The Void: Finding Happiness in a World of Escapism | Full Documentary | PragerU

There's an odd paradox happening, which is that Gen Z has objectively a world that is more developed than ever before, perhaps even better quality of living than anyone in human history. And yet, the rates of depression have increased by 50% in the last decade. China growing its mental health crisis. Depression and anxiety in young people have doubled worldwide. ER visits for suspected attempts of self-harm have increased by over 50%. People are lonelier than they've ever been before. They're struggling with making friends and finding partners. Self-harm, suicide rates, every measurable negative impact on our mental health that you could possibly think of has taken place. The more we have, the more prosperous we become, the safer things are, the easier life is. The more people are becoming suicidal. I don't really see a way out of this depression. It's genuinely hard to admit that you're not doing well. And we are facing down the first generation ever that on average is doing significantly worse than their parents. So we need to be asking questions about, wait, what is going on in our society? What is going on in our culture? We have a generation that outwardly appears to be having an awful lot of fun, and yet the mental health outcomes that we're hearing from them seem to be terrible. What's happening here? Serious? Every time. Every time. Maybe it's time to change your strategy. Oh, I've tried all the strategies. How about the one where you stop playing video games and hang out with your girlfriend? You know, you should really try this. The graphics are insanely realistic. Nick, you know how I feel about VR. I'd rather just hang out with you. Okay, well we are hanging out. I wouldn't call this hanging out. I'd call this watching you do random things. Okay, well, let's hang out then. In a world where you can Uber Eats a fantastic meal while you Netflix an Oscar-winning documentary on a couch you Amazon Prime to your house, a lot of the difficulties and challenges that previously would have faced have been snowplowed out of the way. And it means that when people do come face-to-face with challenges, naturally they're less robust. They are less experienced with dealing with them, and they don't see them as a part and parcel of life. They see them as an aberration or some anomaly. And what we've created is almost an epidemic of fragility. So a lot of young people are saying they have some form of OCD or they're bipolar or they have PTSD and these type of things, and they're actually identifying into the conditions. Hearing how many of Gen Z are on some sort of psychiatric medication is kind of terrifying. It truly is concerning to see how many people I know in my personal life are on these medications. To me, it's like a big, red, glaring, flashing sign that, okay, our society is sick. Our culture is sick. We've got some things we really need to fix here. Living in a pay train. Yo, yo, I'm Tristan, and this is my party. We got Nick and Emily getting crazy. Okay, we'll check back later. Who's that girl you were talking to? Ah, she was informing, man. Hey, but check this. I'm snapping this new chick from Sweden. Much hotter than American girls, am I right? I'm flying to see her this summer. Her dad owns a yacht, so we're talking six weeks buck wild in the Mediterranean, man. You should totally come. Ring Emily. That sounds great. But six weeks is a really long time, and it kind of sounds expensive, right? Emily, you can't put a price on experience. Plus, there's a shortage. But I know a guy, and I've got plenty of these to share, huh? Sorry, are those for your anxiety, OCD, Tourette's, or dissociative disorder? I can't keep up these days. Nah, those are my antidepressants. Double the dosage and all your problems just float away. We don't really have time to float away. Not all of us plan to live at home forever. Ah, well, my parents are never really home, so it doesn't really count. And Nick has that summer job lined up. It could lead to a really great position. I technically didn't say yes yet, so... Nick? Ah, come on. Emily, you really think Nick wants to be trapped in Stars Hollow all summer when he could be chilling thousands of miles away on a yacht? He told them to escape. Am I right? Come on. Hey, hey, mino y mino. YOLO! We see more and more people from my generation living with their parents. They don't feel the need to start a family of their own, and they don't really work. And I think because people my age are being coddled this way. A lot of people I know, when they're faced with these difficult situations, they do turn to escapism or ignore the problem altogether because they don't feel equipped enough to make that decision. I've got two definitions of escapism. One is the healthy version, which is doing something that helps you to relax from what takes up a lot of your day. The other would be removing yourself from having to feel the feelings of life. You are here, you are this embodied creature with 4,000 weeks on the planet. Your goal should be to try and feel the things that are happening to you. You want to actually be able to feel connected to your experiences. And yet, Gen Z is oddly the most connected, but also the most