[HN Gopher] Child suicides in Japan hit record high
___________________________________________________________________
Child suicides in Japan hit record high
Author : Markoff
Score : 214 points
Date : 2021-10-14 08:52 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www3.nhk.or.jp)
(TXT) w3m dump (www3.nhk.or.jp)
| taurath wrote:
| People are really grasping for meaning and a sense of belonging
| nowadays in this phase of global capitalism. We could do so much
| better at helping people find a calling rather than hoping
| capitalist business owners provide them.
| djmips wrote:
| I don't know if I've ever seen a sadder headline...
| skhr0680 wrote:
| It's sad but I'm not surprised. Senior high school is widely
| viewed as the best years of ones life in Japan, and kids who
| started in 2020 have had to live with senior high school (minus
| the fun parts) for 1.5/3 years.
| new299 wrote:
| The best numbers I could find for the US were these:
|
| https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide
|
| Which looks like 5 per 100000 for 10 to 14 year olds?
|
| The Japanese population in this age range is ~5M:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan
|
| So at the US rate we'd except ~250 suicides in Japan if the rate
| was the same as the US.
|
| Over the 12 to 15 range in Japan the article states there were
| 103 suicides.
|
| The rates seem roughly comparable therefore?
|
| It terrible that this is increasing, but it would be interesting
| to understand if this is unique to Japan or not.
| [deleted]
| Tade0 wrote:
| > It terrible that this is increasing, but it would be
| interesting to understand if this is unique to Japan or not.
|
| Unfortunately not. The suicide capital of the world (including
| teenagers) is currently South Korea:
|
| http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20190501000216
|
| which has the highest suicide rate among countries with a
| population of more than 5mln:
|
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/suicide-r...
| [deleted]
| murph-almighty wrote:
| Maybe a total coincidence that I read this morbid news on
| South Korea while I've started watching Squid Game, but
| watching a show that's effectively an allegory of capitalist
| decline in South Korea makes this news not surprising.
| staysafeanon wrote:
| >capitalist decline in South Korea makes this news not
| surprising.
|
| South Korea is on a capitalist upswing, not decline. People
| forget that South Korea was worse off than most of Africa
| after the Korean War. Capitalism and democracy is what
| saved them.
|
| Look at their brother to the North if you want to see a
| real decline.
| novok wrote:
| There is a big cultural meme in Korea about how life is
| extremely competitive & hard compared to what it should
| be. I definitely saw what was being referred to about
| Korea in squid game.
| taurath wrote:
| Perhaps, though you would be wrong about the state of
| things - Korea had a fairly big manufacturing base when
| taken over by Japan, so in a way they had more
| infrastructure already built that just needed to be
| repaired or upgraded.
|
| Source:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_under_Japanese_rule
|
| "Capitalism" being called as a reason for success sort of
| also implies that there is something strong and special
| about Koreans in that they can make it work, where there
| are countless other examples of capitalistic societies
| leading to massive corruption - and indeed Korea has
| massive megacorps owned by just a few families that are
| de facto governments in themselves.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| > South Korea is on a capitalist upswing, not decline.
|
| Yes, that's exactly what PP posits as the _cause_ of
| these suicides.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| things can be good and bad for different reasons at the
| same time
| [deleted]
| canadianfella wrote:
| What are you talking about?
| wyager wrote:
| Elite Overproduction is in full swing in South Korea. The
| costs of entering the upper class are increasing and the
| consequences of failing to enter it are getting worse. People
| are having almost no children because the costs are so high
| and the experience of being a child is so brutal (16+ hours
| of schooling a day is common).
|
| I believe it was Malcom Kyeyune who joked that if North Korea
| nuked Seoul, it would be the best thing to ever happen to
| young people in South Korea.
|
| The birth rate in South Korea is like 1/4th the birth rate of
| North Korea.
| watwut wrote:
| Isn't that issue mostly raising inequality rather then
| elite overproduction?
| 0des wrote:
| > The rates seem roughly comparable therefore?
|
| Is this asking a question?
|
| Edit: Today I learned the best course for a non native speaker
| is to not ask questions.
| SirHound wrote:
| It's an open offer for someone who understands better to
| clarify or confirm incase OP has missed something from their
| calculations.
| 0des wrote:
| It's confusing when people end what appears to be a
| declarative statement with a question mark, not sure why
| I'd get in trouble for asking.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| I used this process, and came up with the numbers, 140
| and 250, and they are kind of close in my opinion, though
| I'm not 100% sure. What do you think?
|
| shortened, becomes:
|
| I used this process, and came up with these numbers, 140
| and 250, and they are kind of close?
|
| Why you got in trouble: people thought you were
| criticizing the original comment for hiding a statement
| to look like a question. (A common underhanded tactic to
| do and a common criticism - "was that a question?".)
| Hoppetosse wrote:
| It can also be an artifact of a foreign language. The
| french interrogatory form can be the same as the
| declarative. It seems likely in this case, their use of
| "therefore" is equivalent to the fench "alors" which is
| often employed to "interrogate a declaration"
| ivanbakel wrote:
| >not sure why I'd get in trouble for asking.
|
| Both of your comments can be construed as linguistic
| pedantry. Particularly, saying "it's confusing" rather
| than e.g. "I find it confusing" is pretty prescriptive -
| and it just sounds like you're doubling down on your
| first comment.
|
| If you want to ask a question about a feature of
| language, it helps to add the context that you're
| unfamiliar with the language itself. Otherwise, most
| readers will assume that you're attempting to correct the
| user you're replying to. Commenting on people's use of
| language is considered quite rude in most internet
| communities - not least because of the number of ESL
| users.
| someotherperson wrote:
| It's the written equivalent of uptalk[0], I wouldn't say
| it is uncommon at all. It would only really be confusing
| the first time you come across it -- like most things.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal
| stan_rogers wrote:
| Not without an ellipsis it's not.
| SirHound wrote:
| You're not in trouble?
| some0x80070005 wrote:
| Generally speaking, this situation does not seem
| confusing for many native speakers. The question mark
| indicates uncertainty about the statement instead of
| asking "<Statement>. Can anyone refute this or provide
| insight to the original significance?". In this case, the
| author drew a conclusion about other data which seems to
| make the original article seem less important or less
| significant, but instead of declaring it as a fact
| outright, the author is choosing to mark it with
| uncertainty instead which will invite a discussion if
| they are wrong on some aspect of it.
| weberer wrote:
| I'm a native English speaker and this trend confuses me
| pretty often. It's not always clear whether the person:
|
| 1. is sincerely asking a question
|
| 2. accidentally hit they question mark key instead of the
| period
|
| 3. is mimicking the valley girl inflection
|
| It's not that much of a problem here, but it's much more
| pronounced in places where people rarely use complete
| sentences to begin with. Such as chat rooms, etc.
| reddit_clone wrote:
| > is mimicking the valley girl inflection
|
| :-) I was thinking this but couldn't find the right
| phrase.
|
| It could also be expressing uncertainty. You want to make
| an assertion but not 100% sure you are right. A question
| mark at the end expresses some self doubt and leaves it
| open to correction. I use '?' that way quite often.
| 0des wrote:
| > this situation does not seem confusing for many native
| speakers
|
| English was not my first language, and this peculiar
| phrasing confused me. Asking for clarity seems like a
| natural thing to do in this situation.
| eof wrote:
| Everything about this exchange seems fine to me. You
| asked a clarifying question about an "advanced" usage of
| the question mark, and you were answered with a neutral
| description of what's going on.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| It is, but it came of as criticism to me, because using
| the question mark this way is quite common here on HN and
| elsewhere.
| 0des wrote:
| I apologize heartily for offending you, that is not my
| intent.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| You did not offend me(with the first post) and I did not
| downvote you. I just explained, why you received negative
| feedback - basically missunderstanding. But talking about
| missunderstanding: I understand your last comment as
| snarky, unwarranted sarcasm. This I would downvote.
| necovek wrote:
| FWIW, does not read sarcastic from the sidelines.
|
| And as mentioned elsewhere, the entire thread seems like
| a good natured discussion: perhaps it felt different
| without the original "edit".
| Freak_NL wrote:
| It seems to be a rather recent phenomenon here on HN
| (broadly speaking) and for me it falls pretty much in the
| same category as other overly familiar and rude language
| patterns such as 'AF' (short for 'as fuck') or 'tho',
| 'cuz', or 'w/' instead of 'though', 'because', or 'with'.
|
| There is a rudeness in making it one of these faux-
| questions filled with implications instead of clearly
| stating what it is you want to say.
| DanTheManPR wrote:
| This practice (adding a ? to a declarative sentence) is
| very informal, and so you wouldn't see it used in
| published English language media, so I'm not surprised
| that you may never have encountered it. It's used as a
| shorthand method of inviting clarification when the
| author is unsure of the veracity of the claim.
|
| This sub-thread reminds me that there are many informal
| rules in languages that are rarely taught, and which can
| trip up non-native speakers. Informal shorthands, idioms,
| slang, etc.
| handrous wrote:
| It's like a written form of Uptalk.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal
| ashtonkem wrote:
| In spoken English, this would be expressed by ending the
| sentence with an exaggerated pitch change for the question
| and a pause; it's a way to indicate uncertainty and give
| someone else an opportunity to affirm or provide a contrary
| opinion without conflict.
|
| Rendering it in written English is not correct per formal
| rules, you'd probably never see this in an English textbook,
| but it's a semi-common colloquialism in forums like these.
| pier25 wrote:
| Putting a question mark at the end like this imitates the
| change of intonation when speaking with uncertainty.
|
| Eg:
|
| I think I left the phone in my car.
|
| Vs
|
| I think I left the phone in my car?
|
| While technically incorrect in written English, this is very
| common in casual speaking and has found its way into casual
| writing.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Last time I looked into it, Japan's suicide numbers were not as
| high as I'd been primed to expect. Japans suicide rate is less
| than America's (14.5 vs 12.2 per 100k), and roughly equivalent
| to Sweden 12.4) and Norway (11.8). Still relatively elevated
| for OECD countries, but Japan's reputation as an extremely high
| suicide rate country appears to be unearned. Countries like
| South Korea (21.2), Russia (21.6), Lithuania (20.2), and
| Ukraine (17.7) should generally get more attention on this
| matter than Japan does.
