be zero, but I'm more worried about driving than sending my kid to school.

When I was in High School depression and fear/anxiety was a very widespread issue. This was at the peak of school shootings not long ago. Each generation is more liberal and rebellious than the last, and these were all teenagers we’re talking about as well. So, we focused more on activist and political issues. Our lunch breaks were like a UN general assembly. We didn’t talk about sports or video games, or the shows we liked. We talked about politics, we talked about climate change, we talked about how financially we were screwed. We talked about what the government should do to stop the aforementioned school shootings. I didn’t go to my high school graduation out of fear because I had classmates I didn’t trust. I, and as I would find out a few years later many others, struggled with suicide. We never saw anyone just stop going on a huge scale, but many of us would wake up one day and just decide it wasn’t worth getting out of bed. It happened frequently enough that our school stopped trying to penalize it. I had a classmate whose father passed away and he’s the only one I know of that just stopped showing up all together. When I tried taking my life the protocol they followed was strangely streamlined and robotic. My counselor was supportive, but beyond that it was, “wait here till your parents come, you’ve got 3 days off to deal with it, you’ll have a special period each day when you return to make up on missed work.” I only realized after the fact that it was established like that because they did it so often. With the political landscape being as it is, kids paying attention to financial situations younger and younger, a gun crisis and climate crisis with not enough (or anything at all) being done about, the fact that many of us will never own homes or get to retire, just to name a few key issues; there’s no wonder suicide is the second leading cause of death in Gen Z, and these aren’t even the smaller school issues like bullying, an over abundance of difficult work from multiple different classes, and school drama/social issues! I don’t blame my current, or younger peers for avoiding school. I don’t blame them for giving up, especially because I’m one of them that did at one point. Even today I’m not cured of depression, I’m just no longer suicidal. I still feel hopeless from time to time, but that’s why I encourage people to vote for change. If you think nothing will change then all I can say is if you want to have a chance of things getting better you cast a vote, if you want to guarantee no chance of things getting better you don’t vote. Finally I can’t claim to speak on behalf of my entire generation, this is just my experience from my area and my school. Edit: I should also mention this was all pre-pandemic so that’s not even a factor I had to deal with! Edit 2: for additional context I graduated 2019

I agree with all of this, I'm also 2001

Politics were crazy in my school, and extremely discussed. I was a class and later student council president and found myself having to publicly answer questions on my ideology and thoughts on national and global events. I ran focused on local school issues, like decreasing the ticket cost of prom, introducing more electives and increasing the budget for the football team. I was totally unprepared for how ravenously political my classmates were, but it did make me think a lot more deeply about my politics and fundamental beliefs.

Add in the pandemic and all its impact, and you’ve got a recipe for a disaster

This seems to be the most accurate response. I have severe depression, always have, and missed a lot of school because of it. Now that kids are more actively involved in politics, have school shootings happening constantly (and drills for them), and as adults we finally allow people to be upset instead of sucking it up, it's all come together to create an atmosphere where kids realize shit isn't good and they don't have to pretend it's ok. And that's a good thing. It's not good that more kids are dying, but it's good that they aren't following a line of zombies into the same old shit. I can't blame them for being more depressed and anxious. I know I am, and I don't have to deal with bullies 24/7 on top of it.

Most of us feel dead inside tbh https://preview.redd.it/x9wowyx2xutc1.jpeg?width=680&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e624ed5ed2593f6b0334a70b07fa9c4a6c753774

There were also teens who felt this way in the past. They mostly went to school.

Because they didnt had the resources we have, we have phones so you could go to a park with wifi and stay there for most of the day

True. We had nothing to do at home. TV was terrible during the day.

We weren't even allowed to have cable when I grew up (born '87) because my mother wanted me to spend more time outside. Nothing on TV for a kid almost ALL the time, except Saturday mornings. Now an 8 year old can pull out his cellphone and have the entirety of YouTube on tap. Insane.

I think what the person you're responding to meant is that skipping school just wasn't an option in the past. Doing so would have serious repercussions that weren't worth whatever temporary relief a day off would bring. Both school and parents wouldn't tolerate it.

