Is digital addiction fuelling a teen suicide crisis?

A warning to listeners: The following conversation references suicide, suicidality, and content that is inappropriate for young listeners.  

 Even before the pandemic, there was an increasing awareness of the decline in mental health of children and young adults. Researchers and scientists have talked and written about rising levels of anxiety in today’s youth, and many have pointed to the pervasiveness of smartphones and social media, which have exponentially magnified concerns for the mental well being of a generation.   

Andrew Solomon, writer and professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University Medical Center, recently penned an article for The New Yorker titled “Has Social Media Fuelled a Teen-Suicide Crisis? ” In his piece, Soloman investigates what’s fuelling the the spike in suicide among Americans between the ages of ten and twenty-four. Quoting the work of Dr. Judith Edersheim at Harvard, Solomon says: “It’s like taking little children and putting them in an all night casino where they serve chocolate flavored bourbon. It's designed to be addictive, it is addictive and that addiction has devastating consequences.” 

Solomon interviews dozens of parents and shares the poignant and heart wrenching accounts of how so many of them were totally unaware of the online world in which their children were living. As one father who had lost his son to suicide explained to Solomon, “I was, I thought, such a good father. I checked around the house every night. I locked the doors. I made sure my children were safe. I didn't know that the lion was already inside the house.”

Solomon further explains that this all has so much to do with the insidious nature of the algorithms, which feed not on vulnerabilities, but bring about a sense of normalization.  If a kid looks at content about being a little depressed, Solomon tells us that “then they start showing you people who are more depressed. “They want to hook you,” he continues, “what they send you has to gradually become more extreme and eventually you escalate to people who are killing themselves on camera and posting it on social media platforms while they are doing it.” 

Parents, educators and lawmakers are working hard to bring attention to this; some argue that social media is only “only one layer” in the crisis.  

Lawsuits have made their way to the Supreme Court but so far, Solomon informs us: “The Supreme Court has refused to overturn Section 230. The legislative work that was supposed to have an effect on placing constraints on the operations of social media companies, have all got stuck in committee, despite the ‘bipartisan agreement that there need to be restraints.’”

Solomon advises parents to educate themselves and talk to their kids, though inevitably the younger generation who has grown up with technology is going to be ahead of the game.  “The idea of being able to monitor all of what your children are doing is a ludicrous fantasy,” Solomon admits. “So I think that's all not very effective, but you can at least be aware and talk to your children.” 

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