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Youth Suicide Rate Increased 56% in Decade, CDC Says (wsj.com) 172

Suicide and homicide rates have increased in recent years among young people in the U.S., according to a new federal report. From a report: The suicide rate among people ages 10 to 24 years old climbed 56% between 2007 and 2017, according to the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rate of homicide deaths decreased by 23% from 2007 to 2014 but then increased by 18% through 2017. Violent death, including homicide and suicide, is a major cause of premature death for the age group. Around 2010, the death rate of suicides among adolescents and young adults surpassed the rate of homicide deaths, according to the report. "The chances of a person in this age range dying by suicide is greater than homicide, when it used to be the reverse," said Sally Curtin, a statistician at the CDC and an author of the report. "When a leading cause of death among our youth is increasing, it behooves all of us to pay attention and figure out what's going on."

Some mental-health experts suggest that social-media use among teens might be fueling the increase in mental-health conditions and leading to greater suicide risk, and some early studies have linked smartphone use to anxiety, depression and sleep deprivation among adolescents. The recent visibility of suicide in the media and online might also increase suicide death rates, experts say.

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Youth Suicide Rate Increased 56% in Decade, CDC Says

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  • by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @10:35AM (#59318750) Journal
    Personal experience. Usual disclaimers about anecdotal evidence.

    Compared to my productivity and my attention span 20 years ago it has gone down tremendously now. I am actually typing in slashdot during working hours, while claiming I am doing it only during compilation, builds. But constant breaks, spoil the productivity significantly.

    If slashdot, that does not try to hard to be addictive has this effect on me, old veteran coder with 25 years of experience, what would something like twitter and facebook would do to someone just starting their career.

    May be I am mentally weak. But somehow without this constant distraction I found useful work, gainful employment, decent family life. It is entirely possible I would have ended up as a useless internet addict myself, had such addictive social media existed in my teen years.

    • by Cryacin ( 657549 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @11:07AM (#59318890)
      This to me is a very complex topic with multiple dimensions.

      Yes, social media does play a deep role, I think not because of hyper-connectivity, rather the hacks that have been used to make it sticky to users. Instant gratification is like crack to young people. Delayed gratification is a learned skill, which is what you seem to be referring to here.

      Couple that with media of all sorts showing people spending beyond what is even remotely reasonable, and making it feel as though this is the new norm. Think about it, flight to Europe? No problem! It`s cheap. In real terms as well. Hotels? No problem. Want it now? I can buy it on my phone.

      Look carefully at how people in the USA lived in the 1950s. It was very frugal, people worked hard for what they had, and they valued it because it involved a lot of peoples time. Nowadays, we live in a throwaway economy, and if something breaks, buy something new. Too expensive? No problem. Make it cheaper. Drop wages in real terms, prime business to be hyper opportunistic and fast. This is not Mana from heaven, this is a tragedy of commons.

      Why do you think young people are committing suicide? It's because their expectations have not been set correctly. There is a wide gulf between the amount of effort *in reality* that you need to put in to be where you *want* to be. A core culture of fake it till you make it is present, and people pull the trigger when in reality they can't make it - in the timescale possible.

      If you're a kid, who is in a "no child left behind school", where if you don't do your work, that's OK, we'll just rebaseline, where parenting culture is always, "it's OK little Johnny, it's OK little Suzy", you're always awesome, and participation = prizes, what do you think will happen when these kids who have been set up to be very narcissistic, meet other narcissists? There's a loser there. More importantly, a loser that can't cope. It's a form of arrested development, because grown people now can't wait, can't work hard for a long time with no payoff, kudos and general cheers all around. It's built a neural hunger for dopamine, because who will tell big John or Suzan that they are accepted? That they are worthwhile?