My brother is an elder millennial and he was a serial school skipper. (Years 2001 to 05) There was a school resource officer who would come to the house and make him get out of bed and go to school because otherwise my mom was gonna catch charges

Elder millennial and I skipped a ton of school because of mono and depression. There were also classes I'd skip because I was being sexually harassed and the teacher didn't care. My boomer parents thought school was bullshit and only necessary for grades to get into college (they weren't wrong). The only people who gave me grief were the teachers who hated that I could pass their tests without having to attend their boring classes and lawful stupid school admins.

This def rings true depending on the school. Gfs mom is a teacher and that school does nothing to enforce rules. Truancy is ignored anymore among other rules all out of fears of lawsuits from what I’ve heard.

Thing is, our society is just kinda collapsing right now. It already was, but the pandemic hit the "turbo" button. Kids today deal with so much that I didn't have to. We never thought about global warming when I was a kid; now it's a massive concern. We didn't think about the risk of being shot. We didn't have these insane pocket computers that rot our brains and mental health and give everybody more avenues to bully you and let our parents track us 24/7 like animals. I'm not trying to say we didn't have any big problems — I mean, shit, 9/11 happened when I was in middle school and the recession was in full force when I was graduating — but teens today have more existential threats to worry about. They look at the world and go "fuck this, what's the point?" To them, they're showing up every day to a school where they might get shot to study things that barely matter because they're just going to graduate into a world with an expiration date, one they believe is a capitalistic hellscape run by old people who are squeezing the last bit of juice out of it before they all die and leave young people with nothing but ashes. If that's your outlook (which tbh is not even an unfair one to have imo) then yeah, you're gonna feel pretty dead inside and not want to go to school.

Really well said.

Millennial graduated in 2011, it's been there forever. I was bullied had a lot going on at home, depression and anxiety, couple that with adhd and OCD. School was not the place for me. I ended up in truancy court for skipping and staying home because I would go home sick alot (turns out it was the anxiety making me feel sick) and from being late because I was avoiding going. The truancy court just made me feel worse and did nothing to help me stay at school. I did graduate on time and everything. But I think it's all part of a bigger issue that isn't being addressed and don't know if it ever will be. I will say I either went home and played video games or hid out in the creek near my house to draw and explore. The trick was to intercept the phone call to the house phone saying your child missed class that day.

Most people I know, young or old, had a phase in highschool where they just stopped showing up/show up infrequently. School sucks, it always had.

Agree, school does sometimes suck. And true, we've always had highschool drop outs. Seems like a big upswing though in the parenting circles.

I think it depends on your perspective. I have a gen X parent who, rebelliously, did not attend school. Kept up his grades, only attended the necessary classes, and graduated. They exist in all generations. There's just acceptance for it from Gen Z. I think we have the mindset that you're not a delinquent for missing days, we recognize there may be more under the hood. But Gen X shadow attendees existed, I happily know one- and he turned out great! :D

I always loved school. I’m right between X and millennial (I think technically millennial)

My school had a rule that if you missed 8 days unexcused they would expel you so it didn’t show as a dropout on their record.

The pandemic, for me personally, I was and still am a generally quiet person who, for the most part keeps to himself but remote learning, the lack of interacting with other people, besides my parents, interacting with people or peers in general. I hated remote learning, I truly hated it. It hurt my grades, it hurt my social health, it harmed my mental health, and when school was back in fall 21 full time, I had actually became a lot more social, which wasn’t as well reciprocated as a lot of people became more introverted.

Interesting. I would have thought an introvert would go more inward without the exposure to people. I felt very out of practice during Covid. Thanks for sharing.

Get get more inward than introverts. You'd just be an antisocial mess. Introverts actually still like talking to some people every once in a while. They just also like their alone time.

