I blame commercials and PSAs. I stopped watching TV in the mid-2000s and have ad blocker. Watching TV today is like stepping back into Plato’s Cave. You don’t realize how psychologically damaging commercials are.
As an example, a few years ago I watched a live stream of the local news during a weather event. Four hours later, I had seen the same commercial for an HIV drug at least 8 times. I had the thing memorized and I was very, very aware of HIV all day as it replayed in my brain. I don’t ever think about HIV. But I was forced to. I’m usually happy go lucky but after that ad, and other ads for a myriad of other drugs for diseases, plus PSAs reminding me how my life is a vicious jungle with death just a step away, I felt pretty bummed. Some of those PSAs are down right mean spirited.
Without ads, I can control my exposure to the horrors of the world. With ads, you’re at the mercy of the station or website drowning you in human misery. There probably needs to be a law to limit those kind of commercials. Like one PSA a week and one pharmaceutical commercial a day.
Frankly, I’m just glad that there may be a tax on advertisin (and other things) to try and shore up health care costs in Michigan.
Blame social media. We have studies that show direct correlation between suicide rate and instagram, for example. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1461444819850106
Do they take into account the ads that are run on those sites?
I mean, everybody talks about how YT is killing everyone but I don’t get it. Unless… There was one day I sat down for breakfast, feeling great and started to play a light hearted review of a movie from Red Letter Media, about to eat a spoon full of Cheerios when an ad snuck past my ad blocker. It started off with “Cancer is different when it happens to a child.” I immediately closed my browser and sat there in stunned silence for five minutes with my chin on my lap. That ad just shat all over my day before it even began. When I got back to watching RLM, I was still thinking about kids with cancer for five minutes while Mike and Jay made jokes.
If people are bombarded by that kind of bipolar stream of videos while watching YT, I can see how it can ruin your life.
In the past when you were bullied it usually was contained to school. Now with social media, it continues in the safety of your home as well.
No, this specifically is about how seeing content in which teens explain how to kill yourself has an impact on the probability that you try to kill yourself.
My daughter is 15. She hates guns. Hates being around them, the sound, the idea of harm, etc. 4 weeks ago she came crying afraid for her friends and ICE. Last week she told me she wanted to learn to shoot. (I inherited a lot of guns. I bought a few myself. I come from a conservative family and I am the black sheep, the one that “changed”.) Still trying to get ahold of someone from Blazing Sword as an instructor. I want her to learn from someone with actual teaching instruction, rather than backwoods learning that I got.
Dude my wife has been wanting to get a gun. I’d talked about it in the past, almost in a hyperbolic way…always to be shot down by her fear of the guns.
But now that I’m thinking about it, I’m scared of having guns in the house.
My youngest is incredibly impulsive. My oldest has high anxiety. I don’t want them in my home, but I’m starting to think we may need one.
Anyway, she went to the range tonight with her brother. She hasn’t shot a gun since she was like 8 (.22 LR). She did alright.
But like you, I’d want to learn (and buy) from professionals. Particularly ones I’m politically aligned with. How the hell can you even tell?
My teenage daughter and her friends were planning a walk out at school to protest ICE. She texted me that the school administrators and “resource officers” (aka cops in schools) physically blocked all the exits so nobody could leave.
Can you blame them?
The US is a fucking hellscape
I spend quite a bit of time there. I’m over several times a year and I genuinely don’t know how people can live like that
There’s a constant thin thread of fear, wrapped around everything, running through everything
People are afraid of the people around them. They’re afraid of their government, they’re afraid of the people who are supposed to be there to protect them, they’re afraid of their employers, they’re afraid of the unknown
I’m very careful not to take my charmed life for granted
the most thing i noticed that both parties are afraid of is giving free or extremely cheap healthcare to everyone, mainly because keeping it private helps keep the parties into gop/dem.
For-profit healthcare is beyond disgusting
Slavery never went away in the US. It was rebranded, encompassing all but the ruling classes, with people’s health tied to their employment
All so some people who were already rich could get richer, and the cost to the American public is a fucking disgrace
Long live Luigi!
Having Trump a president how I imagine it’s like living with an abuser. A constant state of anxiety — never knowing when or where the next blow will come, but knowing it’s coming. You stop planning for the future or enjoying the now and just focus on keeping your head above water one more day. The constant stress actually creates knots in my back that sometimes put me down for days.
