regarding suicidal zoomers on the horizon of elon musk's twitter
Even just in the past 48 hours, the attention around adolescent mental health has become elevated to unprecedented (and tardy) national concern. The reason these issues feel so pressing to me this week in particular is because my now retired but previously preferred space of self inflicted internet mental illness, Twitter, is set to be adopted by that one guy, and Elon Musk’s Twitter already sounds like a hellscape descended from my personal nightmares without the added issue of its inherent infectious societal implications.
This April, an article in the atlantic was quickly followed by one in the times, both screaming at adults about the trend of desiring death in American teenagers. Reading about internet-facilitated inclinations towards sadness through my own positionality was admittedly meta, but especially so upon learning that the times article followed a protagonist living in the suburbs of Minneapolis. In this protagonist is where Pulitzer prize winning journalist Matt Ritchtel encounters his starlet for his piece: disguised (sure, I guess?) by their first initial, non-binary “M” cuts their ankles and wishes to die so that they can live with their beloved anime character “genocide jack” for eternity. I looked him (her?) up for reference:
In the Atlantic counterpart, 35 year old journalist Derek Thompson utilizes a different approach to the hot topic issue, suggesting a list with a length of four (4) reasons why these trends may be occurring. The journalist’s desire to isolate clear causes and consequences is falls short when batting against a teenage psychology, and this is certainly the case for Thompson who succinctly articulates the following reasons for this disturbing moment in time:
1. Social-media use
2. Sociality is down
3. The world is stressful—and there is more news about the world’s stressors
4. Modern parenting strategies
Richter, unlike Thompson, understands that the important aspect of this investigation lies exactly in its lack of clarity. Both adult men share in an earnest confusion in their writing, perplexed by the gravity and frequency of teenage depression, but only Richtel succeeds in isolating this discomfort in a productive way. “As M descended, Linda and her husband realized they were part of an unenviable club: bewildered parents of an adolescent in profound distress,” writes Richtel.
Zoomers are children of the internet in a way where parenting becomes less relevant; socialized in a different reality, one where nothing is out of bounds and nothing makes sense. I can personally attest to the draw of unconventional online spaces entering my stratosphere as an easy and all-consuming content in distraction to my thoughts, as is the case for most people’s attested internet obsessions in times of personal crisis. When we find ourselves in these spaces, there is little hope in articulating them offline, but they find a way of continuing to consume you in your subconscious. Even in less intense forms, this manifests itself in meaning that the routine of our internet becomes a lived space for us; a curated digital rollercoaster that we personally designed to isolate and extrapolate our own highs and lows. Chalking it up to a pandemic or low sociability removes the responsibility from the perpetrators; those who knowingly program these algorithmic roller coaster rides that facilitate internet addiction and those who fund research that fuel our demise.