      The kids get it. They are scared that they won't be accepted, as they can't handle rejection or failure. There is a backlash to the culture now, where people try to live simply, economically etc. Unfortunately, when you look deeper, they themselves are creating their own tragedy of commons, as they don't spend on capital investments, but rather on operations. We as a society have made systems so cheap, that they are brittle. There is a brilliant Indian word, Jugaad. Google it for a laugh. It's basically McGuyvering everything, and then wondering why core infrastructure and services fail more often. It's cheaper and faster on capital investment, but it never really solves the problem, as although a great hack when you have very limited resources and no time to survive, it doesn't stand upon the shoulders of giants. Our solutions these days are wheat fields, which need to be replanted every year, instead of orchards that bear fruit for decades.

      Grimly, I don't think we will solve this. The problem is, we are instant gratification junkies, not just in social media, but life in general. We operate on feelings, not facts, so don't see the hidden traps, and it costs us. We as a society will have to hit rock bottom to reform, and I can guarantee there will be swaths of casualties along the way.

      I hope every day that I'm wrong, or that someone much smarter than I will be able to really solve this. Alas, I feel we will be the pheonix that rises from the fire. Let's hope it's not nuclear.
      • by Areyoukiddingme ( 1289470 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @12:54PM (#59319374)

        We as a society will have to hit rock bottom to reform, and I can guarantee there will be swaths of casualties along the way.

        Given the subject of the article, the casualties are already happening, so that's not a difficult guarantee to make. People are quite literally dying right now. Gen Z may be more lost than the Lost Generation of World War I ever was.

        I'm not so sure participation trophies are the problem. Kids aren't stupid. They very quickly discern the difference between participation trophies and actual achievement. Statistically, Gen Z is working far harder at school than you think. There was a Slashdot thread from a few weeks ago on the subject. The bottom end is hopeless as always, but the top end is grinding seriously hard. They came up during the Great Recession, and it had a noticeable affect on them.

        Social media and the unreasonable expectations it induces seem to be worse than any previous form of media. Boomers and GenX were exposed to movies and TV which engendered some unreasonable expectations, but there was a distance there that's not present in social media. Watching Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous gave people something to aim for, maybe, but it was happening to strangers far away. Social media expectations come from people you actually know, or someone known by someone you know. It's zero or one degree of separation, instead of six degrees of separation. That's a lot more immediate and in-your-face than what previous generations were exposed to.

        Will society in general hit rock bottom before correcting? Perhaps. This article shows there's at least some awareness that something is wrong.

        • by Cryacin ( 657549 )
          My friend, how I hope you are correct.

          The problem here is we are living in the ecosystem of 2019. The genies are all out of the bottle, and they are feeding off each other. The family unit is degrading quite rapidly, and with two working parents as the person who stays at home to rear our next generation is not valued, we are going to have institutionally raised children by a set of teachers that either can't get more money in another job, or are of the few that want to selflessly make a difference, even
      • The West has just got the first generation to have things worse than the one before and where a better future doesn't look possible - of course they're topping themselves!
      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        It goes beyond that. For all the circuses that come instantly, bread can disappear tomorrow. The big screen TV and wireless cloud enabled Jetsons looking washer and dryer come by just signing your name, but since you can't be reasonably sure you'll have a job next year (or even next week), it might all go poof. Not the student loans, of course, they never go poof. You can get a new car with an electric butt warmer with no problem, but if you injure your butt, the ER bills might be insurmountable. You might

    • as you age it's harder to maintain the pace you did 20 years ago. You need more breaks. Usually you can make up for it with experience.

      Also, if your life is anything like mine it's been a rough 10 years. The 2008 market crash hit everybody. I imagine most of us got stuck with lower pay and extra work. Or just plain laid off. I'd only just dug myself out of it when my kid hit college and those expenses started.

      Life really is harder now. There's more competition for fewer jobs. My dad didn't have to c
      • Also, if your life is anything like mine it's been a rough 10 years. The 2008 market crash hit everybody. I imagine most of us got stuck with lower pay and extra work.

