According to a September 2023 Children’s Hospital Association piece,
“Increasing cases of pediatric suicidality highlight the ongoing mental health crisis among youth. Suicide attempts, ideation and self-injury have become the most common mental health conditions seen in children’s hospitals’ emergency departments, according to data from Children’s Hospital Association’s Pediatric Health Information System (PHIS). Between 2016 and 2022, children’s hospitals saw a 166% increase in emergency department visits for suicide attempts and self-injury among children from ages 5–18.”
With the introduction of social media a newer, escalated form of bullying is on the rise: “cyberbullicide.” A February, 2023 Journal of American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law piece states:
“The incidences of both cyberbullying and adolescent suicide are rising in the United States, with recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data showing that 14.9 percent of adolescents have been cyberbullied and 13.6 percent of adolescents have made a serious suicide attempt. Cyberbullying has been associated with suicide of a victim in several recent cases, a phenomenon that has been newly termed cyberbullicide.”
Not surprisingly the cyberbullying epidemic causes children extraordinary anxiety, mistrust in those they thought they could once trust, deep mistrust of adults and strangers and a child’s reality is turned upside down. So when their own behavior starts to change as a result of the cyberbullying especially in pre-teens and teens, naturally the parent, most likely unaware of the cyberbullying, takes the child to the doctor and the child’s pediatrician is most likely going to recommend some sort of psychotherapy, typically in a pill form.
This mounting anxiety and depression can often be misinterpreted if the child isn’t communicating that they’re being tormented privately.
It’s bad enough that most teens are at that age where talking to adults just doesn’t come naturally. Teens especially don’t easily share what’s happening in their lives. For some parents, it’s like pulling teeth to get them to communicate. Some teens mask their torture by always smiling, being nice or sweet and polite to the outside world in an effort to make it seem like there isn’t anything wrong. If their tormenter is saying things like, “No one likes you,” the teen may overcompensate in the real world by proving to themselves and the outside world that they are indeed likable and deserve to be liked by being especially kind or compassionate toward others.
At the heart of this torment and darkness is social media and an internet connection. Despite the founders of Facebook acknowledging that the launch of these social applications would destroy the fabric of society, they did it anyway. Blaming users for being in unchartered territory where likes and loves offer the same kind of fix as an addict hitting a bump of cocaine, the argument goes in circles, and the kids are caught in the cross-hairs of this chicken-egg argument.
Let’s set the record straight. If someone is going to throw you into a roomful of candy or drugs without telling you the consequences of the candy or drugs, and you ingest some, and get addicted, and there’s a bad outcome, it’s not your fault.
For those kids who’ve been put on anti-depressants or anti-anxiety medication as a result of severe anxiety or depression from the cyberbullying, it’s almost like playing Russian Roulette with their lives, according to this June 11, 2010 piece in The National Library of Medicine:
“However, antidepressants can increase the risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior in certain patients under certain conditions. Consequently, use of antidepressant medication and the risk of suicidality has become an issue of concern.”
From where I’m sitting, it looks like adults who could make a difference (legislators and social media founders) are playing with fire recklessly and our children are paying the price. There is an enormous deafening silence regarding the demented and torturous rise of cyberbullying on the social apps that clog up our children’s iPhones. The statistics for suicide as a result of cyberbullying are nightmarishly high. The last time this many children died in a country was when that country was being bombed to smithereens because of a war. Yet social media founders say nothing. They do nothing and leave it up to overworked parents and under-qualified school staff to monitor the phones and the apps. As I tweeted to Chamath Palahipitaya (Facebook Founder, Billionaire) recently, “YOU caused this. FIX IT.”
The only individual with any influence that seemed to care about cyberbullying and its devastating, disastrous outcome was Melania Trump, with the launch of her 2018 Be Best campaign:
“The mission of BE BEST is to focus on some of the major issues facing children today, with the goal of encouraging children to BE BEST in their individual paths, while also teaching them the importance of social, emotional, and physical health. BE BEST will concentrate on three main pillars: well-being, online safety, and opioid abuse.”
Five days before the 2016 election, Melania told a crowd of supporters in Pennsylvania:
“Our culture has gotten too mean and too rough, especially to children and teenagers. It is never okay when a 12-year-old girl or boy is mocked, bullied, or attacked. It is terrible when that happens on the playground. And it is absolutely unacceptable when it is done by someone with no name hiding on the Internet.”
Putting the entire responsibility on the parent to monitor this new culture of mean-ness, cruelty and bullying which hides behind the digital age is totally unrealistic. If the founders of social media, who can afford private tutors and nannies for their children, and can afford to enroll their children in a variety of social events or sports and keep them away from social media and even devices, want to nonchalantly blame the parents for a child’s behavior as a result of the decayed society they created, then they should support that parent in very real ways. Most parents are working two or three jobs just to make ends meet and don’t have the luxury of watching their child’s every single digital move and don’t have the time to monitor their child’s social media interaction or behavior.
This means there needs to be some sort of complete overhaul of social media, especially since it IS the breeding ground for cyberbullicide which outcome is death. We have seatbelts for a reason. We have a drinking age for a reason. We have a driving age for a reason.
And something tells me if there was a federal cyberbullying law put into place and it wasn’t just left up to the States or the parents, then we might see the suicide rate drop rapidly and we would see less children medicated with anti-depressants or anti-anxiety medication.
The second leading cause of death in children ages 10–14 years old in the United States is ruled as “suicide.” Something tells me if we were to pull the curtain back a little more, each and every one of these deaths ruled as a suicide would lead back to some sort of digital interaction which left the bullied child tormented, anxious, depressed, unable to sleep and then ultimately medicated. If those in charge are failing our children so fiercely, is it really suicide?
Or is it murder?
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