Teenage suicide rates dropped during lockdown due to respite from bullying | Hacker News Reader

Teenage suicide rates dropped during lockdown due to respite from bullying

economist.com

54 points_glsb42 comments

Open articleView on HN

105 comment thread 10 days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34214244

And the same article yesterday ago with its proper title, couple of comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34346096

The school-months and school-days are long known to have the highest rate of teen suicide.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/childrens-risk-of...

HN headline does not reflect the actual headline ("Why did teenage suicides decline during America’s first covid-19 lockdowns?")

It also makes a claim that the article wisely doesn't make. Compare the OP:

> The paper concludes that in-person bullying is the likeliest explanation for the rise in suicides when schools reopened.

No suggestion that any evidence was used in making that conclusion. The finding is that suicide rates dropped due to school closure.

To this point, my buddy is a 20 year teacher. He says that the difference between bullying today and 30 years ago when we were in school is that then it stopped at 3 when we went home.

Social media provides the ability for bullying to continue 24/7 and it does. It is a huge problem as text and posts go on and on late into the night.

Being always on and connected is a scourge for youth trying to find themselves in a historically and biologically tough time.

This would not support that suicides dropped though would it? Kids would be online more and likely face bullying continuation.

Not that I disagree with it generally being a horrible scourge on childhood experience.

If this is the case, wouldn't cyberbullying have increased during the pandemic since kids would have been on devices more often?

If there’s no IRL activities to bully about, the bullies’ attention is likely drawn to other things more quickly.

I assume no consideration appears to be made for "children spend more time with family" and so gain the health benefits of such a thing.

Modern society is way to busy downplaying the importance of foundationally secure emotional connections. Busy instead pushing 'independence' and outsourcing of childrens' time and affection for the sake of income.

> No suggestion that any evidence was used in making that conclusion.

You'll find the suggested evidence at the end of the article.

Fun fact: boys are more likely to die as a result of suicide than as a result of an attack or stabbing, use of drugs, accidental poisoning, drowning, fall and any other kind of accident, except for traffic accidents, COMBINED.

Parents should talk to boys about the danger of suicide much more that they talk about drugs and or drowning.

Cause of death by age and gender, EU, 2010: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/HLTH_CD_ANR__...

Also: boys are more likely to succeed than girls: there are vastly more suicide attempts from girls than boys, but more suicide deaths of boys than girls.

Like i said in the older thread of the same article, bullying in my experience is negated by:

community integration (small school in small towns are better in my experience, especially when everybody know your grandma),

School/ysc 'admin' are good: basically if the 'chief' (don't know the English term, sorry) tell their team and professors to be attentive to bullying and respond/get involved with parents, you're golden,

and great teachers who manage to involve their coworkers.

> School/ysc 'admin' are good: basically if the 'chief' (don't know the English term, sorry)

The head of a school below the university level is called the 'principal'; the head of a university may be called a number of things. It looks like Harvard and Yale have 'presidents' while the University of California has 'chancellors'.

The whole point of the modern school system is to train children to be obedient to social pressure and authority. Otherwise they get excluded and get bad grades. It's a kind of pavlovian conditioning to create docile worker drones. No wonder any intelligent human being would rather not go through this dehumanizing gauntlet that destroys both joy and curiosity.

Please someone tell me again how homeschooling doesn’t properly socialize children…

homeschooling doesn’t properly socialize children

The hardest thing home schooled kids have to deal with is communication with public school kids.

Therefore, it's recommended that they speak slowly, and use monosyllabic words in the hope that most public school kids will be able to keep up and understand.

Adults bully, too, so you do need to learn to handle it. Delaying that learning experience likely has both costs and benefits.

> Adults bully, too, so you do need to learn to handle it.

Eh, they do. But not nearly as frequently as children in my experience. I was tormented mercilessly in school, but I'm actually struggling to think of a single instance of bullying I've experienced as an adult. And I don't think that's because I "learnt to deal with it". I think it's partly because most bullies grow out of it, and partly because as an adult you're usually afforded the agency to leave situations where you're being bullied.

> I think it's partly because most bullies grow out of it, and partly because as an adult you're usually afforded the agency to leave situations where you're being bullied.

It is because you can defend yourself. That's all there is to it. If you can defend yourself, people will not mess with you.

Parents that leave children into "schools" so they can get "bullied" and nobody protects them are committing cruelty of the highest order I can imagine.

> Parents that leave children into "schools" so they can get "bullied" and nobody protects them are committing cruelty of the highest order I can imagine.

The grandparent poster here is saying that this bullying is a feature not a bug, and that the bullying prepares you for adulthood! I don’t buy any of it, but that’s the counterpoint to what you are saying.

In my experience as a school student there is very little you can do about it beyond making yourself a small target which comes at a fairly high cost.

You can make it worse once it happens while being on the receiving end of a wildly hypocritical lecture about how the school "will not tolerate bullying". Standing up to organised group bullying is folly.

As an adult you have many more cards to play than that and everyone knows it even if they don't know which cards you have or which of those you're willing to play; the doubt surrounding potential consequences for picking on you counts for something.

Precisely none of that improvement in lived experience comes from "learning to deal with it" and "socialization"

So that's my experience, others may differ.

1. Terrible kids grow up into terrible adults.

2. You’re among your kindred, which is why you’re now bullied less.

> Adults bully, too, so you do need to learn to handle it. Delaying that learning experience likely has both costs and benefits.

