[sp332]

If self-esteem is so high, why is suicide so common?

Giving someone self-esteem doesn't mean letting them whine all the time. Your swimming instructors saying “C’mon dude, stop complaining, let’s get on with it!” IS giving the kid self-esteem!

Teaching many ways to add is important because not all kids are going to be able to learn the same way at that age. Different methods are going to "click" for different students. And those extra ways of adding aren't useless. In fact I spent a fair bit of time in college math and computer courses learning new ways to count, let alone add.

[ChuckMcM]

The argument I've heard is that children are not learning how to deal with failure or criticism early enough to develop a basic toolkit for it.

[alsetmusic]

Agreed. A person who has unnaturally high self esteem will be more surprised by failure than someone with moderate or low self esteem. Losing a job, going through a failed relationship, flunking out of school, or any number of other personal "failures" may be that much more devestating to a person who places unwarranted expectations of success on themselves.

[6stringmerc]

If you need this codified in the modern US media cycle, just take a look at the Corey Feldman / Today Show situation. He was terrible on appearance #1, the internet let him know (as it does, both in tempered and vicious ways) and he claimed he was being bullied, then came back and did appearance #2 which was even musically worse than the first one. Then he thanks everybody for the support, rather than pay attention to the valid criticism that he has not made a bit of improvement since his Howard Stern performance in 1992.

Calling a terrible work product terrible isn't bullying.

[r00fus]

I think kid celebrities live in their own bubble and not representative of the larger population of children.

[6stringmerc]

The man is 45 years old now. He's not a child anymore so it's reasonable to stop treating him with child gloves, or, to the point, coddling his self-esteem.

[maxxxxx]

They don't have self-esteem but exactly the opposite. They are in constant need of external validation to feel good about themselves. A person with real self-esteem doesn't need to be praised all the time.

[sbuttgereit]

This. Self-esteem develops from personal achievement, not external praise. When you see the results of your actions and those actions have produced positive results, you gain that sense of achievement even if others don't recognize it.

This is the big miss from the self-esteem advocate crowds... the ones that do the participation trophies. They aren't creating self-esteem with worthless praise and merit-less awards... they're creating a dependency on the praise of others and that's not healthy: it creates the opposite of esteem when not fulfilled.

[hackuser]

> A person with real self-esteem doesn't need to be praised all the time.

True. And from what I understand, adults get that self-esteem from being given unconditional love as children, when they don't have the capacity to provide it to themselves.

[sien]

The US is #30 on world suicide lists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...

South Korea and Japan are much higher.

Also, given the US's gun laws presumably suicide is often more successfully completed in the US than in other places. Given this, the US suicide rate isn't comparatively that high.

[ljw1001]

from what i know about Japanese culture, they are not overwhelming their children with unnecessary praise. Korea also.

[cbanek]

Cognitive dissonance?

When people tell you you are great at something, but you don't know, or can't talk about it, and feel you can't live up to your parents/teachers expectations, that's a lot of stress.

Also if you thought you were great at something in school, but actually you find out you suck in the real world, if that was a major part of your identity, some people just can't live with that.

[Balgair]

Facebook.

Suicide is considered 'contagious'. Before social media (1970) the 'contagiousness' (to really muddle a complex issue) was ~6. Meaning that each suicide 'affected' 6 other young people deeply, seriously disrupted their life, or left them feeling suicidal as well. Typically this was only close friends and family. Now, as we are all more connected, we see that a single suicide affects more people and more quickly. Now the 'contagiousness' of a single suicide spreads to 134 young people, a ~2100% increase.

My wife teaches and this is all over the local schools now [0]. Kids are now live streaming and live snapping these grizzly acts. It seems that you become the most popular kid in school in an instant and that you get a lot of social capital when you kill yourself live.

I want you to know that I am choosing my words carefully now: It is fucking crazy. Not even kids in a fucking Syrian war zone are doing this fucking crap. To borrow from Tumblr: I. Can't. Even. My wife is damn near at the end of her rope with this on top of all the other shit she has to deal with. I think she'll end up as yet another burnout teacher, I can't blame her.

The linked article has a lot more and better discussion on the complexities of these suicide clusters and how hard it can be to identify and stop them. These clusters seem not to be linked to self-esteem and 'everyone gets a ribbon' culture as strongly as they are linked to Instagram and other digital shrines/death-cults generators. They may be linked, but it seems that the root cause of the self esteem cult and the suicide clusters may be social media. They are correlated, but not causal. This brings up an interesting case with the military suicide rates, as they are a very tight community that the rest of America has forgotten. To quote an Iraqi Porto-potty, of all things: 'The USA is not at war, the USMC is at war'.

We are loosing the war with suicide, and social media is the enemy.

If you are feeling suicidal, there are many resources available. Here are some sources: Call: 1 [phone] (english) 800 273 8255 (spanish) Visit: http://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ (English) http://www.didihirsch.org/spc-spanish (Spanish)

[0]http://www.newsweek.com/2016/10/28/teen-suicide-contagious-c...

[0xcde4c3db]

> If you are feeling suicidal, there are many resources available.

There are resources readily available to stop you killing yourself right now. After that the prospects for help tend to dry up pretty quickly until you boil down to the next crisis. Hotlines are a fine thing to have and to promote, but they're not nearly enough.

[Balgair]

Well I'm sorry for trying to help others out. What are good resources then? Just HN comments criticizing others for not being up to some random's standards.

[Anthony-G]

I upvoted your post as I found it interesting (albeit very disturbing). I interpreted 0xcde4c3db's comment as essentially agreeing with you – but also adding that suicide hotlines by themselves aren’t enough (similar to how, in the case of a physical health problem, applying First Aid keeps someone alive but in the longer-term, medical care is needed).

[0xcde4c3db]

My point is that there largely aren't good resources for a lot of people. It's not a criticism of you personally; you're raising awareness of one part of the situation, and I'm raising awareness of a different part of the situation.

[analog31]

They are under phenomenal pressure. Everything is more competitive, and they are under a barrage of ratings and selection processes.

Endless standardized tests. There was one standardized test when I was a kid -- an intelligence test -- and my parents never showed me the results. I took the ACT and SAT, but they seemed much less critical to getting into a decent college.

Grades seem much more critical today, due to competition for slots and scholarships in the more prestigious colleges.

Ranking systems, such as who gets to skip a grade in what subject.

Competitive selection processes, such as who gets into the youth orchestra, and which level of the youth orchestra.

Increased pressure to attend college, and to major in a short list of subjects that are associated with lucrative jobs.

Mountains of homework, yet we're also told that kids should learn how to "code" and to build up their "resume" for college admissions, oh and maybe also start a business. I learned to code in the ample spare time that I had because I had relatively little homework.

I would not survive being a kid today.

[tpeo]

"So common" compared to what?

[sp332]

Other causes of death.

[gozur88]

Is suicide among kids any more common than it ever was?

[DanBC]

It's hard to know, because the definition of suicide has changed; the way it's recorded has changed; and religion in the US means some deaths by suicide are masked.

But, in general, yes, suicide rates are rising for young people. This is worrying because young women were for years the group at lowest risk of death by suicide. (But with high rates of self harm and attempted suicide).

(US media has terrible reporting on suicide, but this one at least has some details) http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-04-22/cdc-suicide-d...

You can get some stats from CDC here, I guess. http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/statistics/ind...

[ljw1001]

Yeah, my personal experience with teens is that they are anxious and full of self-doubt. I certainly don't see an excess of self-esteem. I wonder how much hard-science there is on the harmfulness of praise

[adrr]

I thought suicide was a measure of how well off a country is and also linked to alcohol and drug abuse rates.