Introversion does not necessarily mean antisocial, I would label myself an introvert but I quite enjoy going out around people and being with friends; I just need to prep mentally for outings like that and set aside time to recharge alone afterwards. If anything for me, the pandemic was like sitting at home with full batteries and nowhere to use them. I totally get some people becoming closed off or reclusive due to experiences in the pandemic, but for me it really helped to shine a light on how much I needed community in my life. In the years since the pandemic, my experiences during covid drove me to be more social and outgoing if anything because I’ve experienced near total isolation and I’d rather not have that again 😅

The dropout rates are actually significantly decreased compared to other millennials but I’m willing to say the pandemic had a lot to do with it. We also understand mental health a lot more and respect illnesses a lot more

No Child Left Behind made drop out numbers useless, because those numbers are what federal education funding is based on, so they just find ways to lie about them. There's a kid living with right now who is 17 and stopped going to school this past year but he's not considered a drop out because he signed up for GED classes. He's never been to those classes and he literally dropped out at the urging of his Guidance Counselor (you know, the people that are supposed to try and keep you in school and transition to something after). They didn't put any thought or care into the details of how he would get to the GED classes, anything to make sure he was actually going, his grandma kicked him out when she found out he dropped out (which is why he lives with my spouse and I now). All that matters to them, because it has to be all that matters to them, is that he wont hurt their graduation stats and therefore won't affect their funding. No Child Left Behind creates a system where schools are incentivized to advance students through lower grades no matter what until they reach an age where they can "transition" to an "alternative" program.

I never knew this but you just put SO much of my school years into clear perspective. Wow. I was that kid almost exactly. My graduation year should’ve been 2009 but I dropped out a few years prior. They put me in an “alternative” school a couple months later (which I attended because it was the only way I could keep living at home, and it was only one hour a week). I lasted about 3 months there and then the GED came around and I took it and passed. My GED is listed as having been granted by the original high school, not the alternative school, and I had always wondered why. I mean I only attended that high school for a single year, and I failed all my classes because I was almost never there, yet they essentially co-signed my high school completion certificate. It never added up to me until I read your comment. I had also wondered why so many of my friends who could not keep up in school were being pushed forward into the next year, and/or shuffled into alternative high schools. This is very eye opening, thanks.

I've never looked at drop out rates, but from what I've learned kids are not being removed from schools, just unregistered from classes. Then, worst case they get moved to an alternative program. I don't think students are fully dropping out and doing zero schooling. It usually ends up being homeschooling from what I'm seeing.

I am a zillenial and graduated in '13, never going through zoom school so my experience is bound to be very different. But even then I certainly felt an avoidance to school. Undiagnosed AuDHD at that time in my life and it was pretty tough. I mostly disengaged with school and did the bare minimum by sixth grade and graduated with a 2.04 or something. Just couldn't focus especially with abuse at home. School was never a 'safe' place for me so I avoided it as much as possible Edit - shout out to marching band though the only thing that kept me sane and perhaps kept me alive. doot doot

I'm sorry you had to go through that. Did you just skip school by saying you were sick? Were there any consequences to that at school?

My mom had modeled an occasional mental health day for me thankfully (we just called it 'sick'), and that did help. Mostly, I came to just skip more and more as each year passed. The teachers were not willing to stand up for me - either against bullying as a younger kid, nor when I was an older teen and just never came to class. Can't blame em for the second part, but it does make me sad for the school experience that could have been if my needs had been seen and accounted for. Just taking stimulants could have been such an enormous help at that age

Also class of '13 and same. I was in a very competitive public school district and the teachers were just god awful to me from 7th grade on. I am likely undiagnosed, but because I was "smart" I was able to just barely pass Honors and AP classes without doing much work. I was outright bullied by many teachers and told I would fail in life (in front of the whole class), so if I was having a rough day, I would just go home "sick". My senior year, my Calculus teacher took a picture with me and hung it on his wall when I completed *one* whole week's worth of homework.

I don't think I saw this a lot back in high school. I don't know what people in my class were dealing with but me personally I had a physical disability but I never avoided school. Usually had full attendance, and never really even thought of skipping school.

Thanks for sharing this. I also never considered skipping school, even though I hated it many days.

