Has anyone any thoughts on this ?

[moondancer]

There seems to be at least one suicide every month by teenagers, not to mention all the self harming that goes on.

There are online sites which tell youngsters how to kill themselves, which I find totally unbelievable...how can they be allowed ?

And am I right in thinking that back in the day....I'm talking mid and late 1900s, no one had ever heard of youngsters killing themselves, or maybe it happened on very rare occasions.

What's happening to our young people that they are doing this sort of thing ? Many of them talk about being bullied, but it's always been the same in schools imo.

It's almost like a new craze and so very worrying.

[Workingman]

What's happening to our young people that they are doing this sort of thing ?

Couple of things.

Over the New Wear period there was a report by the Prince's Trust indicating that vast numbers of young adults felt that they had "nothing to live for" in today's world - no job, no chance of a job, and no prospects. Is it any wonder that many feel driven to suicide?

But down the years we have created weak-minded people. They have been led to believe that if they want something badly enough it will come to them, but when it doesn't it's......"Aw, mum!". Anyone who disagrees with them, no matter how it is presented, is a bully. What used to be 'teasing' is now bullying, and the best cure is a big hug. If anybody says anything non-flattering on Twitbook its "like OMG, I am not loved!", but do they ignore? No they keep reading, responding, and driving themselves into depression.

And then there are the sickos who see all this happening and who know how to manipulate....... and yes, the sites should be closed down and the operators prosecuted.

Harry Enfield's Kevin is not far off the mark of what we as a society have produced.

[TheOstrich]

I think there's a number of factors, including ....

The unregulated internet, which is certainly at fault. Whether you want or can ever achieve regulation is a massive issue and a whole new thread.
The rise in available illegal drugs and highs, from nothing in the 1960's to today's epidemic levels.
An increasing lack of tolerance in society.
An increasing amount of pressure on youngsters and attendant despair.
The diminishing number of stable and loving family units created by changed societal values.

I'm quite sure there are others.

But basically - society today has broken down, some might even argue irretrievably.

[cromwell]

The diminishing number of stable and loving family units

Absolutely this.

[KateLMead]

I agree with all that posters have written, the result being we have created a totally unstable young society.

[cromwell]

I've been thinking about this a bit. The rise of the internet has something to do with increased teen suicides, definitely.
Before that you were limited to what you could be exposed to. Yes there have always been bad people; but now you can log on and find bad people from all over the planet sharing your space, rather than just your town or village.
Also in the past if you were being bullied, mostly your home could be your refuge. Now with social media, smartphones etc you can be bullied 24 hours a day, and bullied by more people too.

[Kaz]

I think Cromwell has just sad what I was about to...............Now vulnerable teens can be coerced and bullied in their own homes, there is no refuge from it. The strong-minded can just ignore or switch it off but vulnerable or people-pleasing youngsters, like the 15 year old girl in the news so recently, just cannot. They seem to get sucked in and unable to pull away.........

[Aggers]

I think that nowadays too many young people don't live the type of life we did in our youth.

Children now spend too much time on their own playing with electronic devices, instead of having
contacts and interactions with real people. There are many advantages to I.T. but there are
disadvantages, too.

I'm sure, from what I have seen, that in spite of the relative affluence of today, children are not as
happy as we were.

But this is just the opinion of an old man.

[cromwell]

And this slightly less old man would agree with you Aggers.

[Diflower]

The trouble is, those devices are there, and 'everyone' has them - if they'd been so freely available in our youths, we'd have had them too

I agree totally, that there's no escape from it now. We tended to have different friends at home and at school, so being shut out at school possibly didn't matter quite so much (although I can well remember being pretty miserable about it). I can see that now, if you're being excluded from a group at school for instance, your instinct would be to get home and look to see what's being said.
And if what's being said is all about you, and not nice, then as a teenager that's going to have quite a devastating effect. We all know, as adults, that these things tend to be very temporary, but now they are being 'fanned', by the way they can be spread so wide.