Comment by YellOh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by YellOh | Hacker News Reader

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According to Washington Post data, there were 393,289 students enrolled at schools during shootings in the past 10 years[0]. (Note this is total enrollment, not those present or injured)

In 2022, there were ~25.1 million teens[1], of whom ~67% used TikTok[2], for a total of ~16.8 million on TikTok (totally ignoring anyone under 12 or over 17).

I know the numbers are hacky because the first group includes younger children and the second group doesn't (and 1/3 of TikTok's users could be under 14[3]), but I was trying to get a sense of scale for each category. Assume the TikTok user count is probably an underestimate.

My hacky numbers come up with a bit over 40x more teens being first-hand infuenced by tiktok. To make the numbers even more hypothetical, the next step of deciding how many times worse you think being enrolled at a school that has a shooting is for students and plugging that in to get how much more attention/resources should be used on shootings is left as an exercise for the reader.

[0] https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-school-shootings [1] https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/technology/tiktok-underag...

The person you’re replying to said that the possibility of being shot at school is psychologically taxing. This would apply to all students at all schools, not just ones where a shooting literally happened. It is relevant because of how frequent school shootings are now, compared to say, 30 years ago. Columbine shook the country when it happened, now we’re at a couple Columbine-style incidents per year. You can say “well that’s still a low overall percentage of students who get shot” and be technically correct while ignoring the gravity of the situation and the fact that other first world countries don’t have this problem.

The fact that school shootings have been so normalized that we’re sitting here and discussing the math around whether they’re worse than social media is… so profoundly sad it’s hard to describe.

This idea sorta goes against this other HN post i saw today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35359271

I think we can safely say that social media hurts mental health worldwide, and school shootings are also really bad for people. It’s almost like they’re separate issues and we don’t have to pick one or the other to deal with. Does that sound reasonable?

I agree shootings do large societal harm past the students at the school (though to be fair, I'd say the opposite side could correctly argue that TikTok makes lasting changes to children/society beyond just the ones that use it (and may be correlated with depression/suicide, which is also profoundly sad))

Surely you have to do some kind of math eventually, or else you'll end up prioritizing whatever sounds the most dramatic instead of the things that actually matter (consider people who are more afraid of sharks than drowning, even though shark deaths are 1 in 4,332,817 and drowning deaths are 1 in 1,134)

I acknowledge that the numbers I'm using are not, by any means, conclusive. And I'm not saying we should prioritize TikTok above shootings just because it's more common. But this seems like a reason to get better evidence about the way the world is, not refuse to touch numbers because some harms are too sacred to attempt to quantify.

> Surely you have to do some kind of math eventually, or else you'll end up prioritizing whatever sounds the most dramatic instead of the things that actually matter (consider people who are more afraid of sharks than drowning, even though shark deaths are 1 in 4,332,817 and drowning deaths are 1 in 1,134)

TSA? Or any other "but think of the children"-type bill? Or look at water-scarcity "solutions" in the south west for something different.

I'm serious, "prioritizing whatever sounds the most dramatic instead of the things that actually matter" is literally 90% of the politician's playbook.

Debating the minutiae of the number of school shootings is just...sad.

The total number of children who should die in school shootings should always be 0.

It's not even particularly hard. Practically every country in the world manages to achieve that target.

Incorrect. Some do, many don't, unless of course you're racist and don't consider quite a bit of the developing world worth your notice. Is that the case?

How common are school shootings in the developing world?

What a childish comment.

The two largest developing countries in the world are China and India, both accounting for roughly 35% of the world’s population. And they’ve both reduced school shootings to either zero or close to zero.

And the ideal number of suicides is 0, and the ideal amount of spyware is 0, etc. All of these are targets, but an ideal doesn't give you further information on how to prioritize

Many other countries have succeeded at bringing school shootings to zero, providing the fundamental feasibility in principle. That makes the difference.

The difference in America is that Americans really don't want to. By the time Sandy Hook happened, Americans had already long decided as a culture that they were willing to trade the lives of their children to protect their sacred right to keep and bear arms. Hell, many are happy to, as long as the kids aren't theirs.

Sort of. Sandy Hook meaningfully changed polling. Americans broadly support the idea someone should do something. Of course, they get colder feet when it gets more specific.

Regardless, this makes it very different from a 0 suicide or 0 spyware goal. Those don't have a similarly reasonable theoretical solution.

No country has managed to bring the total number of suicides to 0. Which tells you that it’s a harder problem.

But again, practically every country has managed to being the total number of school shootings to 0. Which tells you that it’s not a particularly hard problem.

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