        If you're on /., then you got stuck with lower pay and extra work because of H1Bs.

        If you haven't woken up yet and realized that none of this is random, and that all of it is part of The Plan [which was crafted at least a century ago], then you're just about psychologically hopeless at this point.

        Again: NONE OF THIS IS RANDOM.

        It is all
    • As an old timer veteran like you. It isn't social media or Slashdot that is the problem. It takes a lot of energy to be fully focused for 8+ hours a day. Distractions when properly managed are actually helpful to overall productivity.
      As a skilled employee can do something in 30 minutes, that will take new employee weeks to do. As experience makes doing such tasks easier over time, because we fall back with decades of experience so we know what track to run down. That said, A skilled employee will burn

    • Had to read the literature about suicide some years ago.
      It was somewhat shocking to find out the strongest correlations that scholars identified.
      Your risk increases if you are
      Rich, safe, at peace, atheist, single, city dweller, intelligent. There are also weak ethnic and geographic differences e.g. Hungaro-Fins high risk, Slavic peoples low risk (but see the Russians where other factors overshadow the alleged Slavic resilience).
      And on social level, quick change of social order and culture regardless if posi

      • Addendum:
        The article is about youngsters so I dont know how much this applies but on individual level a real or perceived loss of role in life, you may call it meaning is the thing that pushes people to suicide. That's why unemployment is high risk. You feel useless and unworthy. Or a father who looses gis role as one for instance due to divorce.
        I've seen numerous examples of well off people who even have so much that they can stop working and survive no problem, who get totally crushed by losing a job.

  • Yeah sure. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ananananan ( 6320522 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @10:38AM (#59318766)
    Yeah, sure, it's the social media. Nothing to do with the impossibility of finding a job that can support oneself, no affordable housing, and the thought of bringing children up into the world which is even worse than the one that their parents brought them into.
    • Re:Yeah sure. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @10:48AM (#59318798) Journal

      Yeah, sure, it's the social media. Nothing to do with the impossibility of finding a job that can support oneself, no affordable housing, and the thought of bringing children up into the world which is even worse than the one that their parents brought them into.

      Worse than world war? Worse than the Great Depression? Worse than trying to survive in new settlements in the new world?

      No, I don't think you can really say that ... something else is amiss.

      • But the media boys and girls claim we are experiencing crisis after crisis. How can this not be the worse of all times? /s

        • Re:Yeah sure. (Score:4, Informative)

          by jwhyche ( 6192 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @11:49AM (#59319074) Homepage

          Because it's not. Statics are being skewered by better reporting and collecting methods. If go strictly by the news you would think that mass shootings in US schools are going up. When actually they are going down.

          https://theintercept.com/2018/... [theintercept.com]

          Not only are school shootings down from 1992, they are radically down. So I always question things like this. It is case of more or just a case of better data collecting?

          • > It is case of more or just a case of better data collecting?

            Or changing definitions. Which I guess could fall under the category of better data collecting assuming that the definition change isn't to get a predetermined result.

          • It's not an either/or proposition. More/better data collection is pointless if it's not coupled with uniform publishing standards (i.e. you're as likely to publish data which contradict your preconceived biases as you are data which confirms it). Worse, having more data makes it easier to cherry pick and publicize only the data which confirms your biases. The news media long ago stopped trying to portray an accurate representation of the world, and have been abusing sampling bias to push the stories they [ourworldindata.org]
      • Worse than world war? Worse than the Great Depression? Worse than trying to survive in new settlements in the new world?

        Woah, 2007 must surely have been a busy year with so much in it happening !~~

        Check the small details again:
        - TFA is about 2007 vs 2017
        - the poster you're replying to is just experience of kivs vs experience of parents raising them.
        They are all about *recent past*.

        Whatever horrendous event some significant portion of humanity had to endure in the past one, two or three centuries is completely out of the picture.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Fine. Worse than seeing Star Wars in its original, glorious release in an actual theater, and seeing it mangled over the years as Lucas "fixed" it?