And when he’s finally out of office you didn’t notice you’ve been holding your breath for four years and you just want to weep with relief at surviving and escaping.
when he’s finally out of office
Thats the problem; that was the reaction after Bush, meanwhile Obama continues and expands all of Bush’s policies. Under Biden, the libs go back to brunch while concentration camps are expanded and ICE agents start showing up at immigration court hearings.
I agree in spirit but hate the “Biden expanded the camps” thing. Sure, ideally the camps are disbanded and the people released with no person ever being deported anymore.
Sadly thats unrealistic in the US with the way people there are. Expanding them was better than letting them stay overcrowded as they were, which is how most of the deaths were happening.
How about sending fewer people to the camps?
I’m totally enraged, and actively compilling a list of people on the Epstein list, and the billionaires. What’s keeping me out of “trouble” is my family getting itself into debt. Once I’m done with debt however…
I will try the pacifist build a community approach first, but I’m already ready to throw down rhuthlessly.
As someone who lived with an abuser for almost 30 years, can confirm, this is very accurate.
I’m glad you made it, mate.
Right?!
Now that the 2° admentment reason for having guns is totally debunked, the only reason for everyone to have guns is to live in constant fear of being shot or having to shot someone else.
Having to chose between feeding your children and getting life saving medical treatment is a very real choice most Americans can be confronted with.
Etc etc etc…
Turns out USA is only the best country in the world for rich people and paedophiles…
You’re exactly right. I don’t really have a sense of security about anything
There’s less fear when you aren’t staring at screens all day.
F that. Blaming everything on smartphones and social media is a copout and just wrong. If anything, the smartphone and social media is showing more people that they’re not going to be able to escape the capitalist rat race, and will never be able to make it big as an entertainer, influencer, or whatever else has a luxurious easy way of life.
I was afraid of the system before it was cool. Afraid of getting laid off. Afraid my landlord was going to raise rent on an already overpriced POS rental. Afraid I won’t have enough to retire. Afraid of getting asked to work overtime and afraid I’d get fired if I refused.
This crony capitalism sucks ass by design. Social media has a lot of beautiful people living lives most of us can only dream about, while many of us toil at 9to5’s we hate. Everythings more expensive. No rule of law for the most elite and powerful people in this country. They rape children and steal all our tax money and get away with it.
It ain’t social medias fault. Social media is helping to show many how much their life sucks and there’s no hope. The people supposed to be fighting for us aren’t doing shit. The checks and balances don’t work. People are seeing that this whole USA freedom nonsense was a complete fucking lie.
There’s a growing body of scientific evidence that social media use contributes to depression, anxiety, and suicide in various ways. People here are playing touting their armchair psychology but this stuff has been studied by actual psychologists and sociologists. You can easily look it up.
I’m not blaming smartphones solely. I said screens. I’m blaming news media for fear-mongering. It’s a constant barrage of either pro-trump or things you should be afraid of trump doing.
Go outside and take care of your community.
The pedophile Nazis who run this country are trying to take our ability to communicate away
People who have had friends, family, or their own personal interactions with ICE just because they have brown skin don’t need to look at a screen to be fearful.
That’s not what I’m talking about but okay
I don’t think that is a problem with gen z honesty. (Parents willingly let this happen)
“Ignorant people are less fearful” is such a nonsensical shit take.
Hey guys! Look at the witty thing I said online!
What, television?
Among 10-14 year-olds?
At that age, your biggest problem should be losing a video game save file, your crush breaking your heart for the first time, or losing your first pet. All while still surrounded by loving and supportive adults.
What the hell are we doing?
Capitalism
The future in America doesn’t look too bright right now. Especially if you aren’t white, are Trans, or need to live on the planet earth.
It doesn’t look to great if you are white either (particular white with low/medium income)
Some minority groups have major struggles but it is important to acknowledge everyone. Favoring certain minorities breads resentment that make racism and discrimination worse.
My point isn’t meant to be exclusionary, but to use a few examples to point out that young people have a lot of things that could be be making them feel hopeless about the future. That sadly ends up with them more likely to take their own life.
Sounds like some All Lives Matter BS.
Some groups, as a whole, are having a way tougher time right now. Yes that includes the white working poor. But LGBTs and PoC’s are literally in fear of an eminent end of their life by violent means. And some of them are also working poor.
