shoshin Posted October 12, 2020 Posted October 12, 2020 (edited) I saw some sobering stats this weekend on younger people and how their mortality rates are rising in the last decade. The obvious culprit being suicides and this is backed in some other data that I can't paste here because I'm over the size limit but the increase in suicides would not surprise you as the biggest contributor to this. The Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma explores the numbers in more detail but suicides among teens are up 3x since the advent of social media. 3 times! And depression and other mental health issues also are through the roof. Kids who are about 20 today have lived every year of their lives with prevalent social media influence. If we had a pathogen that bent a mortality curve for our kids like this, we'd declare a medical emergency. As it is, our general reaction to this is "Yeah we know," "It sucks," "What can you do," and "Let me get back to being a bully on my Social Media of choice." What can we do? P.S. My daughter and some friends felt this documentary really unlocked some deep insights for them, similar to what those of us who took a class in high school on advertising might have had happen when we learned how ads manipulated people. I highly recommend it to anyone, but especially if you have kids of any age. Edited October 12, 2020 by shoshin 1
Orlando Buffalo Posted October 12, 2020 Posted October 12, 2020 The students I have had that attempted suicides have one thing in common, they have been forced to deal with the reason for their failures. If you are always told lies, such as the world will change to accommodate you, when it becomes apparent that those you trusted did not care enough to tell you the truth it is easy to just try to end it 1
Teddy KGB Posted October 12, 2020 Posted October 12, 2020 We are all gonna die of covid and climate change soon. They aren’t gonna miss much.
Wacka Posted October 12, 2020 Posted October 12, 2020 Remember, the Y axis is a log scale. The biggest risk to young people is liberalism. 1
shoshin Posted October 12, 2020 Author Posted October 12, 2020 5 hours ago, Buffalo Timmy said: The students I have had that attempted suicides have one thing in common, they have been forced to deal with the reason for their failures. If you are always told lies, such as the world will change to accommodate you, when it becomes apparent that those you trusted did not care enough to tell you the truth it is easy to just try to end it Most of the suicides I know about in teens stem from loneliness and bullying. 2
CarpetCrawler Posted October 12, 2020 Posted October 12, 2020 36 minutes ago, shoshin said: Most of the suicides I know about in teens stem from loneliness and bullying. And social media plays a huge part in that. 3
Orlando Buffalo Posted October 13, 2020 Posted October 13, 2020 4 hours ago, shoshin said: Most of the suicides I know about in teens stem from loneliness and bullying. Bullying is experienced by 90% of kids in one way or another. My observation is that the students who take bullying to heart are the ones who discover on their own that they are not special by birth. Many of the parents tell students that they can be successful without hard work, or even showing up everyday. Some have even gone so far as to tell me that their child should not have consequences for any behavior. I am going from the students who have attempted it since I started-usually 2 or 3 a year- and they all have been students who had parents who held them up on pedestals without making them earn anything
shoshin Posted October 13, 2020 Author Posted October 13, 2020 (edited) 8 hours ago, Buffalo Timmy said: Bullying is experienced by 90% of kids in one way or another. My observation is that the students who take bullying to heart are the ones who discover on their own that they are not special by birth. Many of the parents tell students that they can be successful without hard work, or even showing up everyday. Some have even gone so far as to tell me that their child should not have consequences for any behavior. I am going from the students who have attempted it since I started-usually 2 or 3 a year- and they all have been students who had parents who held them up on pedestals without making them earn anything You're spewing a lot of personal opinion couched as fact. Nowhere on a teen suicide medical website do I see, “Kids are committing suicide because their parents tell them they are loved.” In fact things more likely to arise are sexual abuse, physical abuse, divorce, death of someone close, abuse by peers all leading to loneliness and depression and sometimes tragically suicide. Your agenda may cloud your compassion. Edited October 13, 2020 by shoshin 2
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