[GhettoComputers]

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/03/trends-suicide

> The suicide rate increased 33 percent from 1999 through 2017, from 10.5 to 14 suicides per 100,000 people (NCHS Data Brief No. 330, November 2018). Rates have increased more sharply since 2006. Suicide ranks as the fourth leading cause of death for people ages 35 to 54, and the second for 10- to 34-year-olds. It remains the 10th leading cause of death overall.

>But it’s a different story in other parts of the world. Over roughly the same period, other countries have seen rates fall, including Japan, China, Russia and most of Western Europe. What is going wrong on our shores—and what lessons can we import from elsewhere?

I’ve always seen social media as a very artificial environment, it depends on the online environment. But I never associated it with more benefits especially among teenagers.

[closeparen]

The rising teen suicide proves everyone’s favorite social critique. Declining church attendance. Declining corporeal punishment. The academic rat race. Climate change.

Whatever I don’t like about the world is why the kids are killing themselves. Having had friends struggle with this when I was a teenager, I find it incredibly disrespectful and in poor taste to leverage their suffering in this lazy and offhand way as an argument for your political opinions.

[GhettoComputers]

What is my lazy, poor taste or political opinion? You are attacking my post with no evidence or counter points, a emotional response that isn't based on anything other than hearsay, the first section is a strawman, and the second is how your sample bias should dismiss any other experiences. Is it not hypocritical to dismiss the effect of social media on suicide, such as by cyber bullying?

My experience with social media has been negative, and I have lost friend due to suicide and depression, which is why I am pointing it out. Are you suggesting that it has no effect on mental heath or is proven to be beneficial? I would love to be proven wrong if you have information on it. https://www.newswise.com/articles/10-year-study-shows-elevat...

>Through annual surveys from 2009 to 2019, researchers tracked the media use patterns and mental health of 500 teens as part of the Flourishing Families Project. They found that while social media use had little effect on boys' suicidality risk, for girls there was a tipping point. Girls who used social media for at least two to three hours per day at the beginning of the study--when they were about 13 years old--and then greatly increased their use over time were at a higher clinical risk for suicide as emerging adults. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3477910/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_and_suicide

[closeparen]

Social media is one of dozens of social changes in the last N years. You can line any one of them up next to any bad outcome. This is not generally being done from a place of epistemic humility or interest in establishing causation. It’s just “thing I already don’t like lines up with bad outcome, see how right I am not to like it!”

If that’s not what you’re doing, I don’t mean it as an attack on you. I just think we’re systematically abusing miserable kids as confirmation of our priors (about all kinds of things, social media is just one). We owe them curiosity about how to actually help.

[GhettoComputers]

Thank you for the clarification. It is a multi dimensional problem, and I have found very negative effects from social media for myself and people around me.

I do not think that social media is overall good for mental health, it has been shown to be harmful in statistics especially for women and also there is no shortage of n=1 articles on benefits of quitting it. I think it is a serious issue when the teenage suicide rates are higher in the US (pre corona) when it is a wealthy country. If you can clarify, what is the problem you have with my post? I am posting it not only from personal experience but also with data to substantiate my claims.

[cmoscoso]

What other social changes have taken place in the last years?

[tomlin]

A lot of data counters what you're trying to put out here. I wish it weren't true, but if you would like, I can point you to studies where you can see how teen suicide in girls and the launch of Instagram, then Snapchat, then TikTok - as well, final thoughts and letters by a large amount of these young girls vary from saying that social media WAS the reason for their suicide, to saying that actions made by others (via social media) were a factor in others. I do sincerely think social media is a force for harm for everyone - as it raises division among people at rates that are hard to build responses to. Psychologists also largely agree that the effects of social media are causing a new kind of concern outside of what we've so far dealt with.

I do sort of think you might have an agenda here, for at this point you are suggesting that the thoughts and feelings of the girls who committed suicide should hold almost no weight. Maybe you're not saying that outright, but if you haven't looked into the lives of these girls before suggesting their plight is "just another generational grievance", well, yeah, we are fucked.

[kapp_in_life]

And plenty of people's experiences with social media have been positive.

Think of the LGBT teen in a small town in the midwest who can find a social group to discuss their. Hobby groups, pick up sports groups, etc.