| noobermin wrote:
| Like everything, including the supposed "virginity crisis,"
| it's primed by the media that reaches western eyes that
| somehow people here think Japan is all an edgy anime.
| neaden wrote:
| This could be the difference between suicidality and
| completion of suicide. Firearms are linked to an increase of
| completed suicides but not attempts, which could explain the
| US's higher rate.
| noobermin wrote:
| Sure but it doesn't explain South Korea
| naasking wrote:
| Also, Japan has a much larger aging population, so their
| cultural threshold for what's an "acceptable" suicide rate
| among the young could be much lower.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Access to firearms has certainly been shown to affect
| suicide rates, especially among men, given how surprisingly
| impulsive suicides are. But it's not sufficient, given that
| there are other countries with higher suicide rates and
| fewer firearms.
|
| Also, while America has a lot of guns, there's also a lot
| of variance. The stats are a bit hard to compute, but there
| appear to be some states in the US that have fewer firearms
| per capita than some other countries, notably Switzerland,
| Canada, and Finland.
|
| It's also worth pointing out that suicide by firearm is
| largely a male thing. In the United States women attempt
| suicide at 3x the rate that men do, but they tend to die
| because of that at a much lower rate (22.4 for men, 6.8 for
| women). The rate of completed female suicides is currently
| rising faster for women than men, worryingly.
|
| It's complicated, basically.
|
| And as always discussing suicide creates a contagion risk.
| If you're experiencing suicidal thoughts, please know that
| help is available at the national suicide prevention
| hotline, 800-273-8255.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > Access to firearms has certainly been shown to affect
| suicide rates, especially among men, given how
| surprisingly impulsive suicides are. But it's not
| sufficient, given that there are other countries with
| higher suicide rates and fewer firearms.
|
| For reference, nine of the top ten nations for suicide of
| banned civilian gun ownership. All of the top 40 nations
| make it difficult. USA is usually around #50 or so.
|
| It is complicated, and even statements like _"access to
| firearms has been shown to affect suicide rates"_ are
| could be misleading because you could be putting the cart
| before the horse, if someone has chosen to kill
| themselves, it reasons they will chose a fast /painless,
| and effective tool.
| DanBC wrote:
| > It is complicated, and even statements like "access to
| firearms has been shown to affect suicide rates" are
| could be misleading because you could be putting the cart
| before the horse, if someone has chosen to kill
| themselves, it reasons they will chose a fast/painless,
| and effective tool.
|
| But choice of method does affect rate of death, so it's
| correct to say that increased access to any method that's
| commonly used affects the rate of death. Decreasing
| access to that method is valid if its one of the measures
| taken to reduce suicide rates.
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| The unique thing about guns is that they're generally
| more effective at suicide than the other chosen methods.
| It's less about the speed of access people are
| mentioning, but more that when someone uses a gun to
| commit suicide it's more likely to work than other
| methods.
|
| So it's less that guns increase the rate of suicide, and
| more that they increase the suicide rate to suicide
| attempt ratio due to their efficacy. Which, similar to
| the point you're making, means America probably has less
| suicide attempts to begin with than its suicide rate
| would indicate relative to other countries.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Less painful in my opinion would be a helium tank from a
| childrens party store and a gas mask from a hardware
| store. Syncope -> Mortality. Probably closer to
| Kevorkian's assisted method but more involved.
| WalterSear wrote:
| They no longer put pure helium in those tanks for this
| reason.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Ah yes, it appears that has fallen in favor of nitrogen.
| [1] I never would have imagined nitrogen would do the
| same thing. Apparently there are a variety of inert
| gasses that have the same effect. [2]
|
| [1] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29684846/
|
| [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inert_gas_asphyxiatio
| n#Suicide
| wahern wrote:
| The autonomic system responds not to lack of oxygen, but
| to a rise in carbon dioxide levels. (More specifically I
| think it has something to do with pH, which decreases as
| carbon dioxide increases.) So as long as you can expire
| carbon dioxide, you'll pass out without any sensation of
| asphyxiation or struggle. You still need to inhale to
| exhale, though, and the inhaled air needs to have a
| sufficiently low partial pressure of carbon dioxide.
| [deleted]
| officeplant wrote:
| One of my friends borrowed nitrogen and a mask from work
| to pull it off. It's the most ideal way to go out from
| what I understand.
|
| On the shittiest days I see the lines of nitrogen tanks
| we use at work for Gas Detector calibration and remember
| my old buddy.
| robocat wrote:
| > given how surprisingly impulsive suicides are
|
| Do you have a reason to imply most suicides are
| impulsive? I don't think the media implies that (and my
| experience in New Zealand is they are not impulsive -
| usually following a long period of depression and maybe
| stated intent or attempts).
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| A long history of depression and some level of intent
| doesn't mean an attempt wasn't impulsive. That's why the
| question of whether someone has a specific plan is used
| to assess risk: there's a huge difference between passive
| suicidal thoughts and active suicide plans. This page
| contains a few studies on how long people think about it
| before making an attempt -
| https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-
| matter/durat...
| bazooka_penguin wrote:
| Japan has been framed as weird and backwards since the 80s
| and 90s when the US took issue with their rising economy and
| encroachment on western industries
| mabub24 wrote:
| Even beyond attending school during Covid-19, which by itself has
| been disruptive and challenging, I've heard from a number of
| friends who emigrated from Japan that the Japanese school
| experience can be pretty dismal.
|
| I also think some people are too quick to disregard the degree to
| which young people pick up on the quality of life and lifestyle
| of their parents and adults. The salaryman/woman lifestyle, the
| extremely long working hours, and the culture of extreme
| deference to work hierarchies, can be soul destroying, _even for
| your children_.
| graynk wrote:
| Can I ask why is this on HN? How is this in any way related to
| tech?
| wirrbel wrote:
| The Poisson distribution was first described discussing the
| incidence of suicide in children in Prussia, if I recall
| correctly.
|
| On the main matter: Societies need to cater more and better for
| the interest of children. All too often all other concerns come
| first (and children are an after thought to the interest of
| parents, which also aren't entirely high up in the priority
| list).
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| Per-country data on suicides should be treated skeptically
| because most cultures have a strong aversion to suicide and
| listing cause of death as suicide.
|
| Many are classified as accidents and authorities are generally
| fine with this. Additionally, suicides are usually not reported
| by the media to prevent copycat suicides.
|
| What I'm saying is that the "actual rate" of suicides is probably
| higher, maybe by a lot, in many countries than the official rate.
| [deleted]
| wyager wrote:
| I've heard that Japan will classify murder-suicide deaths as
| suicide deaths, because their word for "suicide" actually has a
| slightly different denotation.
| gfody wrote:
| similarly how eskimos have a bunch of words for "snow", and
| new yorkers have a bunch of words for "pizza", japanese have
| a bunch of words for "suicide"
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Absolutely. Just to add to your examples of why soluicide is
| systematically under-reported in certain countries, in many
| Eastern Orthodox countries (Eastern Europe, Russia, Greece),
| suicide is considered a mortal sin and victims of suicide are
| denied burial in religious cemeteries (and denied normal
| religious burial rights) by the church.
| ed_balls wrote:
| > denied burial in religious cemeteries
|
| Same for Catholics and most of Christians, hence no suicide
| attacks.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| That hasn't been true since the 1960's, in the case of
| Catholics. https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-catholic-
| churchs-own-compl...
| ed_balls wrote:
| but the stigma is still there.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Pretty much all fatal single-car accidents are suicides, IIRC.
| Cops play nice with the grieving family so they can get their
| life insurance benefits.
| gfody wrote:
| are you counting unintentional like falling asleep behind the
| wheel?
| wahern wrote:
| In much (most? all?) of the United States, life insurance
| contracts generally cover suicide, except that individual
| policies will typically have 2-3 year exclusion period.
|
| My individual term life policy has a 2-year exclusion period,
| but otherwise covers suicide. I can't track down the precise
| reasons for this, whether its related to case law, state
| statutes, etc. Closest hit I found for California was
| Insurance Code SS 11066(h), but that's for policies issued by
| fraternal societies. (It probably echoes some other statute
| or case law.) There are endless Google hits from law and
| insurance web sites stating this general fact.
| rscnt wrote:
| Do you have sources for this? Here in El Salvador we have
| highways without lamps, streets that drivers treat as
| highways, crosswalk where you cannot longer see the painting.
|
| I guess you're referring to the U.S., right?
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| That's completely false. Among many other factors, about 50%
| of single-car crashes involve passengers, which would imply a
| disturbingly high number of murder-suicides.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| I think maybe OP meant single passenger car accident
| [deleted]
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Even if the absolute number is wrong (which it isn't,
| necessarily), the relative trend is dramatically upward, and
| the biases you describe wouldn't appear to account for such a
| trend.
|
| > The results show a record-high 415 children killed themselves
| in the year through March. That's up nearly 100 from the
| previous school year.
|
| I believe this is mirrored in other countries. The pandemic
| really hasn't been great for a lot of middle/high school kids.
|
| Also: please be mindful that generally if some "obvious fault"
| occurs to you, it probably occurs to the people for whom this
| is their professional area of expertise or even life's work,
| their work has likely been reviewed by a number of their peers,
| etc. _Internet discussion forum commenters are highly unlikely
| to be the first person to think of some flaw in their work._
|
| I'm not saying they always will do said correction, but that if
| you're going to be skeptical, check to see if the correction
| was made instead of just dismissing or discounting the data,
| and be especially careful about your personal biases.
|
| Note that such corrections might only get a passing mention
| because corrections for under-reporting is so common in
| epidemology.
| yyy888sss wrote:
| Strongly agree. Recently an important religious leader in my
| town died, and the police stated it was accident though they
| had clear evidence it was suicide because they knew it would
| distress the public less.
| lemoncookiechip wrote:
| Makes you think that COVID "helped" expose a lot of what was
| already wrong with our society (globally) over the past 2 years.
|
| In this case (underage suicide) specifically, some factors would
| be depression and domestic violence due to mandated isolation.
|
| Forcing abusive parents to spend time with their children, and
| having children who are depressed or were on the verge of
| depression, enter a state of desperation that could lead to
| suicide rates spiking.
|
| A depressive topic in itself.
|
| PS: Should note that these are just two of the most likely
| reasons for the increase in children suicide, but not the only.
