Originally Posted by
TheAsterisk!
I connected them, but it made assumptions that the posters here knew and appreciated how simplistically children (including many adolescents) learn what is and isn't normative behavior (i.e., what is and isn't normal).
If they are constantly reminded, by way of media reports and well-meaning activists, that bullying often leads to suicide, they will begin to think that suicide is a normal response to bullying, nevermind whether they are told that it is wrong. They see that many others their age and in their situation have killed themselves, and the idea of suicide as a way out eventually no longer seems to be abnormal, but just another option that their parents and teachers don't like.
They're more likely to kill themselves if they think that suicide is common or normal, nevermind ethics or morality or more calm long-term thinking. It won't make them do it, you understand, but it will lower the barrier to entry, so to speak.
You can't treat children like responsible adults (or treat irresponsible adults like responsible adults, for that matter). Simply educating them and offering help is noble, but ultimately has effects beyond what would rationally follow. They don't behave rationally. Their tendency to follow trends simply to fit in also leads them to behaviors that make little sense.
This same tendency towards an "Everybody is doing it!" attitude is why things like the DARE program are absolutely idiotic in implementation. It's why people are shunned if they don't go to the right social function. (Recall how little effect the rationally-sound but trite "If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you too?" has on kids. A fair number of them might at least drive out to the bridge, if not actually plummet off the side with the hypothetical crowd of friends and peers.) It's been written off as an artifact of peer pressure- and a part of it is- but a fair amount of it is also merely unthinking emulation of others.
Now to be clear, I have nothing against opposition to bullying, but I do want to remind everyone that it has to be done very carefully, so as not to have unanticipated and potentially terrible net effects.
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