
Suicide on Campus and the Pressure of Perfection - DrScump
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/education/edlife/stress-social-media-and-suicide-on-campus.html
======
danso
ESPN did an amazing longform article about the track star mentioned in the OP,
Madison Holleran:

[http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/12833146/instagra...](http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/12833146/instagram-
account-university-pennsylvania-runner-showed-only-part-story)

One of the themes of that story, as in the OP, is how social media distorts
the reality of experience, making people think that everything is exciting and
upbeat in others' lives...I think for better or worse, this effect is stronger
in Instagram, and not just because of the literal "filters"...what makes
Instagram more appealing in general than Facebook is that, being so focused on
images and impulse sharing, it's much harder to get into political
spats/debates...but it's much more difficult to convey "meh" or other negative
emotions. If you focus on someone's Instagram, you can come away with a very
distorted assessment of that person's life and emotions.

~~~
caseysoftware
I came across this one a while back:

"How many takes did you do before you posted the #nomakeupselfie that you were
proud of showing to the world? I can't believe you just scrubbed your make-up
off, took a photo, and published it within 10 seconds. Did you?"[1]

In the poll results, 23% said "at least 3 times" and 44% said they lost count.
The "ideal" life that everyone is portraying is a joke and a fraud to make
themselves feel better because everyone else looks so good because they're
making themselves feel better. It's effectively an arms race. (no pun
intended)

[1] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10713599/No-
mak...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10713599/No-make-up-
selfies-How-many-times-did-you-take-your-no-make-up-selfie-before-you-
ACTUALLY-posted-it.html)

~~~
toomuchtodo
Most social apps (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat) thrive off of narcissism and
the need for validation. Its a terribly large social experiment in progress.

------
sbuccini
At Stanford, this is known as the "duck syndrome." Ducks appear to glide
easily on the water, but beneath the surface they are paddling like mad.

In a similar way, students may appear to be happy and content when chatting
with them in person, but are actually dealing with larger issues that they
don't show.

~~~
DanBC
That's in the article:

> While the appellation is unique to Penn, the behavior is not. In 2003, Duke
> jolted academe with a report describing how its female students felt
> pressure to be “effortlessly perfect”: smart, accomplished, fit, beautiful
> and popular, all without visible effort. At Stanford, it’s called the Duck
> Syndrome. A duck appears to glide calmly across the water, while beneath the
> surface it frantically, relentlessly paddles.

------
aaron695
> Nationally, the suicide rate among 15- to 24-year-olds has increased
> modestly but steadily since 2007: from 9.6 deaths per 100,000 to 11.1, in
> 2013 (the latest year available from the Centers for Disease Control and
> Prevention).

I possibly missed it but how does that compare to on campus? the supposed
point of the article.

~~~
mc32
Also, one alternative is people not striving to succeed and then being
depressed about not having achieved anything, relatively. Or perhaps there is
a middle where everyone is happy being average like everyone else.

That said, if there is an uptick in this symptom of society at large, society
should try to figure out the cause and then decide if this is a deal we're
willing to make.

------
superuser2
I'm not a fan of this trend of presuming causes for suicides. The brain is an
incredibly complex system with many failure modes, and some of them are just
_weird_. You don't necessarily posses the hardware to begin to comprehend what
a particular suicide victim experienced, which is not to say you shouldn't
try, but humility is appropriate.

People project their pet social critiques onto the youth suicide rate. I've
heard everything from high-stakes testing to too much Instagram to the rise of
atheism to too little punishment. In the context of statistics this might be
an appropriate national conversation. In the context of a specific person,
speculation on a cause beyond what they've written is patronizing at best.

The only generalization I'm willing to make about a suicide is that the
subjective experience of being inside the person's head was excruciatingly
painful for too long. This kind of pain is probably not a scalar quantity
across individuals, so ideas of normal and abnormal tolerance for it may not
even make sense. Perception of time is also subjective, so don't think you can
judge "too long" either. There is probably a 16-year-old who has struggled for
3 years with an experience that would have killed you in a week, just as
someone has probably killed themselves to escape pain you would have
considered trivial.

There may not _be_ a truthy-sounding causal story for the origin of that pain,
even for its victim. If they had one, even wrote it down, it might have been
an explanation they latched on to but not the root cause, which may be as
complex as the sum total of a lifetime of experiences or as banal as
chemistry.

I hope that we as a culture can show some respect for the dead and the
complexity of their experiences, and stop using them as soapboxes for our
ideas of what's wrong with kids these days.