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| This just seems like a euphemistic way of saying that lockdowns
| made a lot of bad problems worse. When they were implemented
| there were plenty of voices warning at the time that they would
| cause children to suffer more abuse, depression, and suicide.
| frockington1 wrote:
| Depression, suicide, drug abuse, supply shortages, inflation,
| people not returning to the workforce. A year ago you would
| have been cancelled for daring to voice negative consequences
| to lockdowns
| umanwizard wrote:
| Yep, the prevailing narrative was "all these negative
| effects are bad, but at least they're not death!" which
| totally ignores the probabilistic nature of the set of
| outcomes. An x% chance of something bad happening to you
| might indeed be worse than a y% chance of death, depending
| on the values of x and y -- but this sort of analysis was
| (and still is) totally missing from mainstream acceptable
| discussion of our response to Covid.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| My very firm belief is that many "official experts" have
| at least 4 big problems/weaknesses when it comes to
| making decisions and communicating with the public.
|
| * They're trying to optimize for 2 (sometimes)
| contradictory problems: getting the right answer AND
| _maintaining their job /power_. A random bloke on the
| Internet just is trying to optimize for 1 problem,
| getting the right answer: any other considerations like
| fielding off hungry young political competitors or
| maintaining corporate stock prices so you stay in their
| good graces aren't factors in the slightest to a random
| well-intentioned smart guy on the Internet.
|
| * They are very smart at their field of expertise, but
| they're specialists and not generalists. They are very
| bad at considering _second-order effects_ outside of
| their narrow field of expertise. Something like a
| lockdown in some city might indeed immediately save 1,000
| extra people from a Covid death. Any risk-benefit
| analysis and deeper consideration of that lockdown on
| other problems such as drug /alcohol abuse and overdose
| deaths, suicides and hopelessness and depression, obesity
| increases leading to many health problems and deaths
| later on, deaths caused by missed cancer screenings and
| other medical problems, loss of freedom, or its economic
| impact and long-term impact on society isn't even a
| consideration by officialdom. Maybe 1,000 people are
| saved to kill 2,000 and cause even further societal
| problems. Yet those 1,000 deaths saved would be
| characterized as a win and proof that lockdowns work
| because no other factors can be considered. I'd strongly
| argue that a smart engineer or CEO (professions who are
| trained to considering multiple factors and tradeoffs in
| complex decision-making) would be better suited to make
| these kinds of complex societal decisions than a
| scientist focused on a narrow field.
|
| * They're frighteningly bad at normal _risk-management
| calculations_. One could make a very reasonable argument
| that a normal fit 0 to 40 year old shouldn 't get a new
| vaccine which has no long-term test data for an illness
| that statistically has a very low risk for them: and many
| people are reasonably making that risk-management
| calculation. Yet many experts are rushing into advocating
| vaccines even for children despite no long-term test
| data. The risk management calculation for a vaccine in
| this circumstance is completely different for the old and
| young, yet no consideration of this is allowed.
|
| * Even when they sometimes get things right, most of what
| what even well-informed members of the public hear from
| the experts is _filtered through the media_.
| Unfortunately, outside of a handful of decent journalists
| who are reasonably smart and understand nuance (and who
| are mostly shunned from mainstream outlets) there is no
| collection of stupider people on the planet to try and
| analyze complex subjects or ask scientists real
| questions.
| DanBC wrote:
| > a normal fit 0 to 40 year old shouldn't get a new
| vaccine which has no long-term test data for an illness
| that statistically has a very low risk for them:
|
| Covid is not low risk for 35-40 year olds. Someone age 25
| with both vaccination doses is at higher risk of death
| than an unvaccinated 12 year old. How you've managed to
| extrapolate from this to "low risk to people up to age
| 40" is baffling, especially when you spend the rest of
| your post talking about how bad people are at
| understanding data.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > Covid is not low risk for 35-40 year olds.
|
| What threshold are you using to define "low risk" ?
| frockington1 wrote:
| You can find data here:
| https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-by-
| Sex...
|
| In my opinion, just about everyone is low risk but there
| is jump in numbers once the 35-40 age group is added
| logicalmonster wrote:
| This comment is not to argue with your interpretation of
| the data. We've both made up our minds, fair enough. The
| purpose here is point out the risk-management calculation
| involved.
|
| Science qua science can give humans all kinds of (nearly)
| objective information about viruses and vaccines.
|
| A risk-management calculation is not science: that kind
| of decision comes down to factors such as one's own risk
| tolerance and projection of the risks involved and many
| other subjective factors, including trust. For a
| reasonably well-informed Covid vaccine decision, you have
| to weigh factors such as your personal risk from Covid
| and compare that to somewhat known short term potential
| vaccine injuries/side-effects, and unknown long-term
| vaccine issues.
|
| Whether you or I personally think a vaccine is a good or
| bad thing for a healthy ~40 year old to take is
| irrelevant. If you feel safer with it, you are certainly
| free to take it. The point I'd like to make is that many
| 40 year olds can reasonably look at Covid death rates for
| their age group, and compare it to the known short term
| problems, as well as weigh the likelihood of long-term
| issues, and come to a sane and reasonable decision to not
| want to rush and take it.
|
| For me, my big issue with the vaccines is fertility. We
| found out after a few years that Thalidomide caused
| birth-defects, as just one example in the history of
| medicine. Personally speaking, I think rushing to mass-
| inject all children with this (as some people want) is
| the worst risk-management decision in the history of
| humanity.
| gamacodre wrote:
| > A random bloke on the Internet just is trying to
| optimize for 1 problem, getting the right answer
|
| Most random folks on the internet seem to be optimizing
| for dopamine hits, not correct answers. Anyone with an
| audience is optimizing for subscription uptake, which
| seems to reliably lead in the opposite direction from
| correct answers.
|
| > Stuff about "mainstream [media] outlets" shunning all
| "decent journalists"
|
| This kind of silliness does nothing but weaken the rest
| of your arguments, IMO.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| Your comment about most people online optimizing for
| something like a hit of dopamine is correct. However,
| just FYI, I clarified later in that same section that my
| comment was referring to "well-intentioned" people.
| Obviously that's a bit subjective and harder to
| delineate, but makes an important distinction.
|
| And just FYI, I never said "all" journalists, I was only
| referring to most, a not altogether uncommon opinion.
| tremon wrote:
| I don't think I have seen many mainstream acceptable
| discussions about the Covid response -- most were nothing
| but emotive monologues from this or that person, and two
| or three simultaneous monologues do not make an
| acceptable discussion.
|
| Also, I don't think it would have been useful to talk
| about Covid response policy using figures like "X% chance
| of death!", since it sounds like a weather forecast and
| we can't even get those right one day in advance, let
| alone when determining policy for the entire year. And
| you can't conclude from absence of public discussion that
| these figures or expectations weren't discussed
| privately.
|
| Yes, it would have been better for the policymakers to
| voice their reservations and motivations in public, but
| I'm not willing to blame the politicians for not doing
| that. In order to have a nuanced political discussion,
| all parties need to play ball. It is counterproductive
| for a politician to take a well-argued public position
| when the media only wants ten-second soundbites and
| actively looks ways to embarrass and undermine said
| politician, and when the public isn't remotely interested
| in a nuanced position because the tribe has already
| spoken.
|
| To me, the Covid response in the West highlights a
| failure of democracy. That is not the same as a failure
| of politics, trying to pin all blame for the failure of
| democracy on the current politicians is just another
| symptom of the underlying problem. Instead, it is a
| failure of society at large. It seems we are no longer
| willing and/or capable to have an honest and open debate
| about matters of public policy, and that is a sad
| situation. I'm not even going to try and hint at the wide
| array of causes and consequences that led us to this
| point, just expressing dismay that I don't see the
| situation improving for the better any time soon.
| zz865 wrote:
| The worst thing is that children aren't at risk of covid,
| their parents aren't much either. The lockdowns are all to
| protect the boomers.
| Markoff wrote:
| the worst thing these kids are much more likely to die from
| suicide than from COVID, yet you see whole COVID theatre to
| protect them, but nothing to stop suicides
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Yet I'm still seeing schools strap masks on elementary
| students and all other sorts of abusive trends that will
| harm their development. The worst thing is that people
| warned about the dangers of isolating these kids from
| school, their friends, and berating them with
| sensationalist media causing their anxiety levels to go off
| the charts.
|
| This is 100% a case of the pandemic response being worse
| than the disease. Risks from COVID for kids is minimal.
| What really bothers me is that people who warned of this
| were berated for not following "the science", censored and
| labeled as someone who didn't care about COVID deaths. Imo
| schools should have never closed.
|
| Unfortunately, I think there will be a lot of fallout from
| the poor response in years to come.
| watwut wrote:
| The kids got used to masks ... and that is it. They are
| "strapped" as much as on adults meaning like wearing a
| scarf or shirt.
| throw8932894 wrote:
| Helped? If you isolate kid from its friends for 18 months and
| imprison it in small room, it will become suicidal. There is no
| need for abusive parents. Lockdowns themselfs are evil!
| dartharva wrote:
| Shitposting about child suicides now? Very mature.
| watwut wrote:
| Is it necessary to constantly lie about what kind of
| lockdowns various countries had?
| elcamino44 wrote:
| It's probably worth noting that Japan hasn't had that kind of
| lockdown. Schools, after school activities, etc for most part
| have continued throughout the pandemic.
| 0des wrote:
| When you say "for the most part", what do you mean?
| elcamino44 wrote:
| There was a period of extended school holidays last year
| due to the pandemic. Also some schools did suspend after
| school care and extracurricular activities during the
| states of emergency. The details probably vary widely
| across the country and no doubt people have been
| impacted, but remote schooling hasn't really been a thing
| (as far as I know).
| 0des wrote:
| Thank you for the reply and clarification. I think I
| understand what is being said. Initially, I parsed the
| statement to mean that only a small fraction of schools
| closed.
| Markoff wrote:
| that's not what article says: "Also, a record high of over
| 190,000 students of elementary and junior high schools
| stopped attending."
| mbg721 wrote:
| So is COVID a health crisis, or just a springboard to force
| societal change? This is why there's so much chaos and
| distrust.
| EricE wrote:
| The real crime? Lockdowns didn't change a darned thing - I wish
| I could say I'm amazed the press doesn't talk about Sweden at
| all; sadly at this point I expect them to be biased and
| interested at protecting the current political narrative more
| than actually doing their jobs.
|
| Context: https://fee.org/articles/sweden-s-top-infectious-
| disease-exp...
| somehowlinux wrote:
| Your article is too old.
