American Girls are Killing Themselves

While adults are worried about political unrest in the country, young girls ages 15–19 are committing suicide more than ever before.

The story really begins in 2006 when an entire generation was introduced to Twitter. Entering the world in 1995, Gen Z or iGen — “Internet Generation” as San Diego University psychologist Jean Twenge classifies them — is considered to be the group after millennials. iGen’s are considered the first to spend their teen years immersed in social media, a fate now known as a double-edged sword.

A period of digital reckoning was upon the iGen world following Twitter’s birth, thanks to the iPhone and Tumblr being introduced in 2007. Facebook usage spiked for the first time in 2008 due to a deregulation in membership requirements, which had users no longer needing to prove university enrollment. Instagram arrived in 2010, and Snapchat in 2011. We don’t have data yet on what is to become of exposure and addiction to TikTok.

Two things are true: behavioral psychology is well aware that girls report having more depression and anxiety than boys, and women are considered to live longer due to the fact they are more likely to see a doctor for medical needs. But beginning around 2011, the depression and anxiety gap between girls and boys began to widen — and girls began reaching an all-time high.

By 2016, roughly 1 out of 5 girls reported symptoms that met the criteria for having experienced a major depressive episode the previous year. This dataset increased for boys but more slowly.

Another alarming figure is the rate of teen suicide from a dataset beginning in 1981. The numbers have shown an increase in tandem with depression for girls and boys. Boys committing suicide, ages 15–19, spiked in 1991 but went down in the years following. That rate has slowly risen since but has not been as high as that peak in 91', yet rising nonetheless. For girls, the rate has been fairly constant since 1981 but is now at it’s highest since beginning this dataset. That means, compared to the early 2000s, nearly twice as may teen girls now commit suicide.

Self Harm is Rising

Self-harm, or “non-fatal self-inflicted injuries,” has another dataset for our young Americans. The phrase defines any act related to bodily injury or an attempt at suicide by either making a plan and not carrying it out, to the actual attempt at ending their life. Emergency room visits include young people who cut themselves with a razor blade, banged their head against a wall or drank poison.

Data from 66 US hospitals going back to 2001 estimates self-harm rates for the entire country. Here’s what they find:

• Rate of self-harm for boys held steady at roughly 200 per 100,000, ages 15–19.
• Rate for girls is higher and held steady at 420 per 100,000.

Beginning data from 2010, the girls rate reached 630 per 100,000 by 2015. Younger girls ages 10–14 rose even more quickly, nearly tripling from 110 per 100,000 in 2009, to 318 per 100,000 in 2015. To show the gap, the rate for boys in that age was 40 per 100,000.

Why?

Significant data suggests that two activities are correlated with depression and suicide-related outcomes: watching TV and electronic device use — specifically more than two hours a day.

What’s on those screens? Social media. iGens are bombarded with advertisements for other lifestyles often more inviting and miraculous than their own. This may not affect young boys as much as it does young girls, but it is clearly affecting both genders enough to bring a steady rise in mental health concerns.

Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, authors of The Coddling of the American Mind, believe that not only are iGens at risk of anxiety, depression and suicide, they also see problematic trends coming out of the universities that have enrolled this generation. Beginning in 2013, trends of “safetysim” (a word coined by the authors) increased, making different opinions, ideologies, and even words appear as violence.

“This is what Greg began to see around 2013: increasing calls from students for administrators and professors to regulate who can say what, who gets to speak on campus, and how students should interact with one another, even in private settings.”

Regardless of your belief on Greg and Jonathan’s university hypothesis, we know that screen-time indoctrinated teenagers from 2006–2011 and began to show in the data. Young people from those years framed their world-view based on what they were seeing on social media, and it seems to have shaped how they interact with the world…or don’t.

Downward trends of healthy activities correlating with lower rates of depression have also been documented. Young people are going out into the world less, and losing the neuro-beneficial aspects of unsupervised play with their peers.

Here’s a few things young people need to do for healthy function:

• Sports and other forms of exercise
• Attending religious services
• Reading books and other print media
• In-person social interactions
• Homework

Most readers might be surprised to see “attending religious services” on the list, but not the author. After spending 5 years on a religious editorial team you can be sure we did our research. Studies show that even a basic level of religious thought and thinking that there is a “higher power” greater than ourselves leads to a happier life. The other aspects of the list are somewhat self-evident…but they are actually declining in the lives of young people today.