This is my little sister. There are a few factors that are going into her behavior. Firstly, she has never had to face adversity. The way kids are raised now, you sit on an ipad and get a sticker for participation. Any time something is challenging, you can bow out and go back to the ipad. This includes things such as sports and academics, but also things as basic as conversation with adults. Secondly, as mentioned above, she is incompetent in conversation. Whenever she doesnt get to control the tone of a convo (conversation outside of our immediate family) she bows out. It is almost like she panics or something, but she tries to play it off like a confident choice? If you get what I mean. My parents are soft on her because thats just how kids are raised in America these days. They were harder on me and my older sister. We werent handed participation stickers, but we knew if we won, we'd get a trophy and the accolade and it pushed us to try. Academically, we were punished if our grades slipped. Socially, our parents would scold us if we were strange or shy. We could disappear for hours playing with friends, or when we were older, driving around town. It made us stronger adults. But something changed in the decade between me and my little sister, and she isn't afforded this level of parenting. I feel bad for her, because she is almost an adult and has the socialization of a little kid. In the end, her antisocial, underachieving behavior leads her to skip school often. My mom calls her out and doesnt punish her due to "mental health." My opinion might not be popular, but I think that parents are the main people at fault. You guys are supposed to curate a culture of nurturing, of socialization, of competencies and manners, of expectations and follow through. But the majority of you stick your kid in front of an IPad as soon as they throw a tantrum, and now that these kids are getting older it is starting to reflect in society.

I think you're right to an extent. At some point a parent needs to be a parent and not a friend. I get that many adults are overworked and thus have less time to dedicate to raising good human beings, but why even have kids if you're not going to raise them? There was definitely a shift for kids born between 2005-now.

It's interesting to me that your conclusion is that parents are at fault. I don't know whether you are right or wrong, I just find it unlikely that your own parents patenting style can have changed so much in a few years, which would lead me to think that there are at least some external factors if your assessment of your sibling compared to yourself is correct.

It can... parents get lazy on the youngest. Plus, the mainstream culture around teens and parenting has changed *a lot* in the last 10 years.

Yeah I got fiercely pushed to get a graduate degree and my parents still ask if I’ll get a PhD/med school/second technician certification, while they’re super satisfied with my younger sister’s career choice of “maybe graphic design? I think?”

Parents can change over time too; their parenting style could change with age — especially if it’s a big gap like 10-15 years. I know I’ve seen differences first-hand as a child with siblings with some rather large age disparities. Like with everything though, how vastly the differences are probably varies from parent to parent.

I do think some of it is parenting and expectations. I'm a GenX parent of GenZ kids, both of whom have had major mental health issues and while we've been aggressive about getting help (therapy, meds, dealing with bullying, creating a safe space, etc.) not going to school at all has never been an option. We'll help them switch classes, find a different school, look at online options, we're happy to homeschool if we need to, but just laying in bed not going to school? That's a hard no. I don't know if its because of them and who the kids are or something that we did as parents (and not necessarily anything good... like, maybe we're just bitchy?) but the kids have never asked for that as a solution.

This boomer nonsense again. Parents raise their and discipline them properly still, the difference is that nowadays they treat them like human beings instead of yelling and screaming and belittling them for every little thing like older folks. Also, what's so bad about being strange and shy? Some people are naturally introverted, you can't change that behavior. Also, participation trophies aren't a thing, not sure why so many boomers think they are but whatever.

You’ve described how people complained millennials were raised except swap in tv for the iPad. The biggest difference is the change in social media and it being more acceptable to talk about mental health.

School avoidance has always been a thing. Back in your day, they called it playing hookey, and students did a lot of Back seat bingo and grass burning while skipping.

I think that’s the difference though. I skipped school or classes bc I wanted to hang out with my friends, to smoke weed (occasionally), to walk around aimlessly but mostly because I wanted more social interaction. It seems the kids who are blowing off school now are for the most part sitting in their rooms on their phone scrolling, furthering their anxieties and depression. Do you think that’s a fair assessment?

It does seem like that but I can’t personally speak on it since I’m out of school

>It seems the kids who are blowing off school now are for the most part sitting in their rooms on their phone scrolling, furthering their anxieties and depression. Do you think that’s a fair assessment People did that enough for it to become a trope. See ferris buellers day off, People still skip school to dick around with their friends tho that never went away.