        • by lazarus ( 2879 )

          When I was in school a classmate of mine for "show and tell" would stand up in front of the class and tell everyone how many times over the Soviet Union could destroy everything on Earth. I didn't for a second believe I would ever see my 20th birthday.

          Just because things were bad before, doesn't mean that aren't bad in a different way now. The whole "we somehow managed so you should too" is not actually a recipe for progress. I don't want anybody today to feel as helpless as we felt in the past, no matte

          • ...dead-end jobs combined with the blinding light of billions of other people competing for fake internet points shone in your face constantly. I can't imagine anything more crippling than the barrage of social media combined with entry-level work that doesn't pay enough for even a basic living.

            Well, you can absolutely SOLVE one of those problems immediately...quit social media.

            If it is bothering or messing you up so badly, you can immediately delete your accounts, delete the apps and voila...that problem

      • I think the Salesforce CEO nailed it when he said that Capitalism needs to evolve. We've basically become batteries for our capital holding overlords. One can see how it would be more efficient to just store us in pods and suck our energy like a modern day vampire (didn't Buffy have a season just about such a contraption?).

        Social media is largely a reflection of the modern day capitalism...and selling selling selling selling. It also highlights the human challenge of having to adapt and understand so muc

        • This isn't about capitalism, but about societal decay. Like entire society becoming bored of existing. Many other cultures came through similar periods. For example, Roman Empire. It it not barbarians that ravaged it but own decadence. Entire Italy through gentrification got turned into mockery of itself, something that is not unfamiliar to modern US. All the Empire's successor states suffered similar fates. As well as the Mongol empire and the Islamic caliphate and their successor states. It would be ridic
          • > This isn't about capitalism, but about societal decay.

            What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them? -- Socrates, 470 BC - 399 BC

            Nothing has changed in 2,000 years.

            • The culture became so perverse in Hellenic Greece that it VANISHED INTO EXTINCTION.

              So, yes, Hellenic Greece was confronted by an existential crisis, and the existential crisis emerged victorious.

              The only constant in human history is that unnatural perversions will necessarily destroy the civilizations, cultures, and peoples who partake of those unnatural perversions.
        • by anegg ( 1390659 )

          I think the Salesforce CEO nailed it when he said that Capitalism needs to evolve. We've basically become batteries for our capital holding overlords. One can see how it would be more efficient to just store us in pods and suck our energy like a modern day vampire (didn't Buffy have a season just about such a contraption?).

          Isn't that the plot of The Matrix?

      • If I had the points, I'd mod you up. I see a lot of the "the world is more dangerous/falling apart/chaotic than ever before!" hyperbole, and I'm tired of it. America's wars are having fewer and fewer fatalities, violent crime is down, pollution is declining, the transition to green energy is accelerating, economic downturns are less severe, opportunities for financial advancement have never been greater (jobs are more optional than ever), education is cheaper than ever (thanks to online courses, YouTube, e

      • Worse than world war?

        Absolutely worse than a world war.

        The surviving participants of WWII responded afterwards with the greatest Baby Boom the world had ever seen, and that Baby Boom continued right up until the advent of (((Birth Control))) and (((Abortion))) [all part of The Plan].

        Whereas the surviving participants in the Scrotial Media Wars [meaning the ones who haven't yet committed outright suicide] have responded with collapsing sexual intercourse & live birth rates, which are sending huge s
        • Don't worry! There are millions of people in the developing world we can import to make up the balance. Embrace diversity it's good for you and good for society

      • Re:Yeah sure. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by stinerman ( 812158 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @11:49AM (#59319078)

        I know you are replying to the OP pointing out that things have indeed been worse on objective scales, but this is not correct in terms of how depression works.If it were, people who are well off would not have depression. Depression often is about comparing your life to (what you think) the lives of others and being disappointing in your own station in some way. For me, I feel that I do not deserve the life I seemingly have lucked into. For others it's that they have worked hard and have nothing to show for it. It's still a comparison, and social media does make that easier.

