Inside Tumblr’s teen suicide epidemic
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
I think all the effort of this misguided article would be much better spent tackling transphobia rather than advocating we curtail free speech.
Its not only about transphobia, its about how youngsters use tumblr.
There is more going on than just three dead teens though. There is also the entire social movement surrounding these three people. Seemingly thousands of people talking about those three deaths. That is much more notable.
How about making it so teens lives don't suck ass? How about helping them instead of actively trying to hurt them with good intentions? It's not like adolescence is some new thing that just popped up, but society has gotten progressively worse at dealing with it for a long time. We know that in cultures that empower adolescents and expect them to join the adult world, there is no such creature as the 'angsty teen'. We create that creature when we insist on treating them like children simply because we don't know what else to do with them with our current social structure - a structure derived from the needs of factory owners around the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and little-changed since.
Do you want to stop teen suicide if it means respecting them as human beings? What if you have to let them make the decisions that control their lives instead of you? Are you willing to admit that you have talked about adolescents the way racists used to talk about minorities, and the way men used to talk about women? Are you ready to admit that you've wronged a part of humanity, even though you had to pass through that class yourself? What you want and what needs to be done to accomplish it are not always things you can live with. Demanding that you should be able to have your desires met without having to pay the price is very immature. If you want teen suicide to go away but you still get to rob them of their autonomy and denigrate them, you are doing exactly this.
This sort of argument is best backed up with examples of what you have in mind.
* Users can self-organize into hashtags, which are easier to navigate and more cohesive than on Twitter.
* Custom blog designs make it feel more personal / intimate, à la LiveJournal or MySpace.
* Reblogs let content spread quickly. Unlike Twitter, there's more flexibility with what and how long this content is. And unlike retweets, reblogging users can add their own opinions / perspectives to what they share.
* Notes, likes, reblogs, followers... provide a metric for the validation of one's opinions.
* The dashboard and blocking system, plus tools like Missing E, let you narrow down the content you want to see and filter out what you don't.
* Emphasis on images / highly visual content which can quickly disseminate social messages and encourages the liking / sharing reaction -- similar to how image macros or videos can easily go "viral".
* No real name policy, and you can easily change your name / switch your blog URL if need be.
* Strong traction in the various fandom communities, which are subcultures in and of themselves and tend to be more receptive to "radical" ideas, as you put it.
Disclaimer: I'm not a Tumblr user; just interested in how internet communities work.
Tumblr is mathematically biased to prevent feedback from the outside. People who use it rarely change their opinions because of this.
I employ each tactic on HN and reddit respectively.
I think it's the bubble-ish environment that gets created not only by your followership but also by the fact that tumblr blogs rarely get feedback from outside.
Once you've build a sufficient followership around you, every thought you express in that bubble gets some how discussed, accepted and developed.
That's why for once tumblr blogs react so harsh to bubble-out-side topics (/r/shittumblrsays) and secondly why I believe it is such a good place for discussion of "radical subcultures".
Combined with the bandwagon effect of downvotes in many (not all) subreddits, this has the same filter-bubble effect, just by virtue of pushing differently-minded people out (either to seek other subreddits, or off the site altogether).
Just look at /r/politics and you'll see this in full force - with a few exceptions, almost any post expressing a somewhat conservative perspective is downvoted massively.
This is one of the reason Reddit implemented [score hidden], which seems to have helped somewhat, but not entirely.
> Radicals tend not to like people disagreeing with them.
This isn't true only "radicals" - it's true everywhere. And I don't think it's the userbase that's different; it's the structure around it that makes the difference. In other words, the same people will group themselves differently on Tumblr and Reddit, even if they use both sites.
Suicide is everywhere. Trans people are everywhere. Minorities are everywhere. Tumblr just isn't sweeping it under the rug as much as some other sites.
[citation needed]
EDIT:
Reason I ask is that, when fighting for the cause of minority groups, it doesn't help to make claims that are easily shown to be false--it hurts your credibility, and by association, theirs.
The "x are everywhere" is what, for example, brought us the Iraq War and the TSA and all the rest...just good marketing whipping people up into a frenzy.
EDIT2:
Fine, for the downvoters, here's some citations (because apparently that's too much to ask):
Various studies show a rate of between 0.1-0.5% of people identifying as trans ( http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-we-dont-know-the-siz... ).
A 2011 study by the UCLA Williams Institute found there to be around 700,000 trans people ( http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/research/census-lgbt-d... ).
Anyways, I don't think any reasonable person would say that 5 people in 1000 would be enough to support the claim the GP put forth.
Anyway, if 5 in 1000 (as your own link states, these numbers are inherently difficult to quantify — but i'll go along with it) is not enough to qualify as everywhere, what is? What's your exact limit on everywhere? 1 in 500? 1 in 100? 1 in 10?
The suicide rate in the US is ~12 in 100'000, but you didn't seem to think mentioning it hurt OP's credibility (or, by association, the credibility of people who've committed suicide).