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-covid-no-lockdown-
| str...
| someonehere wrote:
| Could have sworn I read an article a few months ago that suicide
| rates amongst Gen Z was increasing because of Covid lockdowns and
| social media causing depression/loneliness.
|
| I'm not Gen Z nor are my friends, but they sometimes make me feel
| like they fall into this bucket of "should I check on them more
| often?" for the two items I laid out above.
|
| Deep down I'm blaming social media for the increase in suicide
| amongst younger kids. It's a pony show to them and they all want
| to outdo each other.
|
| I went to a pumpkin patch over the weekend and two late teen
| girls spent an hour or so trying to get the best photos holding
| sunflowers. The place I was at let you pick your own sunflowers.
| These two girls were dressed up and proceeded to set up a camera
| stand for one of their cell phones that had a ring light around
| it. They spent that time trying to get the best photo to post to
| their IG pages and TikTok.
|
| I get it that maybe they want to work on photography, but they
| spent way more effort and time than they should have when they
| were debating what to post to IG and TikTok.
|
| ::shrug::
| [deleted]
| pwned_vnm_alx wrote:
| First thing's first, what I've typed below is all based on
| first-hand experience, which might be not representative of the
| general population, but probably not that far from how these
| kids who kill themselves feel.
|
| First thing being that's being done wrong by parents is not
| treating their children like adults. The culmination of such
| treatment comes when the child gets separated from their
| parents, for example by going to college, and starts doing
| stuff like drinking/smoking/doing drugs/what else not because
| there are no parents present to punish him for it. Problem is
| that the child's subconscious thinks that the bad thing
| happening to him because of, for example, smoking, is not lung
| cancer and what not, but the punishment from his parents, so
| when they are not there to do the punishment, there is nothing
| wrong with doing all that stuff. In general, not letting
| children to make decisions and then deal with the consequences
| on their own leads to a population of people who are unable to
| think for themselves and who, while they have been told what's
| good or bad, haven't internalized that knowledge, as there is
| no opportunity to do so. You know, brain is kind of like a
| muscle, you have to train it when it's not really needed for it
| to be capable when it is. Actually Lois Rossman has quite a bit
| of parental advice that seems decent to me. There is also a
| great emotional disconnect between the parents and their
| children. At least the message I've got from my parents is that
| I shouldn't even bother talking to them as there is a lack of
| even basic effort to try to understand what I'm trying to tell
| them. Not trying to blame anyone here, feeling exhausted after
| a workday is a thing but maybe considering not having children
| if you're unable to treat them properly is also a thing.
| Honestly, I think dropping fertility is a good thing, as being
| more conscious about raising children is at least partially the
| reason, and that's a good thing.
|
| Then school inevitably comes. You honestly can't expect an
| underpaid overworked teacher to manage 30 children in a class,
| there is just too much stuff going on. But, because teachers
| are underpaid and overworked, it is a low prestige profession
| so if things don't change, the problem isn't going to solve
| itself. Then there is the learning process. Problem is, in
| school people don't learn, they are being schooled, and then
| there is some learning happening as a secondary on the side.
| Problem with learning while being schooled usually is that the
| pace is way different and there is a ton of unnecessary extras.
| Here are couple of examples:
|
| My English teacher would accept essays and other stuff that are
| typed, not written by hand, so what I would do is type them
| first, then just write down what I've typed. Why the extra
| step? Could be beneficial to go through the material another
| time and what not, but that could be done without spending the
| time and effort on writing it all down. At least in the
| professional environment, everything is being done digitally
| these days, so an all-digital workflow clearly works.
|
| Maths homework was probably worst of them all because of how
| much of it accomplished so little. It is very much repetition
| based, so a lot of the time the task you're given a set of 10
| identical problems, just with different inputs in them. That
| way by the fifth one, it takes a second to solve it and a
| minute to write down the solution, and there are 5 more like
| this ahead. That way, there is just muscle memory being built
| for solving that one problem, and exactly nothing is happening
| to the understanding of the subject, broader understanding of
| mathematics, creative thinking and problem solving, arguably
| very much needed skills in real life situations. In general,
| there are very little 'reality checks' that might indicate a
| problem a person has but himself is unaware of.
|
| Yeah, you better remember things by writing them down and all
| that, there are way better ways to do all this though. From
| personal experience, I've learned much more and much quicker
| from actually doing projects which required the knowledge I've
| needed. Knowledge retention is also much better and you
| actually have something material to show after the thing.
| Homework itself, in the form we have it now, is clearly
| damaging to relationships with children and their parents in
| general, as parents tend to care about things being done more
| than the well-being of the child. Results of that are genuinely
| horrific at times. Also there is that old text about a guy
| being unable to learn anything from a his professor's lecture,
| but understanding things immediately after reading part of a
| book that professor was referring to in his lecture. I'd say
| exchanging lectures for books and using professor's time for
| one on one discussion if there is a problem with understanding
| it's contents would be a much better use of everyone's time.
| What I mean by all this is that school is laborious without
| need, or at least feels so, damaging to relationships,
| concentrated on remembering stuff and not actually acquiring
| any useful skills and all that.
|
| Then there are people at school Honestly, would feel good if
| people weren't called circle-jerks in class by the professor,
| who is angry (more correct term would be salty) that no one is
| doing their grad project with him, which happened because he
| calls people circle-jerks in class. Would feel good if the
| professor actually paid attention to my project and didn't ask,
| what that circuit drawing has to do with it, while that exact
| drawing has been basically copied one to one into the overall
| project schematic. Both happened the other week. This
| assumption that teacher is this unquestionable all-knowing
| figure of authority is very ill-minded, and overall power
| dynamics are sometimes very problematic in academia. Though
| younger teachers are much, much better. Then there are your
| peers. Everyone is trying to one-up each other and being left
| alone to do your thing is not really an option, probably
| partially because of this built-up grudge, which happens for
| the reason I have described above. Interest circles are largely
| dissolved and at least in my experience, connecting to people
| without directly being introduced to them by someone is
| increasingly difficult. Platforms like tinder are considered,
| speaking in gen-z terms, 'cringe' (I'd say tinder is very
| exploitative with it's business model, but that's not the
| problem being addressed). Besides that, with all the extra-
| curriculums, homework and general attitude by parents to make
| their kids busy, there is not that much time to go outside and
| do things that you actually enjoy, or finding such things. So
| there is basically pressure at school from peers and teachers,
| pressure from parents at home and being constantly busy doing
| stuff which prevents you from thinking about your issues and
| potentially dealing with them. There is a big need for a place
| of some relief, and social media and the internet tend to fill
| that role.
|
| Well, if we're talking about social media here, there is a lot
| wrong with them also. I'd say these days there is a tendency
| for relationships to become parasocial, like 'I follow you on
| socials, you follow me on socials, but we don't actually talk
| to each other directly', so what would have been a two-way
| conversation between two people turns into two one-way ones.
| Then, exposure is spread very unevenly. Some people tend to get
| lots of attention and generally are popular, while some get
| none. This attention is of very varying quality, but getting it
| is still a message of acceptance by society, while getting none
| sends you a message that you are rejected. Texting people on
| social media out of the blue is generally a bad idea, because
| most people who do that are scammers, advertisers and people
| trying to get you to distribute drugs for money and so there is
| a tendency to treat strangers like you would treat someone
| spamming your email. This lack of attention basically sends
| people a message that they are not
| welcome/needed/wanted/desired in general. After some time in
| this circle the person starts to feel that it's not like
| they're in a bad situation, but that he himself is bad in some
| way. What they learn in the end is that there is no place for
| them in the society, and that other people don't care about
| their situation.
|
| The stuff above might be not factually correct but that's how
| troubled people experience things, from which they learn their
| apparent place in society.
|
| Returning to the girls taking pictures and posting them to
| IG/TikTok are probably fine just fine. Actual people who are in
| danger are not doing all this stuff and are basically invisible
| cause they just bottle up all the stress, and after some time
| they may be unable to deal with it because they never had a
| chance to learn to. There is also lack of prospects in life
| (ever increasing rent, working minimum wage for most of your
| life and other stuff) and what not. When things add up, we see
| statistics like this.
|
| Personally, I don't know, if generations prior had it easier or
| something, but I don't see these lowering any time soon, and
| actually was kinda wondering why haven't they gone up before
| EricE wrote:
| We have real evidence the lockdowns were totally unnecessary -
| see: https://fee.org/articles/sweden-s-top-infectious-disease-
| exp...
|
| And yet they still persist in many parts of the world.
| thrav wrote:
| To be fair to them, taking a great picture at a pumpkin patch
| is an American tradition. They often go on the Christmas Card.
| I was out there attaching a tripod to a fence and trying to get
| a good family portrait for my daughter's first year walking.
|
| If they spent the majority of the day outside, I feel like they
| have a leg up on many kids who never leave the house.
|
| I was trying to do similar things on MySpace when I was their
| age; Or spending similar amounts of time chained to my desk
| chatting with girls on AIM; Or more frequently losing 8 hours
| at a clip to playing an FPS.
|
| I had one staying in my house this weekend. They're not as bad
| as we think they are. Most of my concern sits with the way the
| parents behave.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| " Also, a record high of over 190,000 students of elementary and
| junior high schools stopped attending. "
|
| I feel like we are entering an era where different communities
| are experiencing a feast or famine in regards to how they are
| flourishing in the 'modern' world. At the zoomed out earth-scale,
| it seems to be a darwinian process of discovering which behaviors
| will exist in a century (because the only vote that matters for
| the future is how well your children are doing, birth rates,
| etc.).