        Social media also shows a distorted picture of someone else's life. You generally only see what's going on that is good rather than bad.

        My amateur belief on the matter is that modern western society has a problem with accountability, especially with the focus of the news media at the moment. We regularly hear of the rich and famous getting away with crimes that "normal people" would not get away with. We feel that the rules of society are unevenly applied. This causes a kind of learned helplessness where we believe it's not worth it to try to change how our society operates because there's no point. We are powerless to change it, so there's nothing to be gained from trying. We stop trying which perpetuates the cycle, leading to more helplessness and ultimately depression.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • the social fabric that was in place during the 20th century is being ripped to shreds currently; and yes, it will wind up being worse than all of those things to society.

        Sure the *individual* might have been worse off; going off to war and not coming home -- but the country the survivors returned to was in much better shape than what we have now.

      • ...something else is amiss.

        When social norms are so far removed from anything natural, so are the results.

      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        If you're gen-X, your parents likely have no memory of WWII and grew up in the '50s. Unemployment was low and the social contract was strong.

        Even during the war, I wouldn't claim things were all rosy or anything, but you were unlikely to be left with literally no idea what to do for at least the bare essentials (unless you were actually living in the war zone). Arguably, unemployment was actually negative.

        The Great Depression was actually a more similar situation. Lots of unemployment, lots of severe undere

    • by Nikkos ( 544004 )

      "Nothing to do with the impossibility of finding a job that can support oneself, no affordable housing, and the thought of bringing children up into the world which is even worse than the one that their parents brought them into."

      Plenty of jobs. Plenty of housing. Just get the hell out of LA/SF/NY etc.

      World is way better than 30/40/60 years ago. Longer lifespans, better standards of living, more entertainment choices, lower crime. Stop watching the news and go outside.

      Social media and the increased pres

      • by PCM2 ( 4486 )

        When exactly are we going to realize that social media has serious problems? I don't like the idea of any restrictions on speech, but I'm starting to think we need higher age limits at the very least.

        I think there's a lot to this.

        1.) Young people just don't have the critical thinking skills or the life experience to be able to sift through all the stuff that's presented to them, make value judgments, etc. They take stuff to heart that they should probably just ignore. They react strongly to things that aren't really a big deal (and this affects other young people who are on the receiving end).

        2.) We've all seen YouTube comments, and Reddit, and so on. The internet is one big schoolyard full of insults,

    • by Luthair ( 847766 )

      Yeah, sure, it's the social media. Nothing to do with the impossibility of finding a job that can support oneself, no affordable housing, and the thought of bringing children up into the world which is even worse than the one that their parents brought them into.

      Teenagers aren't exactly known for long term thinking.

    • Those are not really youth problems. Young adult problems but not youth.

      We as humans like to compare ourselves with are peers. What is worse then struggling day to day to survive, is to see the guy who you went to school with, show off their new Car, or their vacation in Europe. But what makes it worse, that guy with the New Car or Vacation, may be stuck paying the bills that may be stressing them out and they are envious at your post where your child may had made the honor roll, and pictures of playing

    • TFA talks about 10 to 24 years old people. TFA also talk about social media use among teens.
      Keep in mind that you stop being a teenager at 20.
      Also keep in mind that teens usually graduate from high school around the age of 18, where they do not have to worry much about any of the things you've named. There they mostly have to worry about social pressure from their peers, instead of pressure from the economy. And after graduation there's not a lot of teen-hood left.

      Your objections do not devalue the plau
    • by anegg ( 1390659 )

      Yeah, sure, it's the social media. Nothing to do with the impossibility of finding a job that can support oneself, no affordable housing, and the thought of bringing children up into the world which is even worse than the one that their parents brought them into.

