Boom! Roasted.

The other day I got roasted. Hard.

It was my birthday and as a unique gift, my family put together a compilation of all my closest friends roasting me. You know— like they do on TV for celebrities. A lot of the roasts were really funny. A lot of it I wish my parents didn’t have to hear. And some of it hit a little too close to home. But that’s fine. I’m super thankful for being put on blast either way.

Here’s why.

Jonathan Haidt is a renowned social psychologist and professor at NYU Stern. I’ve been following his work for a few years now and his discoveries are something that I think everybody needs to know about. His book, The Coddling of the American Mind explains his research on the crisis of mental health among young millennials and generation Z. Here’s the harsh truth: rates of anxiety disorders, depression and suicide have skyrocketed among American teenagers in the last 5-10 years. I often hear complaints that Universities aren’t providing enough mental health support for students but the fact is they seriously can’t hire therapists fast enough to meet the demand. This is no joke and if you’re wondering why it’s happening, just take a look outside. Do you see the neighborhood kids running around in the street? Probably not.

Generation Z is an indoor generation. Pandemic or not, kids stay indoors most of the time. Part of it is because of smartphones and the internet. Part of it is helicopter parenting (over-sheltering your kids). But we know for sure that whatever we’re doing to raise kids these days isn’t working. Young people are ending up at college or in the workforce without the right balance and mental fortitude to play the game. And it’s because indoor kids never experience outdoor problems.

When professor Haidt speaks on this issue and how to solve it, he uses the term Anti-fragility. The term was coined by another scholar named Nassim Taleb to describe a class of systems that benefits from shocks and challenges. Take the immune system for example: the more exposure to germs, the stronger it gets. Our bones work similarly: the more we challenge them, the stronger they get. And the longer they go unchallenged, the weaker they become. This same concept applies to our mental health!

Are you catching my drift? Kids get tougher from facing the world alone sometimes. People get tougher from exposure to challenges. Mental toughness is an anti-fragile system. It’s a basic scientific fact that gets ignored every day. Our own schools are part of the problem! I understand the utility of safe spaces and trigger warnings. It makes a lot of people feel comfortable for a short amount of time. But it’s a horrible long-term solution for people who eventually have to face reality. It’s ultimately a great disservice to the students. And it has especially been a political disservice to liberals! Young liberals rarely ever have their ideas challenged and it pains me to see how poorly they debate them as a result.

Anyway, let me bring it back full circle before I go off on a tangent. 😪

The point of this post is actually to suggest how we can all be better friends. I’ve always prided myself on having friends who roast me, poke fun at me, or chirp me (if you’re from MA). That’s what a good friend does. A good friend makes you tougher. A bad friend coddles you and makes you more fragile.

Be a good friend. Make each other anti-fragile.

Filip, again.

**by the way, a lot of my friends roasted me over my blog. Thanks for the motivation ☺️**