Teens who were already finding 2-3 hours "and then greatly increased their use" a day for doomscrolling between school and homework probably would feel the same if they spent it watching TV.

[GhettoComputers]

Can you prove these statements with any data? There are of course benefits to online networking, but the US population of LGBT is 5.6% (of all ages) with most concentrated in urban areas so you are pointing out a small age bracket of a specific type of social engagement in a small population as a counter with the assumption it is beneficial, and the hobbies you describe are not social media engagement, they are online meetings that go offline, which is not the usual trajectory of users online. These sound like extreme outliers unless you'd like to prove me wrong.

[Karawebnetwork]

I moderate four LGBTQIA+ communities and support spaces on Facebook, totaling over 395k members. I cover both my local scene and international communities.

Without the online spaces, most members wouldn't have friends. The bulk of the work is managing the news feeds and the main task is to approve posts individually. So we see them all.

Many would otherwise be totally isolated. Teens in rural America are among the most affected by this isolation. Many users create threads describing their lack of support in their physical lives or thanking the online spaces for existing, stating that prior to their presence on the group, they had no support network.

While the population of LGBTQIA+ people is concentrated in urban areas, they are primarily adults who have the freedom to move around. Teens are stuck in their hometowns and can only move around after they reach adulthood and connect or build support networks online. As you said, the US population is around 5.6% but even states like Alabama still have 3.0%. This demographic is especially relevant in this topic as its suicide rates are higher that the country's average, with trans people (without support) having rates that go as high as 40 to 50%. Online spaces provide enough support to reduce that number significantly.

There is a meme that goes something like:

"Why are you on Facebook? It's for older people. - It's because your friends aren't queer."

The LGBTQIA+ internet is similar to what the internet was in the 90s. Close-knit communities where everyone knows each other, sub-communities, sub-cultures, and lots of blogs and personal sites.

I would even go so far as to say that comparing the average social network usage to LGBTQIA+ social network usage is the equivalent of comparing apples and oranges.

[GhettoComputers]

Thank you for your perspective. Do you think that the LGBTQIA+ community is best served in this method? For instance, art communities would have been a stand in for many before, and from my exposure it seems to have had very good effects for marginalized people who aren't mainstream due to interests, sexual orientation, or creativity and ideas that are normally dismissed. They seem to be the least polarized people I know of.

I have a question for my friend: he is bisexual so he has problems where he is invalidated by both hetero and non hetero communities, and feels very isolated and depressed, and I don't know enough to help, where do you suggest is the best place for him to get support or any resources for bisexual men?

My experience with tumblr was a very mixed bag for the non heterosexual communities such as the mixture of mental health as a focal point where some I knew got better and some got worst and self diagnosed themselves into deeper unhappiness.

[tomlin]

I do think that communities and social media aren't necessarily the same. Communities have existed before social media. I grew up on CompuServe, which had a few LGBT groups as far back as 1997, and forums chat rooms have been around for as long as that. "Social media" in these terms, tends to be surrounding anonymous behavior and how people abuse anonymous behavior to hurt and even cause physical harm - which has similar effects in your communities. We can shun the daily posting, swipe-right, anonymous aspects of social media without removing communities - as proven by their existence prior to social media.

[_bfhp]

That "40 to 50%" trans statistic is incredibly worrying. Can you share where it's from so I can reference it in the future when these discussions come up?

[chiefalchemist]

I think the point is, there are plenty of signals that increase suicide rate. Without full and proper analysis (e.g., control group, etc.) tying social media to suicide rate is correlation.

And as presented, that comes off as opinion.

Note: I'm not taking sides. I'm only wanting to answer your question :) please don't shoot the messenger.

[GhettoComputers]

I can see that viewpoint. Data is imperfect but it isn’t a random correlation like cell phones associated with fungal infection. There is no shortage of self reported data, but cyber bullying attacks directly cause suicide attempts for instance. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6791504/

[chiefalchemist]

Um. Actually, cyber bullying (probably) correlates with suicide. That is, the suicide victim likely has other contributing causes. Maybe that depression? Maybe it's being abused as a child. Etc.

I am by no means belittling suicide (note: a close family member used that exit), nor am I belittling bullying. It's evit. But it's rare such things can be traced to a single trigger. Life is complicated. Sometimes we're too willing to oversimplify.