Nobody is banging on your door, taking you at gunpoint to a concentration camp god-knows-where, and separate you from your kids. Some of them are even citizens or at least here lawfully. I fear a lot of the undocumented probably have already disappeared forever.
Nobody is actively challenging your right to live because of who you love, or whether or not you sit to pee.
Yeah, all lives matter. Some lives just need a little more attention at the moment.
This exact bullshit is why the elite class can keep dividing and ruling, those minorities you mentioned are still in heaven in comparison to others or some specific part of the world, does that mean that other folks around the world should not care about discourse in the USA?
The difference between working classes pale in comparison when it comes to differences in class hierarchy and power structure.
We can always appreciate extra helping hands.
Personally I am not from the USA, but best of luck and well wishes to everybody who is holding the frontline dispite the difference, always remember
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
They aren’t stupid, they can see how bad the world is
It says 10-24, but I agree. It’s fucked up.
The tripled rate is specifically for 10-14.
Ah, my mistake.
What the hell are we doing?
This is the question I’ve been asking for years…
Meh it wasnt that many years ago kids would have been mining coal for 4 or 5 years by 14, yet for some reason they still werent killing themselves. Maybe this is worrisome
I suspect we might not have very good records of child suicide from when children were mining coal, or even very good records of how many died just mining coal
Yeah but they also weren’t on insta/snap/whatever. Terrible reception in the mines.
Relevant user name.
Part of that is likely they weren’t exposed to it as an option the same way our various media does today. Maybe there’d be a rumor around town but there’d be a lot of speculation. Today people are exposed a lot more to suicide and its methods, and that could work subconsciously or even inspirationally to push people towards it.
The stricter home culture and higher religious rates probably played a factor as well. Not saying those are great deterrents but it could provide fears of shame and punishment for even thinking about suicide.
Plus them shits didnt have time to kill themselves after working 16hrs a day 7 days a week.
Losing your first pet is no small event :|
Sure, but it’s not something anyone should be killing themselves over. That’s happened for millennia, I’d say that’s probably unrelated to this graph.
My roommate [content warning]
spoiler
just took his own life a few weeks ago. I had no idea what he was going through because we lived very separate lives. He always seemed like he was doing OK, but in the note he left he spoke of hiding mental health issues from me because he didn’t want to stress me out while I was dealing with my own shit. I wish I could go back and tell him to bother me.
This shit is really happening, and it’s hitting all age brackets. Even if you think someone is doing OK, it’s fine just to check on them. “Hey, how are you?” Be sincere. Don’t hit them with the “What’s up?” Everyone has a preprogrammed response. But give them eye contact and a genuine tone. It’s not something you’ll ever regret.
This is heartbreaking. I’m so sorry.
Absolutely zero doubt Trump is largely responsible. Fuck this country.
The article talks about a rise since the 1990s. But yes, more spikes during Trump terms.
Of course Trump made it worse faster, but the graph is clearly increasing over the entire time axis, in particular during the Obama and Biden administrations.
This is a symptom of the capitalist class continuously waging class warfare against the working class. Simply changing the figurehead will never be good enough to reverse this trend or any of the 69 bajillion other graphs that show us that for the working class, our world is falling apart!
The Epstein class, who shapes the law but is not beholden to it
hes just the latest symptom of a larger systemic problem.
And yet has personally increased mental health problems by a lot
Thanks Trump
The hike in the graph didn’t start with Trump. There is are A LOT of things that we can blame that monster for. This, however, is not entirely his fault.
I’d guess that it has to do with the fact, that quite frankly, most young people had their futures taken by previous generations. Trust in the government has been declining for decades. The economy has been getting worse and worse for the average person for a while. Politics have gotten more and more divisive because of the trend in both the Democratic and Republican parties going further and further right, creating a sense of conflict and distrust towards our fellow citizens.
Assuming that every single one of these problems is miraculously fixed, there’s still the problem with the climate having already suffered irreparable damage. So, yeah, tons of fucked up shit in the world, paired with significant personal problems like bullying and social isolation, as well as all of us being able to see every single shitty thing that happens, I’d be surprised if it wasn’t going up. Trump is a big part of several of those problems, to be fair.
Trump and this are both symptoms of the same underlying problem.
trump is the latest and most severe symptom, he isnt the cause, he just part of a larger problem both initiated in cohesion by both parties, foreign billionaires, and state actors.
This is obviously a Biden residual /s
This feels weirdly sensational which is crazy since it is a article about a heavy topic
make er great!
