71% of young adults, ranging from the ages of 12-17, have tested positive for moderate to severe cases of depression. While depression has always been a factor for teens due to numerous different causes, such as schoolwork or friend group drama, one of the main causes of depression in the modern-day age is the normalized poor treatment of others on a day-to-day basis.
“It isn’t that deep,” a recently developed statement, has become a term primarily used by teenagers for trivial matters, such as not paying someone back a dollar or accidentally cutting someone off mid-sentence. But this common phrase has been abused, with people using it after saying crude jokes to their friends or talking behind someone’s back countless times. While saying it to the more trivial matters can often be justified, justifying actions without facing consequences is unjust and not fair to the person who is negatively affected.
Saying that someone’s actions are “not that bad” or “not that deep” can put the other person in an uncomfortable position. It may make them feel as though their emotions are invalid and that they should ignore their feelings instead of addressing them. Situations should not be handled by dismissing someone’s emotions. People should be able to express how they feel and explain when another person’s actions have been hurtful, unkind, or inappropriate.
One of the main reasons why depression rates are skyrocketing for teens in the modern day is because of the treatment that they receive from their peers. From getting backlash for even thinking about expressing their feelings to another person, to getting their opinions shoved aside, depression can be fostered by dismissal from peers. The thought that saying one’s feelings “aren’t that deep” is becoming too normalized in teens today, and a new mindset needs to be formed. Not only are people being told that their feelings are invalid, but various opinions, such as political opinions, are as well.
Art, politics, relationships, and culture are deep. Humans build identities around stories, symbols, aesthetics, and experiences. Entire academic categories exist because people wanted to ask deeper questions about things others considered trivial. Imagine telling literary critics that symbolism in novels is “not that deep,” or historians that social patterns are “not that deep.” Human views depend on human interpretation.
Even in everyday life, the phrase often minimizes genuine emotion. Someone opens up about hurt feelings or different opinions, but is immediately commanded to stop caring. Rather than encouraging growth and resilience, it can instead encourage emotional suppression disguised as maturity or growth.
There is also a great deal of irony hiding in the phrase that something is “not that deep.” People view things differently from one another on another intellectual level. Something that may feel important to someone because of interests that that person has, or the level of research that they have done on that certain topic, may feel relatively pointless to someone else who does not have nearly as much knowledge on that topic. The whole phrase of things “not being deep” depends on the person, rather than a broader topic that resonates with a population as a whole.
On the contrary, some things really aren’t that serious, and saying the familiar phrase could sometimes be appropriate to use as a joke. Sayings have evolved, and new ones come into usage, such as this one. But responding to a disagreement with another about something with a default response of “it’s not that deep” discourages intellectual growth and instead encourages insecurities.
A new response that could be said instead of “it’s not that deep” could be “I don’t see it that way,” which acknowledges differences without completely dismissing others’ opinions. The idea of “it’s not that deep” doesn’t need to be removed completely, but rather just rephrased.