disconnected generation. Escapism, when taken to an extreme, is massively debilitating because it prevents you from spending the time you should be spending educating yourself, building up your own skills, connecting with other people in the real world and building relationships and building your network. All of the things that are important to do to become successful, if you're constantly spending this time escaping reality, that's all time that's taken away from these things. So when I think about escapism, I think of individuals trying to kind of distance themselves from the stressful experiences they're facing day to day and find solace in, whether it be daydreaming or video games, just entering a different universe, a different reality where they can forget about their problems. And because of the content that we're constantly seeing, I think young people are looking for something that isn't really real, that's unattainable. Ultimately, reality always catches up and you have to deal with the situation at hand. Nick? Is there something you need to tell me? Just hanging out. I thought we were both really excited about that job. And they said it could be something that could become full-time, right? Is that what you said you wanted? That way you can move out and start your own life? Emily, Emily, listen. This trip is like the trip of a lifetime. And everything here is so... It's just so stressful, okay? And it's not good for my mental health. And I honestly, I think it's just good for me to go out and have a fun time. You can't keep using your mental health as an excuse to make poor decisions. It doesn't... Wow. Seriously? What do you know about bad decisions? Oh. Oh, that's right. You're perfect. You are just so much better than me so that I should probably go somewhere else. Nick, stop. Stop. I started dating you because I saw an amazing guy. Okay, alright. Look at me. And I don't see you doing anything with it. At all. And I want to build a future with you, but... But what? You just don't want me to be happy? Is that what this is? Are you happy? Maybe it's time to change your strategy. If you want to go on this trip, that's your choice. Just don't expect me to be here when you get back. When people try to escape reality all the time or they try to dodge responsibility and they're constantly trying to dodge accountability, those people typically don't end up happy. The most undisciplined people live the most unhappy and unfulfilled lives. And when you neglect your problems with something like escapism, there's going to be a snowball effect that's going to turn into a much bigger issue. Escapism can be very addicting. I mean, there's a reason that social media users are called users. It's almost like a drug. And escapism can take on many different forms. So there's maladaptive daydreaming, for example, where individuals tend to lock themselves in their rooms and create these complex stories in their head with these characters. And there's also reality shifting, where people claim that they can completely shift their reality into another universe. Naval Ravikant says that the modern devil is cheap dopamine. And the fact that you can access a degree of satisfaction without having to really do much for it from the comfort of your couch means that it's very difficult to stop wanting more, which means that you need an ever-escalating dose to get the same trigger. Your call has been forwarded to voicemail. Come on, Tristan. Come on. Yo, hey, Tristan. Tristan! Hey! Hey! Hey! Tristan! Come on! 9-1-1, what's your emergency? Come on! Hey! Hey! Tristan! I need you to turn him on his side for me. Sure. Okay. Uh... Tristan, come on! You don't need to know much about fentanyl to know that it is unbelievably potent and the lethal dose can be as low as two milligrams. I mean, just in the USA last year, you had over 100,000 overdose deaths. Deaths. Not overdoses. Overdose deaths. So while many individuals in my generation really are suffering from mental health issues, a lot of people are self-diagnosing, and that's coming from things that they're seeing on TikTok of people romanticizing different mental illness, including depression. Typical human emotions and experiences, they refer to them in pathological terms. So sadness becomes depression. Worry becomes anxiety. Having a bad experience becomes trauma. You have a very dangerous ecosystem going on here of overpathologization leading to self-diagnosis, leading to medication, leading to self-medication, right? It's this recursive cycle. I think that drugs are the ultimate form of escapism, and I also think they're a prime example of how extreme escapism just makes things worse. Nick, what happened? I found you on your kitchen floor. The doctors say that if I didn't find you when I did, um, what were you thinking, dude? The, um, the girl from Sweden, um, when I told her I was coming, she ghosted me. You're just as fake as everything else. My life is a joke. None of it matters. A lot of people my age just feel very lost and empty, and I think the reason why so many people are turning to escapism as a coping mechanism is a lack of purpose and meaning. Human happiness, if you think about it, it's not based on just having the things you want, and it's not simply based on comfort. In