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On-Line Bullying

Entry 2215, on 2022-04-28 at 22:00:58 (Rating 2, Comments)

We have some big problems in our modern society, don't we? Some of the worst include increased offensive behaviour on social media, and greater stress leading to increased suicide, and the worst thing of all is that this effects young people worse than others, right? Well no, wrong, actually.

This subject arose during a recent discussion with some friends. They claimed that young people today in New Zealand are subject to greater levels of stress and abuse, often through social media, and that it is worse in this country than in most others, and it is worse now than in the past. Additionally, they primarily blame abuse and harassment through social media as the cause.

I countered by saying that the claims against social media are exaggerated and that bullying and harassment have always been an issue for young people. I also claimed that both the suicide rate in New Zealand isn't unusually high, and that it hasn't got worse in recent years.

At the time I said I was making those claims based on research I had seen, but I didn't have time to find it to prove my point at the time. Since then I have checked the research, and I am correct on all counts!

So let's look at the stats. First, how does New Zealand compare with other countries for the rate of suicide? Well, according to stats from Wikipedia, we are 71st out of 190, when rates are sorted from high to low. The US, Sweden, South Africa, India, Belgium, Finland, Japan, and Australia are amongst the significant countries who are worse off. Also, our rate of about 10 is moderate compared with the total range of just above zero to almost 90.

Now, I'm not saying that even one suicide is OK; obviously I would prefer if there were none, but we should work with the facts, and saying that New Zealand is worse than all (or even most) comparable countries is not true.

The second stat I want to examine is change over time. I found some stats at "Our World in Data" which showed the change over the last 20 years. Note that using smartphones to regularly access social media is a phenomenon which is less than 10 years old, so if social media was an issue, or any other cause related to recent societal changes, we should see an increase in suicide rates over that period.

But we see the opposite. The global rate peaked in 1995, but has come down fairly smoothly since then. In New Zealand the rate has fallen fairly smoothly from 20.9 in 2001 to 15.4 in 2019. So it seems that suicide isn't getting worse if those figures can be believed. If anything, reporting of suicide is more open today than in the past, so the decrease might be even more significant than the numbers show.

What about the rate for different ages? Is it true that young people are more affected than others? Well again, no. According to global figures from Our World in Data the rate increases with age. Here are some age ranges and the corresponding rates: 5-14 0.64, 15-49 11.19, 50-69 14.25, over 70 24.53. A contrary stat is that suicide is the second highest cause of death for 15-24 year olds globally, but this might be related to the fact that other causes for that age group are so low.

Also note that the second range (15-49) is too wide for an ideal analysis, but I think it is still fair to conclude that this isn't primarily a problem for younger people. Again, suicide by any young person is tragic and I am not minimising how bad this is, but I just want to establish the facts on this subject.

Finally we have the reasons for suicide. The fact that the rate didn't increase when smartphones and social media became popular tends to make the "social media abuse theory" look less likely, but I found some stats on this subject so let's check against those.

According to sources which specialise in this subject, on-line bullying is a factor, but only one amongst many. Also, people who kill themselves tend to have existing mental conditions, especially depression, which has numerous causes, and can rarely be blamed on one thing.

On various sites discussing this subject there are comments from depressed people, people who are contemplating or who have survived suicide, and others who have friends who were affected. I saw no mention of social media bullying being an issue there. I'm sure if I searched more thoroughly I would find examples, but it doesn't seem to be quite as bad as many people think. In fact, there was one person recommending it to solve depression issues, like this: "I lived a selfish life and didn’t pay enough attention to how important family is. Mom, dad, cousins, aunts, uncles. Keep in contact with them. Use social media."

You might ask why is this something I am interested in? Well, control of social media is currently a popular issue. First, there was significant criticism of Facebook, primarily aimed at Mark Zuckerberg. And just yesterday, Elon Musk seems to have bought Twitter and now there is endless hysteria regarding how that is likely to result in increased hate speech and other undesirable activities.

The problem is this idea of "hate speech" often is just a way to suppress ideas which a group doesn't like, and there is no obvious way to defne it. For example, if I said all trans people are freaks and should be eliminated from modern society I would probably be accused of using hate speech, and that is quite justified. If I said people who criticise trans people should themselves be open to criticism, that would not be hate speech. But what if I said that trans people who now identify as female should not be allowed to compete in women's sport. Is that hate speech, or just a controversial opinion to hold?

It's a awkward opinion for some, and often a difficult one to refute, so just making an accusation of hate speech is an easy to to counter it. But it is dishonest, and doesn't allow these controversial issues to be debated fairly.

So this hysteria over my country being particularly bad for suicide, it getting worse in recent years, of it being primarily affecting young people, and it being significantly caused by on-line bullying is harmful because it provides a convenient excuse for further censorship of free speech, and as you know, that is an important issue to me.

One of the major reasons which is assumed to account for the aggression of on-line comments is that messaging on a computer is very impersonal, and it is easy to forget that you are talking to or about another human. Maybe we need an environment where the humanity of other people is more apparent. Maybe we need a VR system where we see the other people involved. Maybe Meta's new VR social features will help!

And remember that comment above about social media helping with people feeling isolated from family and friends. Maybe there are some cases of suicide caused by bullying, but there could equally be times when an on-line discussion has prevented someone from doing that. We have to look at all the facts, and we need to look at the good and the bad. Just condemning a service that you don't understand or don't find useful yourself (as many social media critics do) is not helpful and just gives the censors more of an excuse to exercise even more control. We don't need that.

Comment 1 (7143) by Anonymous on 2022-05-02 at 11:41:42:

At the risk of sounding like an old codger, I would say that "young" people seem, in general, to suffer from a lack of resilience... Unfortunately, it seems that the right to be offended by almost anything has replaced the ability to hear something, process it, and dismiss it as irrelevant.

Comment 2 (7145) by OJB on 2022-05-02 at 14:12:12:

That is undoubtedly the case in many instances, and the fundamental problem in modern society, I believe. Of course, there are genuine cases where people have been targeted through the use of technology, but that has always happened in various ways, even before Facebook, etc.

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