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Why? Long answer - social media yes , but also some degree of resilience was expected from you.
Parents and teachers and other elders didn’t coddle you and would severely discipline you if you were in the wrong. That made you less fragile.
With many of these things there is a social contagion element. Once one person self harmed in my university 5 people self harmed who never would have otherwise.
There’s also - even if you had a depressive episode you didn’t make that part of your identity. Eventually you would want to snap out of it and go do things. And people would let you- the kid who self harmed is a partner at a t1 now- no one still thinks of him in that way.
We also didn’t have phones so much. So you looked at other peoples faces and went on walks and runs for fun and played sports and started the school drama club or whatever and got drunk and did stupid things without ever wondering about what would be on the internet tomorrow. You could actually blow off steam. Literally looking at peoples faces rather than looking at phones the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night is a better start and end to your day.
And we had longer attention spans. You could get lost reading a book or lost playing an epic video game and get into some sort of meditative state.
We were also kinder to each other. We’d discuss politics , disagree , and then go out and get chai and cigs and be friends nevertheless. One could even date folks who were on opposite political spectrums. It made for a less harsh environment. It turns out having that kind of free speech is central to and not separate from human dignity.
Not even politics - even if you had personal drama with someone or someone said something that offended you - you’d eventually in a week or two forgive them. You didn’t carry anger with you and they didn’t carry shame.
And you’d let yourself be influenced. I am particularly prone to be excessively online. But once a day or something some classmate would come to my door or something and tell me to get out of my bed, shut off laptop and go explore the city or go do debate club or go do football or something and I would. I wouldn’t think they were being judgmental and be wounded. You would accept influence from those around you.
And you looked out for each other. Like you paid attention and took care of each other. Classmates of mine have woken me up to make sure I get to class, offered to write projects so I would graduate, checked in on me and took me home when I was home sick, one day I walked into my room to find a piece of cake courtesy of - not even a friend, just a friendly batchmate who saw I was going through something tough. We were just less - alone.
Even relationships, when you’re poor students who have to explain where every 500 goes to your parents your idea of a relationship becomes about providing emotional support to each other, and not necessarily to play out all these gender roles etc.
You also had more agency. Yes you had to explain how you spent money but I was at least trusted to decide for myself what career, what law school, what to do when there. My parents never even came to college until it was graduation time and they would be mortified to speak to any professor. It was good training to grow up to be an adult. Now parents are much more involved because students aren’t entering with the same life management skills.
There was still job stress. The market be more saturated now but back then there was less structure to things and many folks took risks to start their own thing. But you didn’t give up after one failure. It was expected that you’d fail, even if you didn’t get T1- you’ll do something worthwhile- you’ll clerk for a judge for a while and become a litigator later. You’ll work for a T3 law firm and build resume, you’ll write government exams. Life was long and your career would rebound. You had skills , you would find some place to use them.
I can keep going on and on.
So- it is phones and social media. It is also how you were raised and how you treat each other and how you treat yourselves.
And if they were facing less, why was it so? Because India was less overpopulated and there was less competition for grades and jobs? Because there was no social media and culture wars?