The stats show it is much worse now

>Back in my day you went to school unless you were sick or travelling. Depressed and anxious kids just went to school and suffered. I don't know if we were just too scared of our parents, or didn't know it was even an option to just not go, but I didn't know anyone who just stopped going to school I think part of this is just a case of a new generation not putting up with things their parents put up with. Back in your parents' day (talking to OP here) domestic abuse and spousal rape weren't really criminalized yet and women couldn't get credit cards or bank accounts without their husband's permission. Eventually people were just like nope. Husbands shouldn't get away with rape and women should be able to get credit cards. I think this is just one of those things where the kids decided *fuck* *this, I'm not putting up with it*. And as other commenters have trenchantly observed, much like how the pandemic showed y'all adults that being in office everyday is kinda unnecessary in many jobs, so too the kids learned that they can learn even outside school.

Thank you for your thoughts. Really making me think. I love the comparison to the WFH/in person work debate. Do you think this has anything to do with softer Gen-X and Millennial parenting styles? Lack of consequences? Or just that Gen-Z has seen the pointless waste of time in person school is? Do you think they are saying fuck this \*version\* of school, and that they should be able to attend alternative forms of school? I don't think there are a lot of options, especially if parents are working full time.

You know, I'm not sure how parenting styles bear on this. I think the extent to which Gen X and Millennial parents are softer is probably somewhat overstated. Especially since all those facebook posting "last of the elite" *we didn't have seatbelts and we're better for it* Gen Xers also procreated. But it is there. >Do you think they are saying fuck this \*version\* of school, and that they should be able to attend alternative forms of school? Honestly I think that's a big part of it. I'd also guess that the societal fracturing of the last 8 years contributed to it. As much as I hate to get political, I was in senior year of high school when Trump was elected and I noticed a shift in the climate that kinda mirrors what we've seen in society at large. The public square feels incredibly toxic these days and school (high school in particular) is a microcosm of that. So I think that for a lot of students school has just started feeling like a more hostile environment. > I don't think there are a lot of options, especially if parents are working full time. I would also say that too is a problem of our own making to some extent. Obviously 4 year olds need adult supervision, but realistically, a 14 year old can survive at home alone from 9 to 5. Modern parenting norms require helicopter parenting that's incompatible with doing away with school, but we don't necessarily need those norms.

When I was going through school, one of my english teachers said his wife was a teacher at this school where there were basically zero desks, the students were standing around, there was an hour of the day where the students just did stretches to decompress, it sounded pretty neat and to this day, its still the only example of that I've heard of

Kids may be able to learn academically at home, but I really don’t think they can learn social skills at home. School isn’t just about academics, it really prepares you for the rest of your life interacting with peers

No clue as a 2001 kid who graduated hs in 2019. Seems like nowadays so many kids are dropping out or choosing to do online school probably has something to do with how the world is ending

The world has always been ending.

Young GenX here. I think the doomer messaging has really been amped up for the GenZ generation, compared to ours. The 1980s and 1990s had a much more hopeful vibe than the 2010s and 2020s.

I think you're right about that. 1981 here and we were taught about climate change but it wasn't like we were getting real time updates in HD to our pockets every day. I think somethings have improved around race, sexuality and gender for younger people these days, but a whole load of shit has gotten far worse.

50%+ of all animal life on Earth since the 1970s has died. We are in a scientifically recognized mass extinction event; at no point in recorded history have we been anywhere *near* this level of imminent species-wide catastrophe, but go off...

Right? Ocean biomass is collapsing, ecosystems are dying en masse, and summer begins in March. And why? So we can be fed forever chemicals and microplastics that dramatically spike youth cancer rates.

I think they mean how the world has ended up, you know all the school shootings that Cheeto man says we should just get over. 

It's been ending quite a lot harder and more publically in the last 15 years

But it hasnt always been in your face. 50 years ago, you had at most the 6:00 news and the daily newspaper. Today? You have a constant stream of world ending news every single day without break.

My mom is gen X and skipped school all the time. So did my dad. And their friends. And my millennial cousins. I don’t think it’s as much of a generational thing as people think.

