Is social media helping teenagers end it all?
A grim report published on 3 November 2016 by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) informs on the rapid rise in suicide rates among American people, with the focus being on the period from 1999 to 2014. Of utmost concern is the high rate for children 10 to 14 years of age, […]
A grim report published on 3 November 2016 by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) informs on the rapid rise in suicide rates among American people, with the focus being on the period from 1999 to 2014. Of utmost concern is the high rate for children 10 to 14 years of age, for which, in 2014, the suicide rate had caught up with their death rate from traffic accidents. Ordinarily, death, much less suicide, is a rare event in adolescents. So, obviously something has changed dramatically between 1999 and 2014 that is helping our teens take their lives. Accusing fingers have been pointed at the changing cultural norms, with social media in the cross-hairs.
The observed trend may apply more to America and the “more developed” countries than to, say, Nigeria, because of the apparently more stable social state of mind of the people, including teenagers, in “less developed” countries. Simply put, people in poor countries have somehow developed thick skins against harsh conditions, a disposition that comes in handy in difficult situations. However, with the way technology is evolving and spreading, and every society striving to be developed, any country may eventually be susceptible. The world is now more flat, and teens in Nigeria have access to the same websites as teens in the US. Furthermore, bullying is everywhere on the globe, no matter how remote the village is; and its cyber equivalent, or cyberbullying, will potentially be equally pervasive. Thus, as the less developed countries strive to develop, they need to do so differentially, in a way that preserves the good aspects of the old culture.
Keith Ablow (FoxNews.com) sees the problem as follows, in his 11 February 2016 article: “For some time now, I have noted that young people- including adolescents, teenagers and those in their 20s- are disconnected from the reality of their own existences. Facebook, Twitter, Tinder and the like have made them think of themselves as mini-reality-TV versions of themselves. Too many of them see their lives as a series of flickering photos or quick videos. They need constant doses of admiration and constant confirmation of their tenuous existence, which come in the form of Facebook “likes” and Twitter “retweets.”” He continues: “This substitution of media for real meaning has not only been shown to weaken their self-esteem and their ability to sustain themselves through adversity, but it can cheapen the value they assign to life in general- including their own lives. If all the world is a stage of pixels, and young people see themselves as their tweets and Snapchat photos, then taking a fist-full of pills could seem like no more than the equivalent of shutting down a Facebook account or turning off an iPhone.” Call it, “Suicide by Social Media.”
Sabrina Tavernise (3 November 2016 New York Times newspaper) has her own opinion on last week’s CDC report: “The number is an extreme data point in an accumulating body of evidence that young adolescents are suffering from a range of health problems associated with the country’s rapidly changing culture. The pervasiveness of social networking means that entire schools can witness someone’s shame, instead of a gaggle of girls on a school bus. And with continual access to such networks, those pressures do not end when a child comes home in the afternoon.” “If something gets said that’s hurtful or humiliating, it’s not just the kid who said it who knows, it’s the entire school or class,” she said. “In the past, if you made a misstep, it was a limited number of people who would know about it.” With this escalation, an uninformed, vulnerable child who is humiliated is at much higher risk of suicide than she would otherwise have been.”
The rise in the suicide rate among girls, as per the report, is three times higher than for boys, though in absolute numbers boys commit suicide more often. Girls experience depression at twice the rate of boys in adolescence, a situation that is not helped by the dramatic biological changes that take place in a teenage girl’s body. Without a close family structure, a girl – operating in today’s fast world – might seek “fast answers” from the ever-ready-to-help social media outlets; which is where the real problem begins.
Sadly, you can find everything bad on the web, including pro-suicide websites that guide people on how to easily “end it all.” Coupled with cyberbullying and cyber harassment, which can lead to cyberbullicide (or suicide resulting from being cyberbullied), social media can be very potent in facilitating self-destruction in teenagers.
The piece of advice by David Luxton and his co-authors in their May 2012 article in the American Journal of Public Health is still relevant in saving teens’ lives: proactively using social media to increase public awareness of, and education, on, mental health issues. Parental responsibility in the use of social media by teenagers will forever be critical.