I guess I was accidentally lucky that I just happened to be one of the last generations of people that grew up in society when there was no social media. We barely had the internet when I was graduating high school. It was so poor to the point that there wasn't really much reason to use it.
The notion that just 10-15 years later that everything that we ever did would become part of the public record and that we would elect to do it was something that we probably wouldn't be capable of fathoming back in those times. Hell, I remember when you would get booted off the internet when someone would call your house and yes, we called people's houses because almost nobody had mobile / cell phones.
I think that things were better then as far as mental health was concerned. If someone had something embarrassing happen to them you might end up hearing about it, but it wouldn't all of a sudden become something that everyone knew about immediately and there was almost zero chance of it ending up on video. These days, I feel like kids intentionally video things and even set up other people in embarrassing situations purely for the sake of being able to record it and put it online at the other person's expense. Why someone would be so cruel and do this to another person is a level of cruelty that is difficult for me to understand.
A really good friend of mine had his child commit suicide a few years back and obviously, this has been extremely hard on his family. The reason why his boy killed himself was because of bullying related to social media and the pressures that exist for teens as far as popularity and bullying are concerned. This is something that they have to deal with every day for the rest of their lives and I can't even imagine how terrible it must be.
I am a big believer that social media, especially the likes of FB and Instagram are very detrimental to people's lives and mental health and this is especially true for teens who feel the need to be as "famous" as they possibly can be.
This was true when I was in high school as well but my ability to be popular was largely based on how nice I was to people or how many things we had in common, it had nothing to do with who had the best technology or apps on our phones.
While these are still very low numbers thankfully, the fact that the rate doubles in the United States right around the time that social media started to be all encompassing for people and especially young people, isn't a coincidence. The pressure that people feel to live up to impossible standards, probably most prominently in girls, must be excruciating.
The pressure existed when I was in high school as well. The skinny girls got a lot more attention and were sometimes almost by default the more popular ones and to a lessor degree this was a standard for the boys as well. I was reasonably popular but it wasn't really something that I aspired to rank up in. We didn't have a digital group where we were able to track another person constantly. You would see your friends at parties and how you behaved there likely determined whether or not your social status went up or down.
The likelihood of you being intentionally put in place to be the victim of a prank was very low and even if it did happen it was likely in good spirits whereas some of the stuff I see teens doing to one another these days is downright cruel... sometimes to the point of being criminal.
I would imagine that this data is cherry-picked to make the situation seem as dire as possible but the fact remains that there is a definite correlation between the rise of social media and teen suicide rate and the self-harm could be attempted suicide or cries for help of sorts.
I don't know what the solution is here. I did see that I think it was DeSantis that was proposing that people not be allowed to have social media accounts until they are 18 or something like that but well, good luck with that buddy. That isn't going to work and I think even he knows that.
Social media has lead to the decline of the moral fabric of society in many ways and I am happy that I am not part of it and even happier than I am not a teenager during these times. Being a teenager was awkward enough without having every thing that you do potentially ending up on YouTube or TikTok.
If you are a parent, what do you do about this sort of thing?