Comment by rhaway84773 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rhaway84773 | Hacker News Reader

This post goes on a very weird tangent.

If you read any discourse about teenage suicide over at least the past 2 decades (since I started reading the news), it was always focused on the disproportionately high number of boys who died of suicide vs girls. In fact, the disproportionately number of high attempts by girls was rarely even mentioned in most discussions, unless it was in the context of gun regulation because it has been quite clear for a while that more boys died because they tried to commit suicide by guns.

The reason the media is focusing on girls in the context of suicide right now is simply because the recently released CDC numbers show a huge increase in girls attempting suicide in the past, an effect which hasn’t been as large in boys.

For decades the focus has indeed been on the disproportionate number of boys who died of suicide. But the huge jump in girls feeling depressed and having suicidal thoughts is new. Hence, it’s being covered more in the news right now.

The ability of some people to turn everything into us vs them grievances is mind boggling to me.

Agreed. Like the section right after

> The conflation of suicide rates with forced sex here seems at best highly misleading. The sexual frequency number is rather obviously a reflection of two years where people were doing rather a lot of social distancing. With the end of that, essentially anything social is going to go up in frequency, whether it is good, bad or horrifying – only a 27 percent increase seems well within the range one would expect from that. Given all the other trends in the world, it would be very surprising to me if the rates of girls being subjected to forced sex (for any plausible fixed definition of that) were not continuing to decline.

If you look at the data from the cdc [0] there's no dip during quarantine like that paragraph would suggest leading to this sudden surge in comparison. Theres just an increase

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/fact-sheets/healthy-you...

My understanding is that males tend to choose methods of suicide with higher rates of success and therefore actually die in their suicide attempts more often.

I've heard that boys use a more likely to succeed method and that's why there are more male suicides.

Yes... that's exactly what I just said. Am I missing something?

Imo we are focusing on girls because political reasons - people want to ban TikTok and limit social media. It is about politics and nothing else.

I say that, because the debate shows little interest in kids inner lifes, in what kids think, in their actual struggles. Neither for boys nor for girls. It just projects contempt on them, they are all shallow simpletons basically and that is about it.

There is zero interest in trying to teach them or figure out how to talk tonthem either. It is ban or nothing. Which means that is a real goal.

I feel like the issue is political: climate change (and the lack of initiative from leaders regarding it), car-centric infrastructure in the us, the isolation of the global pandemic, and the recent repeal of Roe v. Wade have had an impact on young people, especially girls. So this dismissal of "it's just politics" irks me. Politics is about things that affect literally everyone: infrastructure, schools, social rights... those aren't things to disregard and articles like this don't even bother to examine them.

More girls are feeling hopelessness because of the political landscape in the United States: the reversal of Roe v. Wade has had an enormous impact on the mental health of American women. That being said we can also ask about reporting, I think women are more likely than men to admit feelings of suicidal ideation, but that is just wild speculation on my behalf.

If people actually cared about impact on girls, they would be out there figuring out how to facilitate what girls need. As in, do they need adults to help them organize in person meetups sooner then in puberty? Do they need adults to care more about their self worth and values or whatever, during or before puberty? Do they need something else? But the debate is not even actually about them and shows zero interest in them as humans. I have seen zero actual interest about values those girls have, struggles they themselves think they have. Nothing of that sort, except some projection.

Look at discussion about it on HN - it it between banning them out of tech entirely (and isolating them in the process) or other punishment and between nothing at all. I have yet to see "we talked about what is going on between kids and found out ..." or "we talked about dangers of addiction and this worked this did not".

For that matter, it is basically same with boys. They actually kill themselves more often, but the point is raised up only as political talking point one - usually to suck it up to feminists. But if they cant beat up feminists with that or if they cant use it to claim that girls should go back to kitchen, then they dont care.

> More girls are feeling hopelessness because of the political landscape in the United States: the reversal of Roe v. Wade has had an enormous impact on the mental health of American women.

Yes, tho most 15 years old don't think that far. Except actually pregnant ones. And there are some reports of sexual harassments and such going up too. Note how these never factor into the discussion about their mental health.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but what I think you're saying is: for most adults it's not about the wellbeing of young people, but a cliché "think of the children". If that's the case, I'd agree and disagree.

In my personal circle a lot of people around me are interested in young people. They work with troubled kids as social workers and genuinely care about their work; often trying to involve kids they've helped in decision-making processes. This is sometimes halted by higher-ups, who disregard what children, especially "troubled teens" have to say.

Getting direct feedback from young people is truly not done as often as it should be and I would agree that young people are often talked about or talked over. In systems where children are the "clients" like at schools or as part of social programs, it's integral to actually consider their perspectives.

I'm afraid I don't understand your last argument? When I was 15 I did care about decisions politicians made about my body.

In my personal circles, there are interested people. In internet debates over this topic I have seen, there are very little of them. It is just stroking panic using girls as pawns. Just like think of trans children was just an pretention to get support for general attack on trans everything.

Like common. Past HN debates about this topic were full of condescension toward young girls, full of projection onto them and the most often repeated solution was "take away all tech from them with no debate, regardless of what they think and do zero additional effort to help them socialize". This is not about helping anyone. This is about getting laws you want and punishing them.

> When I was 15 I did care about decisions politicians made about my body.

Quite a lot of them see it as distanced and far away from their own lifes.

> More girls are feeling hopelessness because of the political landscape in the United States: the reversal of Roe v. Wade has had an enormous impact on the mental health of American women.

I find it difficult to believe that repealing Roe v. Wade has had a measurable impact on teen girls and suicidal thoughts more so than say social media, which really appears to have amplified the general bullying, peer pressure, and acceptance issues that have plagued teens for decades.

Why do you think Roe v. Wade doesn't have an impact on women and girls? Studies show that it has had a measurable effect, especially in states where women have lost autonomy over their bodies.

The performative pressures brought on by Instagram and co. is a problem and maybe it impact teen girls acutely more, but the young ladies I've talked to and mentored expressed a great deal of angst about their futures because of things like Roe v. Wade.

Well I never said it didn’t or couldn’t have an impact-just that for teen girls depressed enough to consider suicide there are much stronger negative drivers to that depression than political fights around a topic that statistically will likely not directly impact the girl in their lifetime.

Certainly in a specific edge case situation, the inability to have access to abortion for a pregnant girl who wants one could be a strong influencer of despair—perhaps even beyond bullying. But my comment was more directed to what is most likely the cause of the despair and to be blunt, I doubt that to a non-pregnant depressed girl considering suicide, their immediate access to abortion or what is happening politically around Roe v Wade is overriding despair they get from hellhole that is social media.

Pregnant teenage girls are hit the hardest. The subset that is not forced to give birth, afraid that they might be pregnant and their friends are bound to be more depressed.

In person sexual harassments rates also went up during that period. It is not just social media.

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