[jtsiskin]

“If 1% of the people who go to college start having suicidal thoughts as a direct result of going to college, then guess what: higher education is going to be responsible for a significant number of suicides. No matter how educators spins this, it’s just disgusting. College is literally killing thousands of kids a year.”

[Sebb767]

And that would be absolutely true as well. If colleges were/are so horrible that 1% of people contemplate suicide, it is quite obvious that something needs to change.

[yunohn]

I’m quite sure that this is already the case, and the numbers are higher than 1%. Modern society has a lot of pitfalls which we are blaming on FB/Insta instead.

[nielsbot]

These are additional suicides attributed to FB/Insta, right? We can and should blame FB/Insta for those.

[yunohn]

The feelings are invoked by the other humans posting content on FB/Insta. Again, this is a societal ill, and nobody wants to acknowledge it.

A similar example is when newspapers report on a high-profile suicide, and you have multiple copycat suicides occur afterwards. You wanna ban news reporting too?

[rodonn]

When Berkeley surveyed their graduate students, 47% were depressed and 10% had considered suicide... https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/04/22/berkeley-stud...

Now I agree with your conclusion that "it is quite obvious that something needs to change" with our graduate education system.

[sailingparrot]

How many lives has education saved? Thanks to education we have developed science and technology that save and extend billions of lives.

And if you were to drop everyone out of college today, how would the suicide rate evolve over the long term? I'm pretty sure it would be worse.

You should finish your analogy and tell us, what exactly, is the long term benefit of instagram/FB that makes up for it's short term negative effect?

[croon]

Life is responsible for all suicides, I still don't see your point.

College has a societal value, Instagram doesn't.

[mavhc]

Pretty sure talking with your friends is societal value, and people do that on Instagram

[croon]

People did that long before Instagram, and will do it long after, both online and off.