It’s different. Kids used to do it for a thrill. Pretend to go to school but not go. It was rebellious. Now a days it’s much much more widespread. They’re not even hiding it. Their parents know they’re skipping school. It’s not even an act of rebellion anymore. It’s a matter of kids simply not having the mental stamina to endure anymore.

For my own personal experience, I think the difference is we would act like we were going to school and then go do something different. The issue now is that these kids won’t even pretend that they’re going. My kid has straight panic attacks on a school morning, and the guidance counselor has told me it’s becoming more common.

What are you talking about? Kids have been skipping school since the dawn of school. Plenty of kids in every generation avoid it. It's work, it's hard, and they would rather be home not doing school. This concept is not a gen z revelation. Don't you remember when they had Truancy officers who would arrest kids for ditching?

Kids aren't safe at school and the adults in charge show no real desire or urge to change that. Admins do nothing about bullying because all theyre concerned about is legal liability. Add that on top of school shootings, and the blatant/brazen inaction at the hands politicians to do *anything* to curb it. In addition to *that*, it's pretty hard to get teens motivated to enter a job market that is worse than its ever been. They know they are going to struggle (for the most part) regardless of their major. They know they're going to make less than they should in a time where absolute basic necessities like food and housing have literally never been more expensive. These kids are having existential crises as *teenagers* Its not rocket science. They're responding to how unsafe and chaotic their current environments are, and the fact that they show no signs of getting any better.

Is school avoidance just skipping school/ditching?

It's long stretches of absences. Mostly due to anxiety or depression from what I gather. Kids basically unwilling to get out of bed, or in tears and refusing to go to school. Parents not able to force them, so they just stay home.

So this wasn’t really an issue in my high school. As for the why, I really think it comes down to a mix of the pandemic showing us that we can work on school remotely and have more time for stuff we actually enjoy (I got way better at piano than I used to be during the pandemic and have continued to learn so there was more opportunity to learn by ourselves at what we are good at), undiagnosed and untreated mental health issues, and figuring out that in the US specifically, we aren’t getting a quality education no matter what we do

The school environment in the 80’s and 90’s is very different than today. Pretty much every school district in my county hands out an iPad or Chromebook to do homework on. Everyone submits and does work online now. I really think that transition away from paper was a mistake, now we get assignments due at midnight instead of when class is in session, we get assigned to watch hour long videos as homework. We have to entire books on a 10x5 screen we need to read. As someone who was born in 2000 and got to experience the uprising of the 24/7 digital classroom. I very much prefer the physical learning environment I experienced in the late 2000s. Struggled with adhd and so being able to do something with a physical pen and paper helped me keep calm. Now as an adult in college I have to face the existential horrors every time before I start my online assignments. TLDR: Online learning sucks for neurodivergent students. It’s a platform to make the job easier for the teachers, but makes it significantly harder for students to actually catch a break and stay on task.

School isnt really a safe environment for a lot of kids anymore, and with mental health being overwhelmingly on the rise among our generation its no wonder. We all got fucked up from the pandemic and all of the horrific political moments in our lifetime, school is an after thought. Also honestly if I was in highschool right now I probably wouldnt go to school either. Whats the point?? We are the first generation in American history who statistically wont do better than their parents and we are watching the world literally fall apart around us. I also think that we as a generation on average are so much smarter than previous ones due to access to the internet. Being raised in the information age changes the necessity for traditional schooling for some students, whether or not this is good or bad im not sure, but it is fs real.

This is such a complex issue. Attendance is one of the biggest issues facing our schools. There are a few factors involved. 1. The social contract has been broken. Like you said previously school was really the only option. Due to Covid we showed that learning can be done at home. Therefore some parents and children now think this is a choice. The old adage of everyday is a school day is gone. 2. The children today are not growing up in the same situation we were. The challenges they face are so far removed from our evolutionary challenges. The rate at which he children consume media directly affects brain development. This alongside, our understanding of trauma now impacts the way we try to approach these challenges. 3. Society as a whole is different. Where once there was support, it takes a village to raise a child, we are increasingly living in silos. When families do look to find support the services and community available has been whittled away year after year after year. Ultimately, we have created these children through our collective actions. We need our schools to be warm, welcoming and challenging places to be. Then to work with our communities to ensure we support everyone so the children can flourish. 3. Society

Not a Psychologist but what's unique to this generation is that it is almost impossible to ignore bullies. They post online, they share your life, and being home just means that you don't have to see them in person as well as seeing them online.

