Common Sense: Bad Parenting is Real Cause of Suicidal Kids.

Seconded - well that and lack of disipline and goals

Third - for god sakes you can't blame everything on other things.. Turn around look at the parents and ask.. maybe if they would of simply talked to their child when she was looking down and say "hey, i noticed you've been down for a little wanna talk about it?"

Hum... You can't denied it but the problem it's not really social network it's the Internet network by himself.

Same kind of network existed in Irc at the begin of Internet.

Did I'm more "desensitizing" by Irc than Facebook ?
You can't calculate that.
There is just more users on Facebook than on Irc at the begin of Internet. More users so it's HOT topic.

Some media people needs attention....
Who's "Archbishop Vincent Nichols" anyway ?

I don't think it's as bad as he makes it out to be, but I do agree that electronic communication (especially completely text-based) is a crappy substitute for real, face-to-face communication. It can be really hard to understand what people are really saying when you can't read their body language, facial expressions, and especially when you can't hear their tone of voice. I've gotten into so many text arguments that probably would've never happened if I had just been talking to them. Don't get me wrong, text-based messaging can be useful and fun, but it should NEVER replace real-life interaction.

I think it's a double-edged sword. If used properly, it can be a good way to keep up with friends. If used as your sole relationship portal, you're going to be sorely lacking in life because we DO need face-to-face interactions. Many companies are encouraging people to walk to someone's desk to discuss something vs using email to strengthen working relationships because we need real live interactions. We were just designed that way

Maybe wwe should focus on the true number one killer of all time. Religious Fanaticism.

yeah, i have an account on facebook, i'm going to go kill myself now. /sarcasm.
people are stupid
/serious

Social depression is what is causing these suicides. Social networking websites are just scapegoats. It would likely still happen so blaming technology is never the answer.

Once again the tool is blamed instead of how it is used. The shortsightedness is truly breathtaking to behold. For crying out loud, water is fatal if used improperly! This is like saying that water leads to drowning. Trouble is these kids either don't bother to understand how to appropriately use these resources or the parents aren't concerned enough about it to get involved.

Bad parenting leads to young kids living on the computer in the first place. So both are right.

While I agree that you cannot blame everything that goes wrong with technology such as suicides in regards to Everquest, Myspace, Facebook etc. And good parenting will circumvent certain things.

However, social sites and texting is damaging to the younger generations, the bishop is correct in saying that these sites and texting is damaging to people in regards to social interaction. I see teenagers all the time when I go to malls or restaraunts, and they will stand together and NOT TALK, but text each other while they are 3 feet away from each other.

Anyone cannot see anything wrong with that has issues and needs to have their head examined. How are these people going to be able to maintain a real relationship such as marriage or life long friendships if they cant communicate on the most basic of levels, i.e. verbal face to face communication?

Ive been married for 10 years and I guarantee you I wouldnt be if my wife and I texted, emailed or blogged all of our correspondance to each other.

The amount of time some people spend on this is depressing.

I'm going to go with that maybe there was a problem to begin with.

Social networking sites may not have been the direct cause to suicides, but it'd be a stretch not to see them as a contributing factor. I hate to go to extremes, but to play devil's advocate a little, I would genuinely like to see individuals under 18 completely cut off from Social Networking sites and MMORPGs.

As a parent, I wouldn't want my daughter anywhere near these sites. For one, its dangerous for the kids to be interacting with adults in this manner (its like a fucking pedofile's dream come true), and at the very least they'll be influenced in negative ways (a 20 year old's sexuality conversations should not be subjected to 14 year olds pretending to be 19). So, there's that mess.

Remove the adults, and the situation still sucks. You basically have given a very socially insecure group in a situation where they are stretched across multiple networking sites, and interacting with far too many people. The butter sets spread pretty damn thin. It discourages human interaction, damages social skills (in the same way Warcraft does), and gives easy methods for bullying... in ways that a young person would be ill equipped to handle emotionally.

-Not to mention it makes them freaking fat and lazy. Play OUTSIDE damnit!

My uncle asked me to help him set his daughters up on Myspace, and instead I set him up with OpenDNS and blocked Myspace on the freaking DNS level, so his daughters couldn't go there outside of a miracle.

It seems like a blatantly obvious problem. Pass some legislation that makes these sites 18+. Make it child abuse to let your 12 year old daughter on Myspace, and yahoo chat. I want to keep the internet as open and free as possible, but seriously, get the damn kids out of places where they shouldn't be. Do it before we raise a generation of retards incapable of supporting my social security.

