A profound relational revolution is underway, not orchestrated by tech developers but driven by users themselves. Many of the 400 million weekly users of ChatGPT are seeking more than just assistance with emails or information on food safety; they are looking for emotional support.
“Therapy and companionship” have emerged as two of the most frequent applications for generative AI globally, according to the Harvard Business Review. This trend marks a significant, unplanned pivot in how people interact with technology.
Not only men at all.
Yeah, but it is way worse in men with the way they are socialized. Men are taught to not show emotions which results in them being worse at regulating emotions and not talking about issues with their peers since that would be seen as emasculating.
Women on the other hand are taught to discuss their emotions with their peers and to help others with that as well. And now that women are not required to be in a relationship with a man to be able to thrive in society, many men lose out on their only emotional caretaker and turn to chat bots.
Well it was men’s mental health month. Funny how I just found that out today. But please, let’s talk about women’s mental health issues.
Wait, we have one of those?
Genuienly had no idea.
I thought june was pride month
I didn’t know either, but let’s box people in before addressing things. What’s next, mens suffering through heat waves?
I don’t think it’s only men either, but it’s worth considering the implications and potential causes for what is being said here.
We have had not decades but centuries of macho culture, where mental health is a taboo for men because “I strong, me no cry” and we know that mental health struggles go underreported on men. This is just adding more evidence to a symptom that we already know, of a society that hasn’t been able to course correct because it’s too set in tradition to allow those who need help to seek it without feeling like garbage.
While I’m not saying this is a problem exclusive to men, I think the causes and effects on women and men are rather different. We’ve now known for a while that women with mental health issues or disorders tend to go undiagnosed (even more so than unreported). The case of autism is particularly blatant, as women only started to get diagnosed in a meaningful proportion in the 80s (despite autism not being sex- or gender-driven). https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/topics/identity/autistic-women-and-girls
Similarly, that underdiagnosing came from the stereotyping of gender roles and the fact that being quiet and pretty equated being “feminine”, which is “good”, so can’t be autistic, because autistic is bad.
The performative masculinity of many men is also reinforced by partriarchichal norms in many women, who consistently belittle men who attempt to express their emotions without judgement, who demand macho men, who belittle men who aren’t financially better off than them.
Men can’t talk to most men, and they can’t talk to most women, society in general still largely demands they conform to the ‘bottle it all in, buck up and deal with it’ norm that is so very obviously harmful to men, and whoever they eventually take it out on when they have a breakdown.
… These are broad generalizations, but they are still broadly accurate.
Yep, the psychology industry/field has been unfair to women for a long, long time, often hideously so.
But no widespread progress on deconstructing and at least softening male machismo norms will be possible until we as a society acknowledge that… men are not the only sex/gender that often have ingrained patriarchal norms.
Fair, but it’s still a shady title IMO.
Just a “… mental health too” would have made it both correct and more nuanced IMO.