      Since recorded history, societies have been convinced that there was a glorious golden past that has been lost, and that the age now being experienced is the epitome of dull, dreary dreck and danger. The ancient Greeks had myths about the "Golden Age" but saw themselves as living in the "Iron Age." It isn't true, and anyone who has the eyes to see can find evidence that it isn't true.

      Social media as a phenomenon is to me a more likely avenue of exploration for increasing suicide rates among people of the

  • Due to depressions climbing, and doctors confusing symptom hiders with cures and life situation problem solving, even when they're massively addictive.

    Nobody is confused about why they're depressed. All it takes for that, is to not close your eyes to the daily madness.

    But who cares about solid research, right? Either you're pro-profit (aka "-freedom") or you're a loony "like those time cube vaxxer lizard flat earthers"(TM). /s

    • Yep. Black and white; as you say. I don't know how to solve it but I sure as hell wish we'd put more effort into being less divided.

  • by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Thursday October 17, 2019 @10:44AM (#59318786)

    "Violent death, including homicide and suicide, is a major cause of premature death for the age group."

    Indeed, dying old old age is not, so this is the rest.

    • by PCM2 ( 4486 )

      I assume they really mean death by violence, so they're not including "death by misadventure" (car crash, falling off a roof, drowning, ice skating accident) or death from illness.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @10:53AM (#59318812)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • As more of the world comes online with an open economy, companies spread there and sell a lot more, making the owners wealthier, and the locals no longer have to live on dirt floors.

      The correct measure remains the average health and wealth of people. Income disparity is a red herring, a rhetorical throwback to class warfare.

      • by Impy the Impiuos Imp ( 442658 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @11:30AM (#59318986) Journal

        And if you're worried about college debt, easy, government-guaranteed loans have allowed colleges to double digit increase for decades. $300 more for tuition this year? Nope!

        But an additional $20/month on your loan, ok!

        Congress could shut this down tomorrow by refusing to guarantee any loans to colleges that increase prices more than 1% a year, for the next 20 years.

    • Eh, I don't know. Kids are ignorant to/don't care about most or all of what you mentioned. They do use social media online and grew up knowing no other kind of life.
    • You're RIGHT....well, except for all of history.

      Wealth disparities throughout human history have been far greater than today, not to mention vast segments of the population in bond slavery, serfdom, or other bondage in which they didn't technically have ANYTHING. And yet people haven't historically murdered themselves over it. The difference? Today people assume they should all get to live like the people they see on TV. It's never been true, it's a delusion unique to today.

      Most people across the world

    • by eepok ( 545733 )

      Your post is kinda evidence of the problem. It's a popular social media trope/meme to exaggerate and awfulize things that are just "not easy" or "not the best I can imagine".

      "Could it be because wealth disparity is the worst it's been since the Great Depression?"
      -- There's extreme wealth disparity, but the even the poorest Americans have amazing access to modern marvels and assistance. And how does someone being rich elsewhere affect the mental health over here? They would have to know about that person's w

  • by TigerPlish ( 174064 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @10:53AM (#59318816)

    What, 20, 30 years of Ritalin and Adderall won't catch up to you?

    How about letting kids be kids, and not medicating them to be good compliant obedient convenient kids? They're supposed to be nearly-uncontainable tornadoes of energy, they're not supposed to be quietly obedient "yes m'am no m'am". They *want* to run free and do this one second and that the next while doing a third thing all at the same time. ADD drugs are just for parent's convenience and druggists' profits.

    And while you're at it, stop spewing all the alarmist "you''ll be extinct in 20 years" bullshit the media tells you to parrot. You are, quite literally, scaring the children.

    All this alarmist braying was untrue 40 years ago, and it still is untrue today. 40 years from now it'll still be untrue. The planet will be here. maybe the seas will be a little higher and the temp. a little warmer, maybe it won't.

    But y'all are freaking the kids out. Have a think on that.