Furthermore, I reject the idea that identifying a subculture means that you are dismissing that subculture.
The fact that subcultures can be voluntary, whimsical, or ephemeral doesn't mean they have to be, and I certainly don't assume any lack of seriousness or significance to the notion that someone is a member of this or that subculture.
That is not at all what 'radical' means in the context of 'radical sub-culture'. The definition you're looking for is one of:
2. thoroughgoing or extreme, especially as regards change from accepted or traditional forms: a radical change in the policy of a company.
3. favoring drastic political, economic, or social reforms: radical ideas; radical and anarchistic ideologues.
I guess you could argue that trans people fall under definition # 2 from the perspective of many (most?) people, but i also think that 'radical sub-culture' generally implies some kind of conscious action — i don't think that simply existing as a member of a minority makes you inherently 'radical'.
If you're not sure what someone means, consider asking them rather than complaining about it. Transitioning to a different gender from one's birth default is (for the time being) a radical change involving extensive medical evaluation, a lifetime drug regimen and ultimately major surgery, to say nothing of the social difficulties.
Neither have positive connotations, but "fundamentalist" is worse. Fundamentalism specifically invokes ideas of religious fundamentalism, particularly "religious right" style protestant beliefs.
"Radical" on the other hand is used in a more diverse set of cases. It invokes thoughts of any number of political or religious beliefs that are either outside the mainstream or do not conform with progressive western values as they are traditionally stated.
I don't think either is dismissive. Descriptive, with negative connotations, but being critical is not the same as being dismissive.
In other words you fit perfectly here :)
Even so it has to be taken with a grain of salt. Everyone can escape school, escaping a country, state or just city for a more accepting environment is a lot more difficult.
In all seriousness, many communities on Tumblr exist to find stuff on the internet to get outraged about. "The constantly outraged are locked in a desperate struggle to find meaning in things that do not impact their lives."
Tumblr communities also seems to idolize victimhood. Nothing demonstrates your level of victimhood quite like suicide. So, if you take generally marginalized groups (body size, sexuality, etc), run around searching for things to get angry about, and celebrate their status as societies scapegoats and victims it does not surprise me that Tumblr would have high suicide rates.
The national suicide prevention strategy has recognised social media as something to be aware of. This concern is reflected in some local strategies - it's possibly going to be in Gloucestershire's suicide prevention strategy.
People worked hard to get media outlets to develop guidelines that balance freedom of speech with reducing harm. The national union of journalists has pretty good guidelines.
https://www.nuj.org.uk/news/guidelines-on-reporting-on-menta...
Perhaps the social media industry could set up some meta group to draw up guidelines around social responsibility? Many sites have rules that ban pro-anorexia information.
It's not the sort of problem where you can easily engineer away the underlying causes so it makes sense to deal with the social manifestations. some social causes can be engineered away, but in many respects suicide is a radical political act that's at odds with deeply ingrained societal ideology (eg the extremely attenuated legal rights of juveniles in the US) which are a) not amenable to short-term change, and b) not so simply causal that change will automatically lower suicide rates.
When someone commits suicide and it gets a lot of attention there is an increase in suicides in the following weeks.
That's worth talking about.
When the news covers shoots (or stories like this) they ARE trying to attract more viewer, it's a very different thing IMHO to just leaving up posts and allowing users to share. I see Tumblr taking down posts extremely disrespectful to the deceased. Let's not pretend a blogging platform is to blame, instead let's blame the real people at fault: the parents and the communities that drove these kids to what they saw as their only option.
If a site bans pro-anorexic content they've already said they're happy to restrict free speech if there's a strong enough protective need.
This might just be my privilege leaking, but I also wonder if spending so much time documenting and discussing injustice depresses people and makes them feel hopeless. There is a very strong contingent on Tumblr that exists to find something to be outraged about every single day.
I don't mean we should whitewash discrimination and injustice, but I seriously doubt wallowing in it helps.
I guess I'm just tired of adults reading one or two things and thinking they know better simply because of seniority. The reporter, the white, middle aged Caitlin Dewey, has a reputation for being facile and provocative. She's probably never been on Tumblr. They expert's she quotes, while educated, are still probably out of their depth. While some glorifying type blogs do exist (you can't generalize tumblr; there are more than 221 million blogs) the majority of blogs about mental illness, feminism, minority rights, etc, are based on trying to educate people and provide them with resources and a safe, understanding place. How about adults stop pointing fingers at the big scary internet and put time and effort into, I don't know, making safe spaces for teens so they aren't suicidal in the first place? That's what people on tumblr are trying to do when they "martyrize" Leehla Alcorn. They're putting a face on their movement. Not a movement to glorify suicide. A movement to outlaw trans* conversion therapy, and get proper sex ed in schools. A movement to try and stop teen's lives from being a living hell, a movement to stop teens from being pushed to suicide. A movement that many adults can't seem to be bothered with--but oh no! The teenagers are obviously trying to get each other to kill themselves because it's "cool".