[GhettoComputers]

Yes there is enough media attention it may be overly skewed but it’s like coronavirus statistics, did they die of corona, oxygen deprivation, or inflammation? They said in the study that once that was taken out the stats are way less skewed to negative.

[mbesto]

Your overall point is valid, but this last comment is unnecessary.

> I find it incredibly disrespectful and in poor taste to leverage their suffering in this lazy and offhand way as an argument for your political opinions.

I find it odd that's one of the conclusions you drew from the parent's comment. You're making a baseless claim that the OP has a political agenda (I didn't get this sense at all) when they were clearly demonstrating that there is potential causation and providing insight/opinion to it. You make it sound like we can't even have discussions about suicide because "we're leveraging suffering". I don't think you meant to direct that at the parent but rather politicians, otherwise your comment is far more distasteful and not posted in good faith.

[908B64B197]

Remember the moral panics around Dungeons and Dragons? [0] Or the "Hyper Realistic violence of Doom"? [1]

Social Media is the next in line. In 20 years people will laugh at the articles and news report about it.

Something I wonder too is if suicides aren't just better reported today because there's less social stigma around mental health than in previous decades (for an extreme example, just look at the 1950's...).

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26328105

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mEP4cflrd4

[GhettoComputers]

Do you think we’ll also laugh about the coronavirus response?

[cm2012]

Facebook is global, the fact the suicide rate only grew in the US and not worldwide is a point in its favor. Not to mention the increase in suicide rate is higher for older generations who use social media less, according to the data.

[tablespoon]

> Facebook is global, the fact the suicide rate only grew in the US and not worldwide is a point in its favor.

Not necessarily. To oversimplify things to make a point, suicide may have two ingredients: Facebook and something else. The US has an increased rate because has both (Facebook and the other ingredient), while the other places don't because they only have one ingredient (Facebook) and are missing the other. It's not a point in Facebook's favor if it is one of many ingredients in a recipe for suicide, and Facebook may be the easiest ingredient to eliminate.

And that's totally plausable. The US has many unique cultural factors (e.g. highest rating of individualism of any country).

[GhettoComputers]

That is assuming that facebook usage is globally homogenous.

Social climates, sex and age play a huge factor. Young insecure girls that are bombarded with how they should look, and what their friends are doing without them will not be affected as the boomer who only goes onto facebook marketplace to sell, talk with family, or the kind that posts trump memes. Heres some interesting data. https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-...

[vadfa]

I don't think usage of instagram is much different here in western europe and the results regarding teen suicide are not the same seemingly. So I'm not sure of what to think.

Open to being proven wrong about instagram usage in the us vs europe. I haven't really looked into it. But it seems all teens and preteens here are hooked on it.

[GhettoComputers]

It is multidimensional, it does not mean that social media is going to have the same effect even among the same country with the same usage. Widespread anti-semitism for instance in the US did not cause the holocaust as it did in Germany. The culture in parts different parts of western Europe is different than it is from southern US and northern US.

You will find no shortage of people quitting social media and reporting benefits around the world, the algorithms on instagram will also vary with what is shown. Without enough data I cannot quantify it but other factor such as wealth are also associated with suicides, low income and high income communities have lower suicide rates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...

[908B64B197]

> Over roughly the same period, other countries have seen rates fall, including Japan, China, Russia and most of Western Europe. What is going wrong on our shores-and what lessons can we import from elsewhere?

Keep in mind a 17 years old in 1999 was born in 1982. These were interesting years in Russia, Japan and China to say the least (total collapse of the Soviet Union, for a start, with all the insecurities that ensued) and a pretty nasty economic crisis in Japan [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades

[jensensbutton]

Would be curious to see how the great recession played into those numbers.

[spunker540]

If social media is to blame for the rise in suicide, why has it only affected American teens when it is a global trend?

[theyx]

I am not saying this is the cause, because I’m not American, but maybe Americans use it in a more “harmful” way. Where I live people mostly use Facebook to buy used stuff on the Marketplace and to post memes in their hometown groups.

[dogorman]

Interesting that a "33 percent increase" is the same thing as 0.105% to 0.14%. Those latter two figures are both a lot lower than I would have guessed.

[GhettoComputers]

Yeah it’s only high percentages because the numbers are already pretty low for suicide. It would be a 200% increase in shooting if there was only one shooting before.