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Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

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Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#111

Post by Macha »

retrac wrote: post #78
MrFoof wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I hear from everyone I know with kids... >How would you handle it if they bought their own 2nd cellphone, and only used the cellular network to escape your control. That's what really happens. Lock your kid down? They'll get right around it by going outside of the infrastructure and devices you supply. They'll just carry two phones around, and you just won't be wiser about the second one unless you catch th…

Yes. Our collective age is showing, perhaps. One can buy a new phone or tablet, with a month's data plan, with a few days' lunch money now, in some places. This translates into there being no practical way to keep a dedicated teenager off the Internet, unless they're literally never allowed out of the house and monitored 24/7. (And that might well be child abuse without very good cause! And you've probably already lo…

It's a hard one to know. I knew my parents CC details from about 12, and they knew this, they would often ask me when buying stuff online rather than fetch it from their wallet in another room. If I wanted to buy something online, I just asked first, made the purchase and gave them the cash from my own savings from pocket money.

I'd like to think I was pretty mature at that age, and my parents would like to think they had done a good enough job raising me that this would never be a problem, and it never was. But we can clearly see from stories of kids spending large amounts of money in FIFA or mobile games or whatever, that this is not true for every kid.

The fact that online purchases were a slow user experience in the 90s meant that I had the concept of purchases, and paying back my parents in cash reinforced the concept of spending real money. Since I had my own savings, I could also see the impact to myself if I spent more than reasonable on Pokemon cards or whatever.

If it had just been pressing a button in a video game like it is for modern kids, and wasn't trusted to mind my own money (or that money was just numbers in a bank account), would I have realized the same at age 12? Or would my parents ended up as the ones that "should have known better". How much of that is good parenting, versus a different environment? I don't know.

I don't have kids of my own, and my life situation is such that I don't consider it a practical near term possibility, but I'd like to think I could raise my own kids so I could extend that level of trust, but a lot of people would see just the fact that the kids had that kind of information irresponsible in its entirety.

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#112

Post by starkd »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #39

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…

I think it's premature to dismiss the suggestion that school closings are the cause. Suicide is a complex topic, and the pandemic introduced a lot of disruptions not immediately felt. The suicide attempts could very well be a delayed effect, as proposed by the parent comment.

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#113

Post by austincheney »

yowlingcat wrote: post #106
austincheney wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

When it comes to parenting, I think the soonest you can healthily get your children to functioning with the independence and maturity of an adult (or at least the upper end of their age group), the better. And by contrast, the further you hold them back, so much the worse. What you're describing sounds like it would hold back your child's social development. I wouldn't recommend it.

Freeing children from nonsense like drugs and social media isn’t holding them back. My children’s social development occurs in the real world where they participate in sports and educational activities and spend time with friends offline. Social media isn’t real socializing.

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#114

Post by mixmastamyk »

Jcowell wrote: post #82
retrac wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Our collective age is showing, perhaps. One can buy a new phone or tablet, with a month's data plan, with a few days' lunch money now, in some places. This translates into there being no practical way to keep a dedicated teenager off the Internet, unless they're literally never allowed out of the house and monitored 24/7. (And that might well be child abuse without very good cause! And you've probably already lo…

Yup the solution isn’t always about restricting but educating. Teach them the Ill effects in a respectable matter and deal with the consequences in a respectable manner. Parents job isn’t to not make kids mess up but allow environment for them to fail and learn from those failures and to reduce (not eliminate) the fallout.

Nowadays, corporate and govt surveillance is pervasive. Consequences cannot be "dealt with" after the fact, and deletion is no longer an option. Mistakes are a part of your "permanent record," (with a nod to Jane's Addiction).

It's not like the old days when you knew they'd find a Playboy magazine eventually.

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#115

Post by cletus »

Zababa wrote: post #83
joezydeco wrote: post #29

I witnessed this first hand. My daughter is in this age bracket and our school was 100% remote up until the spring of 2021. The return to school was hybrid, two days a week, and divided 50/50 by alphabet. Her anxiety levels went through the roof. Thankfully we didn't get to an extreme case of suicidal ideation but things were pretty bad for a while. Medication has helped, but getting a therapist appointment is nearly…

> This is all stuff that boys of this age don't care about. But the girls are vicious. That's not totally true. Sure the buys may not care about new clothes or slumber parties (though I doubt it), but they will care for other reasons. Bullying doesn't have a gender.