Adults have legal recourse, children don't.

If your workmate hits you, only he'll get fired if you defend yourself. In school, if you hit back at a bully, both parties are placed at fault.

If your company refuses to stop bullying, you can leave and get a huge settlement out of them, which is why they are quick to stop harassment when it is reported. In school, you can't leave, you are forced to endure and the school is never liable for someone mugging you of your lunch money.

That’s incorrect. Schools can and are sued successfully for not protecting kids from violence and harassment, just as happens in workplaces.

https://www.today.com/parents/parents/teen-1m-lawsuit-school...

> That’s incorrect. Schools can and are sued successfully for not protecting kids from violence and harassment, just as happens in workplaces.

Yeah, and people win lotteries too, and you can find more news stories about lottery winners than about successful suits against schools for turning a blind eye to bullying, but ... that doesn't mean that winning lotteries is the norm.

With the workplace, you also aren't doing an expensive civil suit like you are forced to do with the school - you can cheaply bring your employer to task using your countries employment protections (and associated agencies).

There is no such thing for schools.

In fact, schools punish both aggressor and victims, because it's preferable to having to deal with implicit acceptance of liability by punishing the aggressor only. It's in the schools interest to make sure that victims never come forward (less liability), rather than punishing bullies (more liability).

In the workplace, due to employment laws, it's almost never in the employers interest to protect the bully, like it is in school.

Socializing children requires you to be around other children to play with, or get into conflict with. That's part of socializing. When you're homeschooling, it's much less likely you have a broad spectrum of other children to interact with, as when you go to an actual school.

On the contrary, the school system groups kids from the same neighbourhoods and the same age together. Some schools also by religion. Homeschooled kids tend to mix with a broader range of ages and geographic basis.

> Homeschooled kids tend to mix with a broader range of ages and geographic basis.

or with none or only other members of a religious cult and definitely not the kind of children the parent are biased against

the idea that a homeschooling kid from e.g. a very conservative christian family will have a less segregated experience is just funny

> same neighborhood

one of many many more reasons why neighborhood segregation is a huge problem (independent of weather it's by ethnicity, religion or wealth)

> same age

one of the thinks some of the nordic countries did change (through their suicide rates are high, but that is more a problem with the geographic location, i.e. not getting much (or any) sun-light in winter).

their suicide rates are high, but that is more a problem with the geographic location, i.e. not getting much (or any) sun-light in winter).

That is mostly a myth. While suicide rather in the Nordic countries are slightly above the European average they're not the highest in Europe and below the US. Also the correlation between suicide and not getting enough sun light is at best very weak. If you cluster suicide data on a pr county level in Sweden for example, you'll find a very high correlation with unemployment levels and negative population growth and no correlation with how far north you are.

What you mention is just showing that economical distress and similar are a _bigger_ factor. But that only implies light is a very weak factor if you assume some trivial linear-ish relationship between factors. Through that is likely not the case. I.e. someone who is already in distress due to other factors is much more likely to not eat properly or take Vitamin D supplements or get out during the short time of the day where the sun is up or get more affected by short days making it harder to have a regular sleep rithm, especially if you are depressed enough to have problems getting out of the bad for hours etc.

Non of this does mean you are wrong, but also not that you are right. It's just way more complex and interlocked with other factors then just linear adding up some negative factors.

If you think about it, the only scenario where that is actually useful is the corporate workplace.

Homeschooling children will interact with people in the context of their parents in all places in society their parents visit, and there are a wealth of groups and activities for the kids to join and interact with. Even better, the parents often have more direct insight into their childrens' interactions with others and can advise and support as necessary.

The whole 'needs socialising' claim is based on flawed assumptions, lest we assume all kids at school benefit socially from the environments they are in at school, which seems... optimistic.

Also, where else in society do you need to be measured in competence against other random local individuals of the exact same age?

> Homeschooling children will interact with people in the context of their parents in all places in society their parents visit

How is that different from other children?

They're not at school all day instead of with a parent/friend/relative/etc. Homeschooling is also not just doing the classroom at home, though that is how some parents unfortunately do it.

If domestic relationships aren't good quality then social skills may be impaired regardless.

A compromise is to just have smaller schools. I don’t know who came up with the idea to put over 1,000 teenagers together in a building everyday as so many public high schools do in the US, but there are plenty of studies that show it’s a terrible idea.

I assume it is for economic reasons. Unless property taxes shoot up, how would you support that?

Because if you don't interact with people you can't learn how to interact with people. And this include interacting with people you don't like or which aren't so nice (but just that, not bullies).

The problem isn't schools. It's a bad treatment of social issues at schools (and in society) in many ways.

I mean how messed up is the US that police presence at schools is normal in many areas (and I don't mean just guarding the gate but presence _in_ the schools).

Please someone tell me again how they don't understand statistics. Suicide is still extremely rare even with schooling. Child abuse is actually more common in homeschool environments, which you apparently wish to ignore. It can be true that homeschooling doesn't properly socialize children AND that there's an astronomically small increased risk of suicide from school attendance.

> Child abuse is actually more common in homeschool environments

Source?

Solid numbers (in either direction) are hard to find. Stuff like this is concerning:

https://ctmirror.org/2018/04/26/child-advocate-finds-homesch...

> In a study of six public school districts, Eagan found that over three academic years, 36 percent of students withdrawn for homeschooling lived in families that had at least one prior accepted report for suspected abuse or neglect from the Department of Children and Families.

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