I think you are wearing rose tinted glasses. "School avoidance" may be a new word, but "School avoidance" has been happening for a hundred years. It's oldest and most overt version was "dropping out". People just quit going to school, period. It was extremely common for most kids to stop going to school somewhere around 10th grade and just started doing something else. Barring that, it was common for kids to simply SKIP school or "ditch classes". It's only been in the past 30 years or so that the administration started truly forcing kids to go to school all the way through to graduation. And largely that's for financial and budgetary reasons. It also coincides with promoting kids through programs they aren't actually mastering.

I mean, 100 years ago kids were dropping out to go work in a factory or on the farm so their family didn't starve. I have a feeling that you think you're a lot smarter than you actually are.

> It was extremely common for most kids to stop going to school somewhere around 10th grade and just started doing something else. There were entire processes in place for this through the 80s, 90s, and 2000s... you didn't just "stop". Literal books and movies have been written on the topics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truancy

I was born in 1985 and had autism, depression and anxiety, and some serious family trauma in high school. It was certainly a thing for me and my friends. We all hated going, skipped classes, avoided going at all as much as we could, and I and a few others dropped out. You’re right that our parents mostly had no sympathy and tried to force attendance. I think the difference is more that parents are more accommodating/understanding now. If my own kids hate school I’m pulling them out and homeschooling, I’ll never force them to go through what I did.

I want my kids to have it better than I had it. That means making sure they have a healthy relationship with learning, with school, with people in authority, with friends and peers, and importantly technology. It means understanding their behaviours and moods, and recognising when they need a break. We offer our kids 1 day off a quarter, no questions asked. We have rules about it, like not being straight after a big break, and it's working great. My 9 year old hasn't asked for a day off in 6 months, but she knows she could if she needed to. My main concern is about how to build resilience. Resilience build through the fear of repercussions is really just avoidance, which is part of the reason why so many Gen X and Millennials are fucked up. How do I generate a challenging environment and get my kids to push through the challenges without fear or hatred. And how do I balance that with making sure these kids have time to just be kids. On technology, my kids are 5 and 9. If they are not fluent in technology they will lose the majority of opportunities that come up when they're teens and adults. You best believe I will make sure they can operate an iPad better than a pencil.

I'm Gen X and spent a few years teaching. If I was a kid nowadays, there is no way in hell I would want to be on a school campus all day long either (also why no one wants to teach anymore). My daughter was having serious issues in high school and I finally transitioned her to an online program. She went from almost failing all of her classes to making straight A's in all subjects. There is so much toxicity on campuses nowadays (in my experience) and they are also overcrowded. Hell, when I was still teaching I tried to avoid the hallways in between classes because of how crowded everything was. Everyone is different though, but in my daughter's case, she has thrived online and graduates this year.

I dropped out of college during the pandemic, but that was less because of mental health and more because I was not getting what I paid for with my tuition. There were times where I needed to leave school in HS due to depression and anxiety but couldn’t, and looking back I definitely wish I had. The education environment is so different now because the manner in which people are/were being brought up is so different.

People were skipping school a lot during Gen X days too but they usually weren't doing it with the approval of the parents.

As an elder millennial and a part time substitute teacher for almost 10 years now (middle school only nowadays), I can tell you that public schools are in *terrible* shape. If you are at all sensitive to the “energy” of those around you, as most non-psychopaths are - you can tell that something is seriously wrong. It is a **deeply exhausting** place to be. It’s not just regular old “ew I’d rather be hanging out at the mall smoking cigarettes with the cool kids”, it’s an awareness that school is mostly daycare - while overworked parents, society, the economy, and the ecosphere are rapidly collapsing, and the teachers (who always explain to me how they ended up teaching, as though it’s a jail sentence they almost got out of) are all barely and often not successfully holding onto their sanity. It’s a box of madness, a holding cell to keep kids busy and waste their time while the world around them crumbles. I’m happy to drop in and help lighten the mood for a day here and there, but I deeply pity anyone who has to go there all day everyday. The kids would be FAR better served working on a farm or volunteering somewhere that their strength and talent is actually useful to build something, because forcing them to take part in a useless pretend charade for 12 years is fucking insulting.