| riskable wrote:
| > a darwinian process of discovering...
|
| There's certainly a darwinian process going on with COVID-19
| right now in regards to the vaccinated and willfully
| unvaccinated. What's _not_ darwinian is what went on during
| lockdowns where well-off parents could afford to let one stay
| at home to keep their kids from goofing off while attending
| online classes.
|
| I am unhopeful that society at large will use that as a lesson
| learned about providing resources to the less fortunate so
| their children can get the (online) education they need (even
| if it's just an adult keeping watch over a handful of kids). If
| we have another pandemic with lockdowns like this I highly
| suspect it will go pretty much exactly the same.
|
| To be fully prepared for pandemics of the future families will
| need the resources necessary to keep an adult at home to watch
| over the children going through online learning. Giving people
| remote work opportunities could be a great (societal)
| inoculation, as it were against such inequities.
| gxt wrote:
| someone should get funding to check links between antiperspirant
| use and depression/effects of dark thoughts.
|
| Anecdata: My mood improved gradually after I stopped using retail
| antiperspirants. At some point (aka 12-18 months later) I got
| pissed of never being dry and went back to the stuff. It took 12h
| before the dark thoughts were back, took 3 showers as soon as I
| noticed, and it still took 3 days for the effect to stop being
| noticeable. Since this event I strongly think antiperspirants
| should be studied to confirm this is not just my mind playing
| tricks on me.
| Beaver117 wrote:
| What do you use instead? Do you have hyperhidrosis?
| g354g43b43 wrote:
| The same pressure those kids are feeling to succeed is the same
| pressure American men in their 30's and 40's feel to succeed and
| are killing themselves in record numbers.
| irrational wrote:
| I'm always confused when "child" is used for teenagers. I always
| assume child means elementary school kids and it throws me when I
| realize they mean older kids.
| danschumann wrote:
| I can't say anything proactive about this situation.. but I can
| say things. Do you find that the emotional juice of a situation
| is more primary than the logic of a situation? Like, people feel
| something and then rationalize the logic to justify their
| feeling. I have found that using feelingswheel to get a firmer
| grasp on the specific emotional chords, connections and common
| "songs" I tend to play, etc, has increased my ability to identify
| and categorize emotions on a finer level. Categorization is the
| least thing that must be done in order to process hurt. The brain
| will try to process a situation until it understands it, and it
| can require using emotional intuition to identify the exact
| feeling, as if it were a chord played on a piano, where some
| notes are hit more than others. It's important to categorize
| granular feelings (like indignant is a form of anger whereby
| you're upset that something is unfair) (embarassment can be a sad
| hurt or a disapproving disgust) (some feelings lead to other
| feelings) (dismissive anger is repressed by default from feeling
| like anger) Some people don't have true feelings, because they
| will automatically convert one feeling to another. Instead of
| feeling angry sometimes and happy other times, they feel the
| liminal angry/happy feeling that feels like a mecurial wire of an
| emotion. For instance: if they're happy, they become angry that
| they aren't happy more often; if they're angry about something,
| they're glad that they finally have something to be mad about.
| skim_milk wrote:
| >people feel something and then rationalize the logic to
| justify their feeling
|
| Kind of sounds like projection. Depending on who you ask, it's
| generally understood in psychology that children raised by
| cold/rejecting/invalidating/selfish/abusive parents develop it
| to cope with having age-appropriate emotions that offend their
| parents. It could be perceived as a way to manipulate/convince
| the cold/rejecting parents into giving them what the child
| needs (food, attention, etc.) without feeling bad for having
| their age-appropriate, healthy needs - a habit that outlasts
| its need and stays through adulthood to the detriment of
| everyone. A healthy response would be to not feel bad for
| having feelings and, due to successfully developing self-
| acceptance, integrate/communicate all their emotions and
| rationality in a healthy way.
| icu wrote:
| Thank you for mentioning the Feelings Wheel. I never knew it
| existed and when I looked it up I could immediately see its use
| with my parenting as my son struggles to express his emotional
| state. I wonder if you've used it, or the Emotion Wheel, with
| children or for other use cases like conflict resolution in the
| workplace?
| danschumann wrote:
| I've found benefit across all areas of life. When dealing
| with other people, I find it helpful to at least be cognizant
| of the main emotional category, but it's easier to feel the
| specificity in yourself than in others.
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| A while ago I read a french news article that talked about
| bullying in japan and what was mentioned in it was way beyond
| what counts as bullying here (except for the most severe cases).
| Bullying is always really bad and even just "mild" verbal or
| physical abuse can scar a child for life. But what apparently
| counts as "regular" bullying in Japan truly gave me the chills.
| Mentioned were things like stripping others naked, throwing away
| their clothes, burning their stuff, hitting them with sticks,
| spitting among other horrible things. The article also mentioned
| that this went on just as a bad online with encouragements for
| suicide being a frequent part of the cyber bullying.
|
| Does someone here have any experience with japanese school life?
| Is it really that bad? Or did they just pick a number of the
| worst cases?
| theprotocol wrote:
| > a French news article [about Japan]
|
| Interestingly I experienced persistent bullying that included
| physical assault and mental abuse (it was always successfully
| passed off as a joke when they did something to me) in the
| French system.
|
| It was so bad that I still relive it daily every single day
| now, many many years later.
| euske wrote:
| Probably it is overblown, but I wouldn't be surprised if this
| actually happened somewhere (certainly not regular though).
|
| That said, I'll say that bullying in Japan is different in that
| it is _orchestrated_. Peer pressure is enormous in Japan. When
| someone is being bullied, very few of us can raise an objection
| because doing so would make you the next target. So everyone is
| becoming an enabler. (Actually, this is not just kids ' matter.
| It's pretty much how the whole society functions here. No
| wonder adults can't stop kids bullying - they're just imitating
| adults!)
| svara wrote:
| I don't have any particular insight on bullying in Japan
| specifically, but having lived there for a big chunk of my
| childhood I can say for sure that you have to be very, very
| skeptical of the "Look how weird Japan is" trope which is super
| common in Western media.
|
| Those stories always follow the same pattern - pick out the
| most extreme example of something that you can find, then spin
| some superficially insightful theory around it relating it to
| some essential difference between Japanese culture and other
| cultures.
|
| There is no such thing as essential differences. And if all
| that reaches your attention about a faraway place is the
| extremes, you are bound to come to some weird conclusions.
|
| It's just too easy to apply this recipe to anything you don't
| understand well. Just imagine the stories you could tell about
| European student culture if you started from the Belgian
| Reuzegom hazing story [0], and generalized from there.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuzegom#Death_of_Sanda_Dia
| jkhdigital wrote:
| In Japanese society, historically, ritual suicide was
| accepted as an "honorable" way to die under otherwise
| shameful circumstances. It seems pretty natural that, with
| such a cultural legacy, Japanese people (including children)
| would be more willing to resort to suicide.
|
| Reinforcing your comment, the fallacy here is in assuming
| that the factors affecting suicide rates among Western
| children are identical to the factors for Japanese children,
| and therefore bullying in Japan must be particularly
| atrocious to cause the high baseline suicide rate.
| Levitz wrote:
| >In Japanese society, historically, ritual suicide was
| accepted as an "honorable" way to die under otherwise
| shameful circumstances. It seems pretty natural that, with
| such a cultural legacy, Japanese people (including
| children) would be more willing to resort to suicide.
|
| Does it really? Do you feel the same way about western
| society and, say, duels to the death? The many old
| practices regarding marriage and the church all around?
|
| I don't think suicide as an honorable death is any more of
| a real thing in Japan nowadays than ninjas are.
| brezelgoring wrote:
| >Do you feel the same way about western society and, say,
| duels to the death?
|
| Considering how common a form of retribution gun violence
| is in the US nowadays, yes, I'd say yes.
|
| Could there be a case to be made in comparing American
| school shooters and Japanese student suicides? Maybe we'd
| find they had similar school experiences prior to their
| final moments.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Does it really? Do you feel the same way about western
| society and, say, duels to the death? The many old
| practices regarding marriage and the church all around?_
|
| Yes, I would. Such societal norms don't just die, they
| remain in the "ether" so to speak.
|
| For example, americans might not be as religious, or
| sticking with the church. They might not even be born in
| the US, or just be first or second generation. But the
| culture, and this includes immigrants as they integrate,
| contains all kinds of protestant ideas.
|
| And it's easier for something like a suicide norm to
| survice that a practice of the duel (which takes two to
| survice, plus has the law against it, even if you come
| out alive).
