| 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 (800) 273-8255 (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... |
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.