Bullying may not have a gender but in the aggregate it's different between boys and girls. Note the word "aggregate". There are invariably anecdotes the contradict the aggregate view but the point is that it's not an absolute, just an aggregate.

There's lots of research on this topic.

You see the ripples of this well into adulthood. You see it as the expectations placed on girls and women where they're held to a higher standard than boys and men are. And who are the agents of that? Other girls and women.

I'm not female but all of my experience has been that no one tears women down more than other women and that female bullying is generally much, much worse than male bullying (at least until male bullying graduates into violence including sexual violence).

Why? Because it seems to be much more multi-faceted. Instead of being primarily physical dominance and signaling, it encompasses social alienation and psychological torment.

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#116

Post by danuker »

klyrs wrote: post #50
ianai wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just like nobody lets their kids do drugs or have sex? (Do you remember being a teen?) Kids are sneaky and resourceful. Harm-reduction works better than abolition; authoritarian parenting erodes the trust you need to effect durable change in your kids' behavior.

> authoritarian parenting erodes the trust you need to effect durable change in your kids' behavior.

authoritarian governing erodes the trust you need to effect durable change in your citizens' behavior.

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#117

Post by MisterBastahrd »

Dumblydorr wrote: post #33
ianai wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How would you handle it if they begged, pleaded, and explained how all their friends use it and it'd be social ostracism to not use it? I'm not a parent yet but I dread this situation. I'm good at denying urges personally, so I'd tell them desire is a constant part of life, we can't always get what we crave. Further, I'd state actual facts about girls mental health, they will see and be exposed to unhealthy mindsets…

Because you're not a parent, here's a tip: kids are tougher than you give them credit for and they're tougher than they understand. Your responsibility as a parent is to figure out how to toughen them up without crushing their self-esteem.

Instagram is not an essential part of any of this. If the worst thing your kid can say about you when they hit adulthood is "daddy didn't let me on Instagram," then you did a phenomenal job.

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#118

Post by [deleted] »

mprovost wrote: post #20
retrac wrote: 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

#119

Post by johnchristopher »

Dumblydorr wrote: post #33
ianai wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How would you handle it if they begged, pleaded, and explained how all their friends use it and it'd be social ostracism to not use it? I'm not a parent yet but I dread this situation. I'm good at denying urges personally, so I'd tell them desire is a constant part of life, we can't always get what we crave. Further, I'd state actual facts about girls mental health, they will see and be exposed to unhealthy mindsets…

I think a friend of mine handled it well. He nurtured a trust based relationship with his children, trust was highly valued and it gave his children a lot of free way but he also set up clear boundaries.

They could do try do things behind his back, they had full window to do it but trust was so ingrained that I don't recall him ever finding out huge problems.

Which doesn't mean they wouldn't plead and beg and try to cajole to get something.

At some point he would explain the rationale behind a decision but in the the end when push came to shove if a "no" was spoken it was a final "no". He isn't forced to justify his decisions and it's accepted as is and I think somehow trust plays a part here. Because his children knows that it's not the thing to get (smartphone, movie time, etc.) that is at play but trust (edit_begin) ultimately trust and the only way to get that thing would be by breaking trust (edit_end). They have to keep their parent's trust and parents know they can only get that trust by actually trusting. So, it works out. YMMV.

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#120

Post by mixmastamyk »

anonymousab wrote: post #108
austincheney wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that’s what happens only because you set boundaries around social media there are far deeper failures already in place.

> only because you set boundaries around social media Social media is social interaction. It's an inextricable part, if not the centerpiece for many kids these days. This is the modern equivalent of saying "no friends allowed"/"you can only see and talk to your friends for a couple of minutes a day", as hyperbolic as that may seem. Extreme rejection and rebellion is a logical outcome from that.

A lot of folks addicted to social media think it's important that kids get addicted too, like smoking in the old days.

Truth is they'd be better off without it, for as long as possible. Focusing on media instead of school is a great way to end up working at a gas station later in life.

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