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Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

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Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#51

I have a theory I'd propose: The biggest cause of teen suicide is essentially feeling rejected in some way by your peers: being bullied, a breakup, "mean girl" switches from former friends, etc. When schools closed, the immediate pressure of any of these negative social interactions went to the background (or at least simmered on social media). When schools reopened, kids tried to figure out where they fit back in th…

Anecdotally:

I was bullied a lot in school. When I became avoidant and just stayed at home, I was a lot happier because I didn't have those stressors.

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#52
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instagram was founded in 2010.

That definitely looks like an impactful year from the graphs there. I think if I had kids I wouldn’t let them on such sites until 16/17 or never. Granted, I have a strong opinion against social media before this data.

OK, but if you're stuck at home, you're probably using Instagram more, not less. And when you're back in school, your Instagram usage probably declines.

Very unlikely that Instagram has a net psychological benefit, but being in school seems to have had a more direct effect.

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#53
post #16

There was something very off before the pandemic. Girls were already diverging sharply from the historical norm and from boys over the last few years: https://els-jbs-prod-cdn.jbs.elsevierhealth.com/cms/attachme... "Sex- and Age-specific Increases in Suicide Attempts by Self-Poisoning in the United States among Youth and Young Adults from 2000 to 2018". It's disproportionately a specific method (poisoning) and it is…

Instagram was founded in 2010.

I am not disagreeing but I am interested to know which specific factors make it so different from things in the past. I remember growing up and the boogeyman was sexualized videos on MTV and violent video games. I didn’t believe it then and I don’t quite believe it now. Not to say I don’t believe social media has negative impacts but this is a pretty sharp rise.

It also coincided with the post-2009 financial crisis. Could be more financially unstable households. Could be a feeling if being left behind as pressure to excel academically and socially increased due to a desire to get into better schools for some financial security. I don’t know. Just throwing out other hypotheses.

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#54

I have a theory I'd propose: The biggest cause of teen suicide is essentially feeling rejected in some way by your peers: being bullied, a breakup, "mean girl" switches from former friends, etc. When schools closed, the immediate pressure of any of these negative social interactions went to the background (or at least simmered on social media). When schools reopened, kids tried to figure out where they fit back in th…

This is my theory too. A friend of me noted that one positive thing about lock-down is the complete lack of FOMO (fear of missing out). Which seems particularly important at that age.

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#55
post #9

reddit removed this link due to not passing media bias.. interesting. https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaCoronavirus/comments/oqawe5/s...

"Reddit" didn't remove the link, an individual volunteer moderator of the specific subreddit removed it. Saying that Reddit removed it is like saying that GitHub rejected my pull request to Docker.

reddit is a community made up of the moderators, contributors, editors, lurkers, and also the company that finances it. Without them reddit doesn't exist. so reddit did remove the link, for if such behavior wasn't tolerated it would be cancelled, just as this post is being down-voted. if you want to get more specific about it, that's great. thanks for pointing it out. it's irrelevant to my intentions.

and don't worry, github removes PRs too, https://torrentfreak.com/dmca-notice-wipes-reverse-engineere...

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#56
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instagram was founded in 2010.

I fear that it may be as simple as that. Because if that's the cause, I'm not sure we can fix it.

This is like people reading research in the 50s that smoking causes lung cancer. Even if true what are we going to do? Everybody smokes so lets just keep smoking instead of trying to quit.

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#57

I have a theory I'd propose: The biggest cause of teen suicide is essentially feeling rejected in some way by your peers: being bullied, a breakup, "mean girl" switches from former friends, etc. When schools closed, the immediate pressure of any of these negative social interactions went to the background (or at least simmered on social media). When schools reopened, kids tried to figure out where they fit back in th…

Anecdotally: I was bullied a lot in school. When I became avoidant and just stayed at home, I was a lot happier because I didn't have those stressors.

I concur. Perhaps the break from schools opened their eyes to the notion that life didn’t have to be the total hell that it is for a lot of young kids and then being forced back was too much to handle, on top of all of the other stuff everyone has been struggling with this last year.

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#58
post #16

There was something very off before the pandemic. Girls were already diverging sharply from the historical norm and from boys over the last few years: https://els-jbs-prod-cdn.jbs.elsevierhealth.com/cms/attachme... "Sex- and Age-specific Increases in Suicide Attempts by Self-Poisoning in the United States among Youth and Young Adults from 2000 to 2018". It's disproportionately a specific method (poisoning) and it is…

Instagram was founded in 2010.

[deleted]

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is supposed to be meant by "reverse correlation"? Correlation is a symmetric phenomenon, and the final part of the quote makes it clear that the correlation between these two behaviors is positive, not negative: > more time spent in the classroom appears to be associated with increased rates of attempted or completed suicide.

Common parlance. The assumed situation is that isolation would increase mental health problems and suicide risk. Instead it went in the other direction. To distinguish this from positive correlation for nontechnical readers, “reverse correlation” makes sense.

Would it not be inverse or negative correlation, instead?

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see the Far Side Comic that never was. "Having been burned one too many times by putting lines through shotgun blasts, scientists switched to correlation categories."

Divide study results into tranches with AAA, AA, and B ratings.

Meta analyses as collateralized bonds that let scientists argue whatever they want!
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