I find your example is extremely odd and disturbing. Facing other mindsets and cultures at a young age as a reason, or at least contributing, to depression? That's really a stretch.
Are children also at risk when meeting with other kids of different religions? It could shake their own faith too, by the same logic.
> Facing other mindsets and cultures at a young age as a reason, or at least contributing, to depression? That's really a stretch.
I can see it contributing. Humans are tribal animals and teenagers are the extreme of this with all sorts of cliques and clubs that form in high schools. Imagine being a teenager and discovering that your in the wrong tribe, then imagine that the tribe you like is "at war" with your tribe. Even with modern communications it would be easy to feel isolated without that face to face interaction.
Facing other mindsets and cultures is wholly different in real life versus solely online.
Why do you think racism / anti-Semitism / anti-Muslim sentiment is so prominent online and so much less prominent in real life? Why does so much research show that actual, in-person interactions with people of other backgrounds reduces the strength of racist stereotypes in people's minds?
> Why do you think racism / anti-Semitism / anti-Muslim sentiment is so prominent online and so much less prominent in real life?
Mainly because speech isn't regulated online, and there's little to no repercussions when going beyond what's acceptable in "real life". Online discourse has become a way to show what's behind the facade that many feel forced to adopt when talking face to face. Basically there's less hypocrisy online, at least for a vocal minority, for good or bad.
> Why does so much research show that actual, in-person interactions with people of other backgrounds reduces the strength of racist stereotypes in people's minds?
That's the Intergroup Contact Theory. But I still don't see why it's useful to explain an increase in depression in young people. The primary "tribe" of a kid is close family, anyone else beyond is an outsider: they have different values and perspectives; even your neighbour may be of a different religion, another race, another economical class, etc... Meeting this otherness is simply life and unavoidable. Online social life just displays this otherness in a harsher light, the extremes are more apparent.
Or are you proposing that we should lock up kids in their house for fear of their minds not being able to cope with what's outside? I'd argue that this overprotective mindset might actually be one of the reasons kids are more prone to depression these days, similar to how allergies are more prominent because we are less exposed to normal pathogens in early childhood. Kids falling back on online activities may be merely a side-effect of this, not the real cause of their anxiety/depression.
Are children also at risk when meeting with other kids of different religions? It could shake their own faith too, by the same logic.