    • (((Who))) [washingtonpost.com] makes the drugs?

      And (((Who))) [psychologytoday.com] prescribes the drugs?

      There is damned near INFINITE (((profit))) to be made in destroying a civilization.
      • GAILA: Look out there. Millions and millions of stars, millions upon millions of worlds. And right now, half of them are fanatically dedicated to destroying the other half. Now, do you think if one of those twinkling little lights suddenly went out, anybody would notice? Suppose I offered you ten million bars of gold pressed latinum to help turn out one of those lights, would you really tell me to keep my money?

    • Indeed, 40 years ago it was 'nuclear holocaust is going to kill us all!' Gave me nightmares for a long time. Guess what? We're still alive.
  • by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @10:56AM (#59318838)
    I think there's something behind the notion and specifically think it may be due to declining face to face interactions. We've got hundreds of thousands of years of evolution that shaped us to handle that which have come crashing head first into modern technology.

    A few months ago I remember hearing some news story about two people on the opposite ends of the political spectrum (think it was some actor and some member of Congress) that had met face to face and had a long discussion on some topic. I don't recall if they actually agreed on anything, but both of them said that they thought it was a productive and cordial conversation and that it seemed like they could have further discussions or at least talk about the issue. Meanwhile I look at conversations on social media (or even web forums) for that matter and see the polar opposite.

    Maybe we still want to screech at each other and fling shit like packs of howler monkeys, but when you've got the other person right there next to you it's a lot more difficult to do that. Anti-social media seems to bring out the worst in us and makes it far too easy to digitally segregate ourselves into little tribes where we can keep reinforcing the notion that the other isn't worthy of being considered human, and the lack of face-to-face interaction makes that easier to do and reinforce.

    I don't know if that's the immediate cause of suicide in youth, but I could imagine that a decline in face-to-face interactions could cause some erratic behavior in apes that evolved to be social creatures with exactly those kinds of interactions. At the very least, I think it contributes to making a world that's just a little less joyous and a little more callous and maybe that's enough to push a few more of the most vulnerable people over the edge.
    • by stinerman ( 812158 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @11:27AM (#59318970)

      I have found with my own depression that getting out and doing things helps. People who were depressed in the past had to go places to get regular chores done. People today, if they have the means, can have pretty much all the necessities of life delivered to them. There is really no reason you ever have to leave the house.

      I agree with you that this is a possible cause for some people. For others maybe not. Everyone is different in this regard.

      • People today, if they have the means, can have pretty much all the necessities of life delivered to them. There is really no reason you ever have to leave the house.

        Outside is not even temperature-controlled. Sometimes it's too hot and/or too humid, sometimes there's water falling from above and sometimes it's so cold there's freakin' snow everywhere. Not to mention the bugs and the noise.

        Now if you'll excuse me, I'll go cry in a corner while waiting for Amazon to deliver my snacks. The damn assholes are 5

    • by PCM2 ( 4486 )

      I think there's something behind the notion and specifically think it may be due to declining face to face interactions.

      I know this is true for me. I vastly prefer talking to someone in person than any other way. As I age, though, that's getting harder to arrange. Friends move away, they have kids, and so on. Your "coworkers" are in a different time zone.

      Have you noticed that most young people don't talk on the phone anymore, either? They text. I know I do this, too -- and for me, it was because of the unintended side effect of carrying your phone with you everywhere you go, so when it rang, the unstated implication was that

  • by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @11:01AM (#59318860)

    Climate change prophets have been telling young people that doomsday is nigh. They've heard it every day of their lives, in one dramatic story after another. What would you expect?

    - They have no future.
    - They've been taught that history is all grievance and zero accomplishment.
    - They've been told there's a good chance they'll get raped or commit rape in college.
    - Their jobs will all be replaced by robots.
    - Brexit will destroy Britain and cause a famine.
    - Recession is just around the corner
    - Fake news will make their votes meaningless.
    - They'll spend their lives perpetually in debt from college loans (until they die from climate change in 2031).
    - They'll never be able to afford a house.
    - Nazis or white supremacists or some other bogeymen are lurking around every corner, ready to jump out and maim their minds with weaponized thoughts.