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| The ether of American "death by duel" is part of the more
| general protestant idea that suicide is an act against
| god, but there's no rule against finding
| someone/something to kill yourself with. Drink yourself
| to death, get yourself killed by a cop, join the army and
| find a place to sacrifice yourself: all are related to
| why duels to the death were part of our culture. To what
| extent that ether still effects the way we act I couldn't
| say, but it's definitely still around.
| nverno wrote:
| Suicide was also an honorable way to go out in the Roman
| empire, but I'm not sure it's a societal norm in Italy
| nowadays. Definitely in the ether though, I think suicide
| after disgrace is something everyone can relate to.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Suicide was also an honorable way to go out in the
| Roman empire, but I 'm not sure it's a societal norm in
| Italy nowadays._
|
| Maybe not so nowadays, but you'd be surprised how often
| it was a solution to societal shame in Italy up to the
| 1950s or so...
| burnished wrote:
| Do you want to reframe duels to the death as gun violence
| and then consider America, which is the most clear
| comparison?
| ploika wrote:
| American gun violence is on a different scale to most of
| the rest of Western society. I don't think it's a
| particularly useful comparison.
| retrac wrote:
| The relics of European honour culture, which includes
| duelling etc., being preserved in parts of the USA,
| particularly in the West and South, due to the delayed
| roleout of the centralised state, is a real argument made
| about why men from those parts can be so quick on the
| draw (perhaps literally) at the slightest interpersonal
| offence. Dunno if it's true but it doesn't seem
| preposterous.
| srvmshr wrote:
| Japan expat resident here.
|
| The 'suicide for preserving honor' theory has been long
| abandoned & mostly outlawed, even. No one in the modern
| generation thinks that way. The causes for suicide are
| mostly due to economic imbalance & high credit/ loans/
| failed businesses (sadly). Children have easy access to
| credit cards from family, and rack up huge debts by
| indulging in things as part of peer pressure. I saw several
| case studies highlighting this when I was part of
| influencer marketing business.
|
| Ritual suicide was done by seppuku - slashing out your
| guts, as a final act of bravery. No one does anything
| remotely similar.
| andrewprock wrote:
| I have to assume that WWII history is still being taught.
| I'm not sure if they are censoring kamikaze tactics in
| Japan, but they are still well documented in US WWII
| media.
| srvmshr wrote:
| Funnily enough, WW2 is taught in a very sanitized way.
| Its more along the lines of "we had disagreement, we had
| a war, we were all somewhat wrong. let's move on and be
| peaceful". People take offense if you prod along the
| topic further. They don't want to talk about it anymore.
| jkhdigital wrote:
| How do you "outlaw" a theory?
|
| You can't purge a cultural heritage--everyone in Japan
| learns Japanese history and ritual suicide is a notable
| part of that history. The point is not that people commit
| suicide today for the same reasons or in the same way
| that they did 500 years ago, but that _it is more likely
| to be accepted as a way out_ than in a culture that e.g.
| considers suicide to be a one-way ticket to the spiritual
| inferno.
| srvmshr wrote:
| > You can't purge a cultural heritage--everyone in Japan
| learns Japanese history and ritual suicide is a notable
| part of that history.
|
| Not sure where you get this idea, but this is grossly
| inaccurate.
|
| Japanese culture is strongly revisionist. People don't
| talk about the war, much less teach about it. The 'old
| ways' and 'samurai heroism' was faulted for the mess in
| '40s. People make a sigh whenever such touchy topics come
| up. New Japan is a different beast.
|
| As a consequence, we are seeing a generation which is
| severely confused on why WW2 happened. American pop
| culture is embraced with open arms, but they can't
| explain why Hiroshima happened at the hands of US. It's
| all faulted to grave mistakes on the 'old thinking' which
| is best left behind. Japan adopted modernism & became
| America's best buddies, ignoring the blemishes over 3
| decades of Imperial japanese horrors. Older generation,
| who used to teach from experience of pre-war and neo-
| modern Japan, are dying off due to age. A significant
| chapter of history is being ignored by looking the other
| way. Look up the editorials of any Japanese weekly, and
| on any random week you will find some discussion on how
| they bemoan the growing dissonance between the post-war
| values of peace & the cultural change alongside the
| pseudo-aggression of some political parties, which
| eventually aims to remilitarize Japan at some point.
| (That's a story for another time or another thread)
| aikinai wrote:
| The "Japan is no different from any other country" trope is
| just as inaccurate as the "wacky Japan" trope and in my
| experience has actually overtaken the original in online
| discussions (though news articles clearly still focus on the
| original).
|
| Making a generalized story from cherry-picked anecdotes is an
| incredibly common strategy for journalists writing about
| anything. Sometimes it might actually match more general
| trends and sometimes not; you can't say without real
| statistics, which in most cases don't exist or aren't
| accurate anyway.
|
| No one's tracking it carefully, so who knows if bullying in
| Japan is actually worse or just picked up in the zeitgeist
| more. But it's ridiculous to pretend like Japanese school
| culture isn't drastically different from that of most western
| countries.
| secondaryacct wrote:
| Yeah having moved to China from France, I was expecting to
| meet aliens honestly, and ended up concluding like you there
| are no essential differences between cultures.
|
| Everything is essetially the same with some limited number of
| levers being pulled a bit further: girls want to marry a
| little bit earlier, parents are a little bit more worried abt
| kids, politicians a bit more corrupt, racism is targeted at
| different colors in a different hierarchy, all that jazz, but
| all the patterns I was used to in France simply fit China
| very well and I didnt find it so difficult to just brush off
| the odd difference and adapt.
|
| My Chinese parents in law also discovered I have the same
| strengths and flaws any other Chinese guy their daughter
| could have found :D
| N00bN00b wrote:
| It took me about 10 years to really understand the enormous
| differences between my native culture and my current
| culture. And those differences are staggering. And they are
| _both_ western.
|
| You're assuming you can "see" the cultural differences.
|
| Sometimes you can easily see it, but often it's really hard
| to figure out, because they are going to express themselves
| in edge cases that you have to run into, which takes time
| and then it takes time to run into enough of them to be
| able to see a pattern.
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| You are right, even asking people from a country directly can
| give a really false impression due to the pattern you
| describe. As someone who has lived both in the US as well as
| two european countries for equal parts of my life I know very
| well how easily views can become distorted by listening to
| single cases that are not representative.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The modern media landscape is sub-optimal.
|
| Seeing all these surveys that show that the more you consume
| media the less you know is extremely sad. I don't think there
| are any short term solutions.
| breadsphere wrote:
| There was a recent scandal in Japan where a musician named
| Cornelius was chosen to preform at the Paralympics and had an
| old interview resurface where he bragged about this type of
| bullying: stripping naked, force feeding someone their own
| feces... sadly it sounds like this was done to a handicapped
| person.
|
| He was forced to resign and ultimately put a lot of pressure on
| prime minister Suga because he was his pick. Suga had to also
| step down after this and other similar incidents.
|
| https://aramajapan.com/news/cornelius-apologizes-after-bully...
| noobermin wrote:
| This sounds inline with bullying in the US honestly, at least
| in the rougher schools.
| Raztuf wrote:
| Watching anime (yeah yeah I know) I used to laugh at the
| absurdity of the bullying and how sexual it all was. I had no
| idea that bullying is really that bad in Japan. That's
| extremely sad.
| dartharva wrote:
| The frequency of how much of what appears to be outlandish
| bullying gets portrayed in Japanese shows could be an
| indicator of how normalized it has become there. I have
| watched some anime too, and I cringed every time they showed
| those cartoonishly evil bullying scenes. They appeared so
| unrealistic to me, but reading this discussion it seems it
| might have actually been a quite relatable theme for Japanese
| audiences.
| ganzuul wrote:
| OP said 'appears to'. You are saying 'is'.
|
| Sharpen up.
| white-moss wrote:
| I'm Japanese (24). In my own personal experience, I've never
| seen bullying that severe. There may be regional differences.
| emadabdulrahim wrote:
| This reminded me of experiences I wish I could forget for when
| I was bullied from 2nd grade to 8th. What made it worse was by
| puberty, I realized I was gay, which made me feel the bullying
| was justified because of how reprehensible my sexual
| orientation was. While I don't believe this anymore, I do feel
| those experiences have left a deep scare that won't simply go
| away.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Similar experiences here. If you haven't, really can't
| emphasize the value of a good therapist, and gay men's group
| therapy if you can find it.
|
| That said, I think the deep scar analogy is apt. While
| therapy has helped me immensely in dealing with some of my
| issues, those issues will always be there, so it's hard not
| to feel an immense amount of regret and "if only" thoughts
| wishing I had never been bullied in the first place.
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| I'm sorry this happened to you. I actually find it terrible
| how bullying in general is seen as "part of growing up" and
| other nonsense or sometimes even heavily played down with
| lies or fabrications like "the bully himself is actually
| suffering/has a bad life thats why he does it" (which is in
| no way generally true).
|
| Or even worse: blame is put on the victim.
| rabuse wrote:
| I was a bully during my teenage years. Honestly, did it for
| the attention from peers, and especially the girls. It's
| sad to say, but girls definitely favor that mentality at
| that age range.
| srvmshr wrote:
| > Does someone here have any experience with japanese school
| life? Is it really that bad? Or did they just pick a number of
| the worst cases?
|
| I sincerely believe these instances were cherry picked. If such
| things happened regularly, it would have made an awful amount
| of noise in an otherwise law abiding society. Mixed raced
| (hafu) children do get more bullying from anecdotal evidence,
| but that is more of name calling or poking some fun at visual
| attribute. My knowledge about the situation is limited to Tokyo
| & Osaka, but that is pretty much where most of the foreigners/
| mixed race families are to be found.
| joeberon wrote:
| > The article also mentioned that this went on just as a bad
| online with encouragements for suicide being a frequent part of
| the cyber bullying.
|
| That doesn't surprise me at all. Back in the day 2ch, which was
| the forerunner of 4chan in Japan, was extremely popular, but
| basically just as toxic and awful as 4chan. I think in Asia
| generally there is a LOT of aggression online.
| OneTimePetes wrote:
| This is the iceberg of "face" culture. Appear happy content
| and whatever society demands in public and let out the true
| opinion, feelings and yes, often hatred in anonymity or inner
| family.
|
| Good thing we wouldn't introduce such a thing in the west.
| tada131 wrote:
| Does this thing even need to be introduced?
| ekianjo wrote:
| > I think in Asia generally there is a LOT of aggression
| online.
|
| In Asia? You haven't seen Twitter yet in the US.
| joeberon wrote:
| > You haven't seen Twitter yet in the US.
|
| Yes I have, and there is much more of a culture to be taken
| care of and get emotional support there than I've seen in
| other countries. Even British twitter is way harsher lol
| Americans are generally very kind and soft
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Sounds like a foolishly overbroad claim, perhaps you
| should step it back to "the Americans I follow on
| twitter"? https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tennessee-
| man-targeted-...
