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Is being depressed the new version of being bored?
When I was growing up all I heard from my friends was about how they were so bored all of the time. They would be in the middle of a fun activity and start saying they were bored! It was like it was cool to say you were bored all the time or something.
Well, now I don't hear many people saying they're bored but I hear them talking about how depressed they are. Sometimes they will be in the middle of a fun, happy activity (just like before when I was growing up) and start talking about how depressing their life is and stuff. It's like the word "bored" became the word "depressed" or something! They're practically the same situations!
Am I on to something or am I just running into strange people? Does anybody else feel this way or is it just me? It's weird!
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I don't think the people you hang out with are interchanging the words "depression" and "boring". I think they just don't know what word to use for how they feel, and depression may be the closest they can verbally come to it.
As a side, why wouldn't teens be more depressed than the ones you grew up with? War, broken families, an economic crisis, world disasters happening on a fairly regular basis... it's enough to make ANYONE feel uncertain and sad. But I believe that they may be trying to communicate that they are stressed - not actually depressed, which is a mental illness - but stressed.
And you're certainly right about how people loosely throw the word around. "I'm so depressed the new Cure album sucked..." is not a good useage of the word. Depression (the illness) is common, and I personally believe it's because people simply aren't as resilient as they were before.
The best way to defend yourself from overdramatics (as well as decipher who is "depressed" from the actually depressed) is to ask them to clarify. Are they experiencing a mental illness? Is it just today, or this week, or two weeks, or longer? (Two weeks being the cutoff point).
And if they aren't really depressed.... call them out on it. If they are, help them to access help.
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I am going to assume you around high school age. Many of your peers feel like their life sucks due to a lovely phenomenon known as teen angst. Teenagers like to rebel by being sad and thinking their life sucks. I don't know why.
Real depression is an extremely serious matter. If you notice a change in one of your friends behavior and are worried for their well being, talk to them about it. Just because a mild case of teen angst is more common than teenage depression, it does not mean that it doesn't exist at all.
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