------
Animats
From the article: _" Several times in high school she had found herself
attracted to other girls, but believing her parents and church did not fully
accept homosexuality, she had pushed aside those feelings."_

This reads more like a gay issue than a school pressure issue. The author of
the article may have an agenda - by the same author, "A University Recognizes
a Third Gender: Neutral", "A Gender-Neutral Glossary", and "Writing Around
Gender".[1]

The Huffington Post has an article about suicides at MIT: "It's not good
enough to be "very good" or God forbid, just "good." Excellence has become the
new average. What a burden for kids, especially those whose boats don't rise
with the tide of increased expectations and higher and higher standards."[2]

Here in Silicon Valley, there are now suicide-watch guards at the three
railroad crossings near Palo Alto's Paly and Gunn high schools. Infrared
cameras are being installed.[3]

[1]
[http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s...](http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/julie_scelfo/index.html)

[2] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerome-schultz/lowering-the-
pr...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerome-schultz/lowering-the-pressure-in-
_b_6889466.html)

[3] [http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2015/09/02/caltrain-
begin...](http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2015/09/02/caltrain-begins-
improvements-aimed-at-preventing-deaths-by-suicides)

~~~
untog
_The author of the article may have an agenda_

Or maybe they are a journalist with a beat. Not saying that's definitely the
case here, but someone writing on the same topic repeatedly is hardly rare -
it's usually because it's something they've researched deeply and are
knowledgeable in.

~~~
goldfeld
Programmers have passion but journalists have agendas!

~~~
xienze
Programmers don't have the same ability to influence many people with their
work.

~~~
untog
Oh, but they do. What algorithm organises your Facebook feed? What content
does it prioritise?

------
cafard
Those years can be hard, with or without social media, etc. My wife knew in
college a number of young women who committed suicide over men; this was well
before even email was generally available. For that matter, about 90 years ago
a college president wrote that a wave of suicides among college men was due to
"too much Mencken", causing a memorable reply from H.L. Mencken.

------
DanBC
We need to talk about suicide but articles like this possibly raise risk. The
detailed description of a person and her reasons; mention of methods; mention
of locations; etc all are possibly harmful.

That leading photo is of an exhibition that IMO would significantly increase
risk.

The author makes no mention of gender differences in rates of completed
suicide (far more common in males). (And it's not just a difference in
methods).

Most of the article is speculation - sometimes by people working in suicide
prevention but still speculation. It would be nice to see more rigorous
research being used.

There are some good bits about the article: there's a message of hope.

But not including the contact details of suicide prevention services in an
article like this is dangerous and irresponsible.

~~~
hkmurakami
Case in point: "The Complete Manual of Suicide" (Kanzen Jisatsu Manual --
完全自殺マニュアル) which many people in Japan have used to great effect.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complete_Manual_of_Suicide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complete_Manual_of_Suicide)

[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2059673.Kanzen_Jisatsu_Ma...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2059673.Kanzen_Jisatsu_Manyuaru_The_Complete_Suicide_Manual)

------
a3voices
I wonder how much of this stress is caused by technological advances. I bet
Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, etc. is making these poor kids neurotic.

~~~
roymurdock
The article calls this out pretty explicitly:

 _In the era of social media, such comparisons take place on a screen with
carefully curated depictions that don’t provide the full picture. Mobile
devices escalate the comparisons from occasional to nearly constant...Madison
Holleran’s suicide provided what might be the ultimate contrast between a
shiny Instagram feed and interior darkness. Ms. Holleran posted images that
show her smiling, dappled in sunshine or kicking back at a party. But
according to her older sister, Ashley, Madison judged her social life as
inferior to what she saw in the online posts of her high school friends. An
hour before she killed herself, she posted a dreamy final photo of white
holiday lights twinkling in the trees of Rittenhouse Square._

I'm 22 (just graduated) and I got rid of my Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat
about a year ago. It feels fantastic. I do miss messenger sometimes, but the
benefit of not having my time/energy sucked out by Facebook far outweighs
messenger's convenience.

~~~
seiji
_Madison judged her social life as inferior to what she saw in the online
posts of her high school friends._

I'm 32 and still feel shitty about life compared against everybody else
posting their amazingly perfect success-success-success lives online.

Computers used to be the domain of nerds, then they became _too_ common and
now it's a permanent social status ranking high school game you never get to
exit and can't even completely opt out of either.

Maybe we could make a viral game like the ice bucket challenge except this
challenge is to _not_ post online when something amazing happens in your life.
Just be quiet and know you got away with something.

~~~
rjbwork
How can one not completely opt out? I'm completely opted out of it all. All
I've got left is a facebook profile I haven't updated in over 5 years.

~~~
bjwbell
I mostly opted out. I became much happier when I stopped looking at other
people's feeds & instead only email/text to keep in contact.