    The self-anointed good people can only communicate negativity and nihilism. Young people are listening.

  • it puts pressure on everybody, including teens. There's a laundry list of problems our poor response to the 2008 market crash (and our willingness to let it happen in the first place) caused.

    I keep saying this, but Vote Bernie or Warren in 2020. They're the only candidates who will actually regulate Wall Street. Everybody else is doing swanky donor dinners (Trump himself has raised $125 million in 1 quarter, that didn't come from small dollar donations, I'll tell you that, and don't get me started on Bi
    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      When the Democrats learn math w.r.t. the federal budget, then I'll support them. The Republicans are clearly too stupid to learn it...well, that and science, which they figure is some sort of dodge.

  • by Comboman ( 895500 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @11:52AM (#59319104)
    Is it possible this is really (or at least partially) more accurate reporting? Families don't want to admit to a loved ones' suicide, so many used to be written up as something else: "accidental drug overdose", "fell asleep in garage with engine running", "accident while cleaning gun", "auto-erotic asphyxiation", "fell asleep while driving", etc. Even many police shootings are actually "suicide-by-cop". Yes, suicide is depressingly common, but it always has been, we just got good at ignoring it.
  • by FeelGood314 ( 2516288 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @12:58PM (#59319390)
    Our modern car dependent subdivisions have isolated our kids. My kids play outside and make up their own games but they can do that because there are 5 of them. I rarely see other kids playing/congregating outside and between November and March there are none other then my own(I'm in Ottawa). My one nieghbour is 25, he has never walked from his front door anywhere and spent money. My neighbourhood is completely unwalkable. The kids that do do activities are driven by their parents to organized activities.

    So now we have an entire generation that doesn't physically interact with each other. It's painful watching 16 year old kids come out to play and realizing they have no conflict resolution skills. They think cheating is fine because there is no ref or immediate consequences. They lack any idea or creativity in making new rules.

    We had phones and video games 40 years ago. If anything it is easier for kids to send messages to each other. It is the lack of physical contact and unsupervised face to face interaction that is depriving our kids of the necessary social skills they need.
    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      What did we do 100 years ago? When a good portion of the population lived on farms and had much less access to transportation of any kind suitable to meet the kids 'next door'.

      I rarely see other kids playing/congregating outside and between November and March there are none other then my own(I'm in Ottawa).

      Ottawa. Well that's because they'd freeze to death. Where I live, you can't see them because they are out at 1:00AM and it's too dark. Hence the need to continually bump back the school start times.

  • If you teach kids that they are special snowflakes that melt at the first sign of opposition and everyone else is responsible for their feelings and they are justified in being suicidal over mean words, they're going to be special snowflakes that melt at the first sign of opposition, hold everyone else as responsible for their feelings and feel justified being suicidal over mean words. Shocker I know.
  • It's been shown that if you treat a whining dog by mimicking its behaviour and by way reinforcing it, you will increase the problem. It's how a lot of bad behaviours get worse. Now we have people teaching young children that all sorts of things are bad and that they are victims of everything and that they should be sensitive to everything. And surprise, they become people who can't cope with the real world when they get older. When people are told to grow a thicker skin instead of whining all the time and
  • by jbmartin6 ( 1232050 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @03:08PM (#59319924)
    I suspect the growing number of older people who want to kill them has something to do with it. They don't even understand the concept of a lawn.
  • by More Trouble ( 211162 ) on Thursday October 17, 2019 @04:02PM (#59320128)

    Since I don't read WSJ, I found the CDC's report instead. In it, we find that the youth suicide rate for urban areas is basically flat. All of the increase is in rural areas.

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