From: Drew Robertson
Columbus
The recent editorial "An easy solution to help troubled youth" exhibits more optimism about public policy and teen suicides than I can share. While the legislative changes addressed in that item might be helpful to a few particular individuals, the net effect on the teen suicide rate is likely to be negligible.
I will begin on a brighter note. In his book "Enlightenment Now," Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker shows that suicide rates generally are volatile, and are not at the record highs that are sometimes asserted in the media. They are also influenced by many, not always obvious, factors. "Suicides increase during economic downturns and political turmoil, not surprisingly," he writes, "but they are also affected by weather and the number of daylight hours, and when the media normalize or romanticize recent instances."
The increase in U.S. teen suicides that concerns the editors is what social scientists call a "cohort effect," driven by forces impinging on a particular age group, in a particular society, at a particular time. Social psychologist Jean Twenge examines those forces thoroughly in "iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy – and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood."
That lengthy subtitle suggests that there is much more to worry about regarding those born since 1995 than an increase in suicides. The factors affecting them include such matters as family structure, parenting styles, and, especially, social media. These are mostly social and cultural issues, not political ones, and public policy initiatives are likely to have little direct effect on them.
The central question is whether we have the collective determination to engage the serious and sustained social and cultural work that will be required to reverse the negative trends Twenge identifies.
That question remains open. Unless and until we answer in the affirmative, though, public policy will have marginal effects at best.