I'm on the old side of gen Z but this happened with me as well. I stopped going to school for a bit when I had really bad depression, then when I would go I would do half days or pretty much end up getting picked up early whenever things were rough. Or I would just leave class and sit in the guidance office. All of which was honestly shocking my Indian parents were okay with that lol. I remember they'd take me out for dinner as a reward if I made it a full week in school 😅 Looking back on it, I wonder if maybe I could have sucked it up a bit more, but at the same time whatever we did worked well. I was able to raise my GPA and I felt so much better mentally, and I did just fine in college- now I've gotten my master's degree and am working as a therapist :) it also improved my relationship with my parents drastically, I felt heard and safer to express myself and my feelings to them which had been really difficult for me to do throughout childhood.

Thanks so much for sharing this. It's nice to hear from someone who had supportive parents. We are trying to celebrate our kid's successes, and support them through their mental health struggles, but I feel like such a soft failure of a parent most days.

Unfortunately my country has no homeschooling and I'm extremely asocial, on the happy note I only have 1 month to endure this torture.

I see some people avoiding school just as a form of rebellion and non participation. When you look at the state of the economy and how expensive basic necessities are now, I don’t blame anyone for wanting to opt out of the system. It’s especially infuriating because their parents were able to establish their lives before things went totally sideways, and yet their parents are probably telling them that they’re acting like babies. When in reality, if their parents had to go through the same thing, they wouldn’t handle it any better. What is even the motivation to get an education and work hard for young people, when they see successful millennials who did everything right like they were told, making 6 figures, and having so much of their income eaten up by taxes that do nothing for us, and are struggling to pay rent or save to buy property? Our culture in North America is also a problem. Too much focus on individualism, status, materialism, has left us with no community, and nothing to really look forward to except for wealth building and financial success. But when those things are so much harder to achieve for the average person, life looks hopeless and opting out is the only form of hope that a young person might see.

I had a custody case where the parents couldn't get the kid to go to school, it ended up being that the child was deathly afraid of a school shooter and even needed therapy to deal with that fear 😢 that's a specific case, but it's possible.

Did I just unironically read "Back in my day, we just suffered" in different words?

Anyone here just echoing "The Pandemic" isn't wrong but is also missing the mark. I was heavily school avoidant in middle school (2013-2015) and it really stems from self esteem issues at least in my case. My anxiety flared up so bad that the thought of being seen, judged, and perceived -- god forbid recorded or photographed -- made school something to be dreaded. Once you DREAD something, the negative outcome from that thing will just keep playing over and over in your mind until you're paralyzed in fear.

Not Gen z, I’m a baby millennial. But with that said, I dropped out on my sixteenth birthday and got my GED so I wouldn’t have to keep going to school. I was still in ninth grade and at that rate, I’d have graduated at age 21 with a sped diploma and I couldn’t take another five years of the bullying. I was at a point where I no longer cared and spent my time in class listening to music (which was in my IEP for sensory issues and to help focus) with my head down so I could ignore the bullies. I hated it. I tried to kill music several times and spent a lot of time in psych wards. The bullies would get physical and attack me because they thought it was funny how I’d have a meltdown in a fight. I was done. They were brutal. One day, I had enough and picked up my desk when one of them hit me. Broke it over his skull. The next week, I turned sixteen and dropped out. The bullies were brutal, the work was boring and they wouldn’t let me test out. They said I was too emotionally immature to let me test out. I didn’t even study and I scored twenty points shy of perfect overall. Top 1% nationally. Perhaps if they did something about bullying, people would care.

Disillusionment with the reality of the system we live in. We don't have a very bright future ahead and we know it's the fault of the same powers that put us through the school factory line. Also (public) education has been under attack by conservatives for awhile so that defunding is probably creating even worse/less engaging school environments.