Why are Girls Affected More Than Boys?

Data sighted from professor Deborah Tannen on her work with the now famous acronym FOMO, and psychologist Nicki Crick on aggression, show that the disparaging gap in mental health from boys to girls is the way girls look at reality with a inclusion/exclusion lens. That means young girls possibly see engagement in life as either included or excluded, or FOMO — Fear of missing out — or FOBLO, fear of being left out.

Some Data:

• From 2010 to 2015, percentage of boys feeling left out increased from 21–27%.
• Girls in the same time stated they felt left out 27%, jumping to 40% in 2015.

If girls hold the inclusion/exclusion paradigm then the rise of social media, Snapchat filters, and potential involvement with various groups around the world could prove disastrous for a sex that defines life as either being invited or left out — leading to a distortion in cognitive behavioral theory known as catastrophizing.

“Girls may be more “relationally” aggressive, trying to hurt rivals’ relationships, reputations, and social status — by using social media, and making sure other girls know they are being left out.” -The Coddling of the American Mind

In other words, according to Nicki Crick in the 1990’s, there may be no overall aggression difference in total aggression values for the sexes but girls may express aggression differently by psychologically using social media to harm others as opposed to physical rivalry between males.

Unsupervised Play

There’s no question that the rise of social media in 2006–7 has correlated with rising rates of anxiety, depression and suicide among the younger population in the US. Boys and girls ages 15–19 grew up with the internet in their pocket, and the cognitive development has been both incredible and devastating. It’s clear that the mind can learn and evolve at a faster rate with increasing levels of technology, but it’s also clear it can be dangerous as well. The double-edged sword nature of the expanding world of instant connectivity means we need to find and learn the balance that comes with so much power.

Are parents having the much-needed conversations with their kids? As a parent, do you feel like there will be pushback from your attempts at prying into their world? I know it may feel like being nosey, it may feel like you are pushing their boundaries — but as a parent, that’s ok.

There’s a balance. We know that some screen time is good, especially if it is centered around knowledge and education, but no more than two hours a day. A blend of outside social activity for exercise and unsupervised play will be good for the body and mind of anyone, let alone young teens.

According to “Experience-expectant development,” our brain is wired to explore the world and attempt to navigate through human interaction. If that exploration doesn’t manifest, we may be stunting our children instead of preparing them for the road ahead.

Peter Gray, a leading researcher of play, explains the nature of play and our interaction with it as children,

“They seem to be dosing themselves with moderate degrees of fear, as if deliberately learning how to deal with both the physical and emotional challenges of the moderately dangerous conditions they generate…”

What happens when children don’t get enough of this “fear dosing”? They lack the proper development of handling stressful situations. Add that to an increase in social media conditioning and you have a recipe for a coddled individual who can’t express themselves without getting scared, stressed, angry and violent.

Where Does This Lead?

What do we do? Usually the answer lies is openness, honesty and conversations. We need to feel like we can talk to our kids without adding more secrecy to an already secret subject. We should feel bold enough to make things uncomfortable, and risk breaking the thin veil of trust we have with younger people.

Questions to ask the young people in your house:

Do you use social media? (I know some teens that have phones but don’t actually care for it.)

How do you use it?

Do you use Snapchat?

Have you ever felt pressured from using social media?

How do you feel about FOMO?

Do you believe the world you see on social media is real? If so, how?

As parents, how do you go into this without losing your teen’s trust? How do you navigate questions around what you know and what you don’t know?

No one will be able to answer those questions for you but you. However, one thing I can say for sure: this is a conversation worth having whether you get it wrong or not.

~

Some references:

Facebook usage spike: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2015/10/08/social-networking-usage-2005-2015/

1 out of 5 girls: (Hunter & Tice 2016)

15–19 male & female suicide: CDC Fatal Injury Reports, 1999–2016

Self-Harm Rate: Mercado, Holland, Leemis, Stone & Wang (2017)

Religious people are happier. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/31/are-religious-people-happier-healthier-our-new-global-study-explores-this-question/

“Experience expected development”: Black, Jones, Nelson & Greenough (1998)

*A huge thanks to the authors of The Coddling of the American Mind. This short and simple article is written using their hard work and data-driven approach to solving a problem for young people in the US.