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Even British twitter is way harsher lol Americans are
| generally very kind and soft
|
| You probably aren't exposed to the same kind of feed
| then.
| sethammons wrote:
| Don't get in a verbal pissing contest. Bring up a
| concrete example. Then they can do the same. Anecdata
| battle until trends can be established. Or if data trends
| can be shown, link those.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Not every discussion between people needs to have the
| caliber of evidence required by a scientific study or
| dissertation. Besides, arguments like that tend to just
| end up being tennis matches where commenters lob
| citations back and forth at each other without reading
| them.
|
| Also, I think people should feel free to share whatever
| life experience / observations / anecdotes they have
| because it's not like what we write here is going to get
| cited in some journal.
| sethammons wrote:
| This was a case of "my dad can beat up your dad." Just
| stated as "I see worse than you are seeing." Nothing of
| substance. If we want to compare who's stream is worse,
| provide some examples, don't just say you've dealt with
| worse than what you assume the other person has.
|
| Anyway, looks like I replied to the wrong post
| originally. And I botched my delivery. It was a poor
| attempt at encouraging more substantive discussion. I,
| for one, would have been interested in seeing an example
| that points out how much more ruthless a different
| country was, and I would have hoped that someone would
| show a counter example, and then a n interesting
| discussion pop up.
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| This is a conversation not a pissing context or a peer
| reviewed study. It's very hard to quantify one's
| experience. I was once active on both the UK and American
| sphere of twitter and I feel the American side of it is
| much worse. It's fine to not go further and just
| acknowledge different people have different experiences.
| We don't have to go fetch studies that take ages to read
| fully and to critically examine just to justify every
| opinion we have, especially when there's probably just as
| many studies pointing to the opposite.
| isoskeles wrote:
| Why didn't you post this reply one comment up?
| [deleted]
| Loughla wrote:
| I find that interesting, especially for countries like Korea
| or Japan. The stereotype of those cultures is sort of
| passive, and accepting of the status quo. And yet, when
| anonymous, the fangs come out, if not even more pointed.
|
| I'm sure there's something there, but I'm not a social
| scientist. Anyone with experience in sociology/psychology
| have an idea what that's about?
| elzbardico wrote:
| I always thought that the more you repress aggression and
| competition, specially in human males, the more it will end
| up being expressed anyway, but in bursts or in passive-
| aggressive ways. Of course, this is just a personal
| hypothesis.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| This is self-evident, especially in the West. Girls are
| getting further and further ahead in education because
| they are obedient, and not unruly and full of energy like
| boys. And no one gives a shit. It's instead touted as
| some victory for feminism or something.
| joeberon wrote:
| Unfortunately that bites them with a lack of confidence
| and taking risks in the future. However that is mainly
| due to patriarchy and internalised misogyny in my
| experience.
| orangepurple wrote:
| It may also be elevated self-doubt when doing something
| logically sound but overall risky over an extended period
| without social validation, and not patriarchy or
| misogyny.
| joeberon wrote:
| Why would that affect women more than men?
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Problem is that the "feminist" label is so simplistic as
| to miss all nuance ala: all that is "good for women" is
| "feminist".
|
| Is being successful in school good? yes. Is being
| successful in later life good? yes.
|
| So you cannot consider the "successful school dropout".
| "risk taking" is the missed nuance, or "it has to get
| worse before it gets better"/"break a bone to set the
| leg" etc. Instead you have the only "feminist" path as
| (cherry-picked populations of) girls doing well in school
| _and_ successes later in life, even if those don 't
| necessarily/naturally correlate.
|
| If you really wanted to capture that nuance, you need the
| kind of discussions Jordan Peterson has wrt
| personality/behavioural traits and their impacts on
| differences in outcomes; but you can clearly see how much
| hostility (in the name of feminism) he receives for that.
|
| The funny thing is how he's accused of (sex/gender)
| essentialism, even if backed by stats/data, despite the
| advocated feminist alternatives being _also_ full of
| essentialism (and just-so narratives), just ones seen as
| more culturally palatable.
| dartharva wrote:
| >The stereotype of those cultures is sort of passive, and
| accepting of the status quo. And yet, when anonymous, the
| fangs come out, if not even more pointed.
|
| I think _because_ can be a better replacement for _yet_ in
| this sentence. Repression very often leads to higher
| intensity.
| joeberon wrote:
| I think it's precisely because of that collectivism, which
| leads to much harsher punishment of outliers.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Hmm, I always thought conformity-culture was the cause of
| social accountability of outliers. My go to example for
| this is the highly individual valuing, yet Patagonia vest
| wearing finance bros. Conformity without collectivism.
| It's a thing and it's much more insidious than the
| collectivism-conformity script we got growing up.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Yes, accurate, with tacit approval of the masses, too.
| Which makes things even worse.
| taneq wrote:
| John Gabriel's Greater Internet F*&kwad Theory explains it
| succinctly (language warning): https://i.kym-
| cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/325/699/4fc...
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > Mentioned were things like stripping others naked, throwing
| away their clothes, burning their stuff, hitting them with
| sticks, spitting among other horrible things.
|
| All of these things happened to at least one person I know
| growing up in the US.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Does someone here have any experience with japanese school
| life?
|
| No direct experience but heard stories of bullying of children
| of friends/colleagues living in Japan and that was scary
| enough.
| tkgally wrote:
| My two daughters went through Japanese public schools in Tokyo
| and Yokohama, and I now teach and do research about education-
| related topics at a university in Tokyo. My research focus is
| not student behavior, but I sometimes visit schools and I hear
| a lot of anecdotes about elementary and secondary schools from
| teachers and college students.
|
| My impression is that, overall, the bullying is probably not
| significantly worse than in other countries, but that perhaps
| more media attention is focused on the issue than elsewhere.
| There was a major moral panic in the mid-1980s about school
| bullying, and the media continue to report regularly on
| statistical trends and extreme incidents.
|
| Anecdotally, there seems to be a lot of variation among
| schools. More than one public school teacher has confided to me
| about how different the kids are in different neighborhoods.
| Japan may seem homogeneous, but there's a lot of local
| variation by social class. In the tougher schools, there can be
| fighting, stealing, and bullying, while in other schools that
| might be practically unknown. Private schools can be very
| different from public, too, and there are a lot of single-
| gender schools, which have their own dynamics. Certain aspects
| of Japanese culture, such as age-based hierarchies, may be
| stronger or weaker or play out differently in different types
| of schools as well.
| csa wrote:
| I lived in Japan for 8 years (not in Tokyo), and this sort of
| stuff was very rare and often newsworthy.
|
| I imagine it does happen, but more often than not at urban
| school, at schools that are less academically oriented (e.g.,
| construction high schools), and overall in lower socio-economic
| areas. The abusers are probably from abusive families.
|
| If you're in the burbs or the provincial parts of Japan,
| bullying at this extreme level is very unlikely to happen. The
| more common type of bullying is verbal abuse -- still bad, but
| not like the examples you gave.
|
| All that said, there is a form of hazing that is common in
| Japan that would probably be considered abusive, and that's
| with high school baseball clubs. The new players on the team
| sometimes get boot camp-like treatment, and some folks (and
| sometimes coaches) take it too far. It's theoretically all in
| fun and/or character building, and there are often checks and
| balances in place by the senior players, but I've heard some
| stories. That said, I don't think that there are many baseball
| players who would not do it again.
| new299 wrote:
| This is probably something that varies a lot by area but based
| on my observations of elementary school students (who I've seen
| the most of) and others. The situations you describe sound like
| pretty strong outliers.
|
| I would want to see pretty strong (non anecdotal) evidence to
| think otherwise.
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| Yeah it is always hard to get a proper picture of something
| like actual school life based on one (or a few) articles when
| in reality often not even parents of the children themselves
| know what is really going on.
| mathrall wrote:
| This is alarming; Japan is already on the verge of a population
| shortage as it's quite difficult for them to have children. Even
| with the help of the Government's benefits, it doesn't suffice.
| They should address this issue right away.
| iamgopal wrote:
| Last line can be applied to almost any problem, and can be seen
| as a de-facto method for solving problem.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| Suicide and depression are incredibly difficult things for
| anyone to address because they stem from unquantifiable things.
| When people _feel_ like life is not worth living, despite
| having so many material goods and most of their basic needs
| taken care of, what is a government to do? Suicide and
| depression are high in developed, stable countries. Many people
| there have everything but feel there is no point to life. Our
| cultures of extreme nihilism which deemphasize the worth of
| human life are not something a government can fix even if
| desired.
| swutas wrote:
| You think the problem with a child suicide spike is that it
| might cause a population shortage??
| sumedh wrote:
| They can solve it with immigration but Japanese people
| apparently dont like it.
| rataata_jr wrote:
| Japanese actually care about their people in this regard.
| Lowest crime, and other good things...
| inkblotuniverse wrote:
| Importing foreigners isn't a solution, and besides, they
| become infertile too (within a few generations) if they adopt
| the local culture.
| rabuse wrote:
| Homogeneous societies seem to be more stable than ones with
| cultural diversity. Change my mind.
| webmobdev wrote:
| I also remember reading that many murder cases are sometimes
| intentionally or mistakenly re-classified as a suicide to close
| it, because the Japanese police are under a lot of pressure to
| maintain their high rate of solving cases.
|
| Suicides in Japan perhaps have an additional attraction in that
| insurance companies have to payout even if the cause of death is
| suicide.
|
| Couple that with the asian cultural pressure of taking care of
| one's family, and the cultural factor that suicide on personal
| failure is linked to honour and glorified in Japanese history, it
| becomes somewhat understandable why some Japanese individuals may
| find suicide as a reasonable / attractive option while
| contemplating how to end their depressive existence.
|
| _Japan 's suicide statistics don't tell the real story_ -
| https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/02/03/national/media-...