fact, those things can create more individual misery if they are not backed up by the foundational pillars that help to keep somebody sane and with purpose and meaning in their life. Comfort is always going to be comfortable. In the immediacy, straight in front of you, it's always going to look like it's fun. You need to find something which is bigger than that, which is more important than that, which gives you more meaning and more purpose, so that you can say no to what is immediately comfortable and go after something which is long-term meaningful. Hey, listen, I know you probably don't want to hear from me right now, but I just want to let you know that the trip is off. Just a no-deed. And he's fine, but, yeah, I guess I just wanted to say that you were right about everything. Emily, I want to build a future with you, too. I just don't even know what I'm doing with my own life. It's not fair for you. So I think I'm just going to take some time and focus on what's real. And who knows, maybe in the future we'll... Yeah, that's... I guess that's it. Bye. Believing that you can change the person that you are, having a vision for what you want to become, how you want your friends and your community and your life to look, and then being able to make changes that move you toward it is more rewarding than social media or video games or porn or drugs are ever going to be. Something that's really helped me is to keep this journal where I write down what kind of person I want to become. And when I stopped having this sort of victim mentality, I really took control of my own happiness and my own success, and I saw my mental health improve drastically. The things that actually keep people sane and grounded and happy and feeling like they have meaning and purpose with their lives are family, friendships, faith, health, and truth. It's knowing that what you're doing matters and that your life matters and that what you're doing contributes to something greater than you. But it requires an awful lot of effort, and there is going to be a permanent temptation for you to stay and to do the thing that's easy. And ultimately, the reason to do it is because life is going to be difficult either way, and it's which difficulty do you want. Do you want a little bit of difficulty now, or do you want a lot of regret in the future? If you're feeling stuck, trusting in yourself is built up by making small promises and by keeping them to you. You need to have faith that if you say you're going to do a thing, that you will do the thing, and that's done by starting small. Tiny, tiny, tiny little things. These little things will compound, and over time, you will end up being unrecognizable to the person that you were before, I promise. Putting in work, having faith that you can enact change, I promise you that it will make a difference. I am a living, breathing example of somebody that was adamant throughout his 20s that he was depressed and anxious and that this was just a byproduct of the way that my mind worked. And I started to change the lifestyle that I lived and the values that I had and where I derived meaning from, and very slowly, life got better, and it's now unrecognizable to what I experienced in my 20s. Nick! Tristan! Dude! It's good to see you, man. Good to see you, bro. Hey, man, congrats on getting your own place. Mike, seriously, this is a miracle. Yeah, it's... Bro, I can't lie to you, it feels so good. Yeah, yeah. Um, hey, I wouldn't be here without you. Listen, dude, we both know that I wouldn't be here without you. So, what's going on with Emily, man? Hey, I told you to invite her, didn't I? I don't know. We're not doing this right now, are we? I don't think she wants to see me right now. Come on, Nick. She's still single, you think that's a coincidence? I don't know, man. You know what that sounds like? What? A little bit scared. Am I right? We'll see, okay? We'll see. Yeah, okay. If this resonates, if you think that you're built for more, if you feel like life should be something that it isn't, why not just try? Just by changing my perspective, I've gotten so many more opportunities and my life has changed for the better. It's kind of like the snowball effect. So, you make good decisions, you'll make more good decisions. You have a good attitude and outlook on life. You will attract those same people into your life. Life is like this choose-your-own-adventure. You can create your character, you can go to the gym and level up your strength, you can increase your intelligence, you can boost your charisma, you can dress how you want, you can portray yourself in different ways. You can do this all in the real world. Imagine a future for yourself that is greater than the one that you're in and believe that you could achieve it. Just for a moment, try, just try for a moment to imagine what that would feel like. It's there. It's there. It's within your grasp. You just need to take the first step. It's a nice place to think. Hey. Uh... You know, I've been trying that more lately. Thinking. Well, I mean, it's always good to try new things. Yeah, well, uh... You know, I figured it was time that I... changed my strategy. Hmm. I don't know, maybe we could, um... hang out sometime? Um... How about now? You know, you know that I feel good!