Right now Gawker has a post up about a 15-year-old Staten Island girl who committed suicide after essentially being slut-shamed by her high school football team. As is becoming the macabre norm, the young girl took to Twitter leaving hints of her state of mind before carrying out the act two days later. “I cant, im done, I give up,” she said. What is going on? And why does it seem like “bullying” has taken on a whole new genesis in the last two decades?
The New York Post also reports Felicia Garcia committed suicide yesterday afternoon by jumping in front of a train at the Huguenot Staten Island Railway station after succumbing to bullying enacted mostly by her high school football team who went after her over a past relationship with one of the players. Friends of Garcia say she was repeatedly called a slut and was teased via social media.
The teen took to Twitter and Instagram (beware some photos are graphic…and shocking) to showcase the timeline of the situation. However the bullying didn’t cease even in the moments before her death. Witnesses say the football players continued taunting the girl up until she leaped backwards onto the train tracks.
Some of the comments on Gawker’s site are extremely frank and some would say more than a bit disturbing. One commenter had this to say:
Oh Jesus, drama freak…NEWSFLASH there is more to life then high school…I was teased relentlessly in high school, yet never once did I think of jumping in front of a fucking train…boohoo…grow a pair, fight back, be witty, laugh it off…realize that 4 years of your life doesn’t define you and are the most forgettable…yuck good riddance…
Some other more sympathetic comments chimed in with stories of other teens committing suicide through the years, Amanda Todd, the most recent and notable, and interestingly enough, mention that for some reason the age of 15 is a sort of standard bearer for suicide.
Yes, we’ve been discussing teen suicide for decades, but why does it seem much more prevalent(?) accepted(?) expected(?) desensitizing(?) in some circles when it happens now? Is it really just about social media’s invention where we now have the ability to chronicle our entire lives down to the very second if we choose, which makes hearing of suicide all the more accessible, but also serves to glorify it, make it more tangible and real for young people? Remember back in the 80’s and 90’s when we heard that suicide could spread like an epidemic the more exposure it found? Is that happening again?
And what about the sentiment of “just grow a pair” and the whole mantra of “It gets better?” Does this make any sense when we’re talking about a generation of kids who have difficulty embracing the fact that there’s more to life than what they’re currently experiencing? Add to that the fact that social media has made their worlds much more narrow, where the teasing and bullying can now follow you home, live in your laptops, and cellphones, and seep its way into almost every living breathing moment of these kids’ small lives? No wonder they feel as if there is no escape. It doesn’t seem as cut and dried as it may have been when we were kids and at 3:00pm your life became your own again, and you felt that if you just made it through the day you might be okay, and you could see yourself putting the people in your high school in your rear view mirror as you got older — because perhaps, just maybe, you got a reprieve every once in a while — and your lives were not lived out in digital time.
There seems to be a lot of hand-wringing that goes on with regard to teen suicide — there always has been — but now it seems with “bullying” becoming what it’s become, it makes it even harder for parents, teachers, and lawmakers to figure out what to do. Even some plans to bring students closer together get stymied by certain groups who say that the goals are to increase acceptance of the LGBT community. Sigh. So what in the world are we to do to get kids to see similarities within each other, and in conjunction, help those who need increased psychological services that are beyond the school’s ability?
Could limiting social media access be a linchpin in tramping down the spread of bullying and suicide? Are our kid’s lives too intertwined to the point that the petty dramas are ratcheted up to such dangerous levels that everything must be played out like a smaller version of what’s seen in entertainment and various forms of tabloid-esque media? These are the questions this blogger asks. Add your thoughts or suggestions to the comments.