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| I've seen a few pop-documentaries about children in japan (and
| korea and china), where they show kids leaving their home at
| early hours, then doing a lot of work in school, then afterschool
| scholwork, aditional lectures, and then they come home at late
| night hours, sleep, and repeat.
|
| I'm not sure how much of this is true and/or a stereotype, but
| even elsewhere, i've seen parents overcrowding their kids
| (school)work schedules (+extracurricular activities) to absurd
| amounts, where the kids can't handle it anymore.
|
| This is in comparison to my childhood, where pretty much everyone
| had school from 8-until somewhere between noon and 2pm (depending
| on the year), and after that we pretty much just "went out" and
| did "stupid kid stuff" (mostly hanging out)
| simonh wrote:
| My kids are Anglo-Chinese, they went to school there for
| literally a few days so I don't have personal experience, but a
| friend's son went to school in China until he was about 10 I
| think and is now in school here in the UK.
|
| His son thinks school in the UK is ridiculously easy. His
| teachers think he's amazing because he always hands in work
| early, it's always very neat and well done, he started off well
| ahead of kids his own age in maths and the sciences that are in
| common with Chinese schooling. The work ethic he learned there
| is working very well for him.
|
| Having said that, my friend particularly wanted his son to come
| here for secondary education. The system over there is
| excessively regimented and oppressive. Education here is much
| broader with more scope for creativity and extra-curricular
| activities. They're very different systems.
| tikkabhuna wrote:
| Anecdote from my visit to Beijing. We stayed in a guesthouse
| type place with a courtyard in the middle. A child around 7-8
| was doing homework with her mum until 9/10pm while we played
| cards and drank beer.
|
| As a kid I would have been playing games or watching TV at
| that time.
| joeberon wrote:
| What I don't understand is that if you look at the
| performance of Chinese academics it isn't particularly
| exceptional compared to those who had lazy upbringings in the
| west. Surely they should be basically superhuman in their
| academic achievements? I am extremely lazy, and had a very
| crappy lazy school experience, even at British university,
| and yet I was not significantly worse than my Chinese
| clearly-a-genius PhD supervisor. In fact I do not see any
| particular difference in research quality or output when
| comparing people who had intense school careers to those who
| had easy and laid back ones. Somehow the intense academic
| training in those countries does not seem to translate into
| actual research output.
| dustintrex wrote:
| The point of all the studying is to ace the entrance exams,
| not learn anything about research or original thinking. At
| least in Japan, once you're actually in the university, you
| can pretty much slack off for the next four year until you
| graduate and face the next grueling phase of your life,
| becoming a junior salaryman.
| runeblaze wrote:
| One popular explanation is usually the scarcity of
| educational resources in China. In China, you work really
| hard so that you can out-exam the other students so that
| you can get into some decent college. The gist is that
| China has limited higher-educational resource (so graduates
| on average do not come out that well) and a large
| population base (so people really need to work hard to
| fight for the little resource).
| whoevercares wrote:
| It's more statistically significant- check how Chinese
| names dominated CV conferences
| joeberon wrote:
| Different fields always have different nationalities
| dominating though. You could easily say "look how
| Italians dominate astrophysics" but that doesn't
| necessarily mean anything.
| jkhdigital wrote:
| Compulsory education is all about the median student, not
| the outliers. I suspect that performance at the top end of
| the curve, i.e. people who tend to get PhDs and become
| professors, is influenced much more by personality and
| graduate-level educational experiences.
| simonh wrote:
| For all it's apparent advantages, the Chinese education
| system also has some pretty deep flaws. A family friend in
| China is the head of the Computer Science department at a
| local university. This was a few years ago, but he told me
| none of their graduates ever, as part of their studies,
| actually compile and run any code. They are taught java,
| algorithms and theory but no practical exercises, it's all
| on paper. That's not necessarily true of every institution,
| I've met some great coders from China, but they're mostly
| self taught.
|
| Also even if you had the best students, they are
| constrained by the institutions they are in and the
| experience of their professors. It takes generations to
| develop deep institutional experience and culture. They
| know this, and expend a lot of effort trying to get
| experienced Chinese academics that have studied abroad in
| western institutions to come back to China.
| Vrondi wrote:
| We see this among students who come to American
| universities from certain parts of Asia: serious
| knowledge of syntax, but not able to navigate the OS, use
| the IDE, or compile the code. I've heard this same
| scenario of learning programming on paper from multiple
| countries.
|
| And, also, if you know the syntax of a few languages
| cold, but you have no creative practice at problem-
| solving, are lacking foundational computer science
| concepts and practice, then by the time you are in
| college or grad school, another language may have come
| along, while you may have to struggle to apply existing
| knowledge and creativity to new tools (which is the point
| of a CS degree).
|
| Some students have no mental toolkit to rely on other
| than brute force memorizing the syntax of a new language.
| The difference is highly noticeable, even at a low level
| of college work.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| who was taking care of you in the afternoon?
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| For younger kids (6, 7, 8yo), there was "afternoon care" in
| school where they did their homework and then went outside to
| the school playgound and played with stuff. For older ones,
| they went home after school, and stay there, or go out, and
| parents usually came home at 3, 4 in the afternoon. For even
| older ones (13 14, 15,..), they usually stay at home until
| the parents come home, and then go out again.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Would you mind sharing general region and decide for
| context?
|
| My American Midwestern childhood was largely similar in the
| late 90's, but I still had one parent at home full time.
| ekianjo wrote:
| One things that's missing from this article is that the familial
| context is not there to support children in Japan. Before COVID,
| kids are expected to spend most of the waking life at school or
| in the school context (they even have activity clubs in the
| weekends, at school, and cram schools after school pretty much
| everyday).
|
| The day COVID hit, children were suddenly brought back to stay at
| home in an environment where parents were never used to having
| them around.
| Markoff wrote:
| Japan's education ministry says its latest annual survey shows
| the number of schoolchildren who killed themselves topped 400 for
| the first time. Also, a record high of over 190,000 students of
| elementary and junior high schools stopped attending.
|
| The ministry conducts an annual survey of elementary, junior and
| senior high schools, and schools for special needs education
| across the country. It covers bullying, truancy and suicides
| among students.
|
| On Wednesday, the ministry published the results of its survey
| conducted for the 2020 school year.
|
| The results show a record-high 415 children killed themselves in
| the year through March. That's up nearly 100 from the previous
| school year. Seven of the students were in elementary school, 103
| in junior high and 305 in senior high.
|
| The number of elementary and junior high school students who were
| absent for 30 days or more was 196,127. That's up nearly 15,000
| from the previous year and a record high.
|
| The rate of children who were absent has also been on the rise.
| The rate for elementary children increased threefold over the
| past ten years, to one out of 100. The rate for junior high was
| one out of 24, up 50 percent.
|
| The survey also looked into the number of children who stopped
| attending school due to concerns over coronavirus infection.
|
| It shows the total of 30,287 elementary, junior high and senior
| high school students were absent for 30 days or more due to such
| concerns.
|
| Eguchi Arichika, student affairs division chief at the ministry,
| says the results show that changes in school and household
| environments due to the pandemic have had a huge impact on
| children's behavior, and that the increase in the number of
| suicides is very regrettable.
|
| The official adds that the ministry will work to encourage
| children to seek help, and to ensure learning opportunities for
| children who cannot attend school.
| dartharva wrote:
| It's so hard to not feel sentimental about this. Suffering to
| such a degree that you you take your own life is the most
| horrible way to go, and it's beyond heartbreaking that children
| are going through this. And the 415 kids are the ones who went
| through with it, who knows how many thousands go struggling for
| finding their will to live every day. Japan, and all other
| countries where this is an issue, need severe and disruptive
| interventions urgently.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I wonder how these correlate to parental success status. It seems
| the culture wants children to be successful. Children sometimes
| compare themselves with or view it as a competition with parents.
| Ones with high successful parents sometime lose hope of being
| better/successful (see a bunch of boys of successful male actors
| of the past).
| tamaharbor wrote:
| Coronavirus aside, I wonder how many of these deaths are related
| to TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter use.
| agent327 wrote:
| You are being voted down, but I can think of little as harmful
| as the open sewer that is unfiltered social media, especially
| to younger people that haven't yet learned not to take it all
| personally.
| EricE wrote:
| I grew up in the era of dialup, BBS's and USENET - and it did
| warp my perceptions a little. I can't imagine how being
| exposed to social media as an adolescent - or younger - could
| have seriously screwed up my perceptions of society.
|
| Elsewhere someone sarcastically asked about video games - if
| 1/10th the concern that was shown in the 80's and 90's over
| video games towards social media I think we all would be
| having a much different conversation.
|
| I dunno why up until recently social media has been pretty
| much getting a pass. It's nice to see at least some
| discussion of it, especially in relation to kids, showing up
| in more places. I'm always amazed and somewhat appalled by
| how many of my peers I see just hand over phones or tablets
| to their kids to occupy them. At least in the past when
| parents parked kids in front of the TV it was one way and
| limited to fairly "safe" content.
|
| Ha - after having typed that it sure makes the concerns
| voiced over TV in the past feel very, very quaint in
| comparison. Something I really hadn't considered before now.
| prepend wrote:
| This is the kind of stuff that should be possible and valuable
| to study but requires TikTok, Facebook, etc to run the study
| since the data is all on their servers.
|
| I expect that the analysis has been done internally and just
| not released since it's bad (ie, social media use is higher
| among suicides). Maybe a whistleblower will leak this stuff.
|
| I think an analysis is possible by building off their typical
| drop off analysis. I think that because I expect all drop offs
| are likely analyzed to restart and avoid future drop offs. So I
| expect they have a way to classify people who died vs left the
| platform.
|
| In the US we release a "death master file" that has names, dob,
| ssn a few years after death. If Japan has something similar it
| can be run against account holder data to see who actually
| died. I don't know privacy law in Japan, but in the US cause of
| death is confidential. So we just know that a kid died and
| would need to predict cause of death from social media
| activity.
|
| With this low number, they could be investigated manually to
| see how many children had accounts and what patterns exist in
| common.
| srvmshr wrote:
| ex-Adtech engineer living in Japan.
|
| You'd be surprised how many horror stories I have encountered
| about teenage girls commiting suicides due to peer pressure,
| credit card loans & inability to keep up with fashion trends.
| nivenkos wrote:
| What about drugs, and video games, and Satan worship?
| Taywee wrote:
| Not everything is puritanical pearl clutching. Some things
| are actually measurably bad for you. Comparing any old
| criticism of something as unhealthy to the satanic panic and
| conservative anti video game pushes isn't helpful at all, and
| doesn't really make much of an argument.
| inkblotuniverse wrote:
| I could imagine video games making someone's life worse.
| They're addictive and mostly non-productive.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Satan worship is in jest, but it's interesting the root word
| for Satan, the devil, diablos (diabolos) describes the
| 'spirit of division' in human societies.
|
| Worshiping conflict would aptly describe social media in many
| areas, so the ancients were on to something :)
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