I think it says more about the girl than the social networks...She obviously had some real psychological issues...The "torment" she went through is not much different than kids teasing each other in highschool. Kids are viscious, grow a backbone, and overcome adversity instead of having a temper tantrum.

1+^ fulle, those are some excelent points you made.

it pisses me off when parents just let their kids sit on their asses all day at the computer.. no wonder obesity is raising so alarmingly fast!

So encourage children who have access to technology not to use it, then they'll wind up hopelessly out of touch with their peers and behind the eightball, furthering their isolation later in life. I'm assuming that to be a Bishop, he's probably an old-timer, and more likely than not, just doesn't 'get it'. In the future, say in 10-20 years when his generation is DEAD, everybody will communicate using such 'new-fangled' methods. It will become the new norm. Fuck me, I'll bet his parents bitched about the telephone, TV, and microwave ovens. And his grandparent probably thought that the telegraph and the steam engine were making youth to distract-able and less grounded. Technology changes, people change, everything changes, that's how existence works - either get over it, get a hold of it, or swim futilely against the tide.

BTW, I thought it was heavy metal (80's), oh wait, video games (90's) to blame for teen suicide? Oh, it was social networks all along... but how have they been doing their nefarious work decades before they were created? People who are inclined to kill themselves will find a myriad of reasons for doing it, be it a breakup, a public embarrassment, insurmountable bills, pride, boredom, chronic pain, obesity, indigestion, etc - the next disaster is just around the corner, every corner. Shitballs, what are you going to do, put everybody in a nerf world?

PS - And why didn't the omnipotent magic man in the sky prevent this from happening in the first place?

Parents NEED to maintain control of the online presence of their younger kids. If they don't feel quilified or able to do that then they're best bet is to chuck the PC out the window and tell the kid to go outside or you'll "find them something to do".

I was pretty militant about limiting our oldest's boy's online freedom until he hit 16 or so... then I scaled back until now he has full access (he's 18). Our 14 year old still has limited access and we monitor the only social site he's on (facebook).

It's really about due diligence... I wouldn't think I was being a decent parent if I let my kids run unsupervised in Real Life... and Virtual life is no different.

Religion has killed and caused much more damages to the people than Facebook - that's for sure!
And the biggest suicide in history was no other than Jesus Christ!

As others have pointed out, the problem lies not in the tool itself but in the usage of it. Like most things in life, moderation is the key to healthy living. Adults should be able to moderate themselves, and children should be moderated by their parents. If only society was perfect...

Facebook, Myspace, et all are simply symptoms. The suicides linked to these are symptoms, and might have occurred anyhow. The reality is, society as a whole is becoming dehumanized, and anti-social.

Kids don't know their parents, and parents don't know their kids. Family structure has been destroyed. So called progressive thinkers have brought about so many anti-social behaviors that our society continually spirals downward. Feminism pulled our mothers out of their homes, leaving kids in day care centers where they're raised by other people's kids. Discipline was taken away from school authorities, yet teachers are relegated to simply babysitting children because parents are no longer home to discipline properly.

Parents now work so hard, for so many hours, that many of them are out of the home 8 to 10 hours of the day, and when they get home they just want dinner and peace and quiet. There's no more fishing trip with dad, where you can tell him all about the bully at school. No more sewing lessons with mom, where you can tell her about the boys that tease you, or the girls that insult you.

And so our children seek out attention through video games, Facebook, MySpace, drugs, alcohol, teen-sex, and other avenues. And we wonder why kids these days (and even adults) can't handle the stresses of life. They have no support at home, let alone in the mean world that exists without them.

Throw on top of that, the pervasive destruction of moral and religious beliefs in this country (and world), and you find yourself with ilequipped teens who don't even have God to rely on.

"Too much exclusive use of electronic information dehumanizes what is a very, very important part of community life and living together."

A lot of Anthropologists have been saying the same for quite awhile now. Our brain wouldn't have evolved the way it did without social interaction, it has been a distinctly deciding factor for setting us apart from other species. While what the Bishop was saying is taking it into a slight extreme, he is right about one thing; Passive aggressive methods of communication are having a huge impact on personal psyche on not just the younger generation, but the current as well.

The interesting thing is no one really knows how this will ultimately affect us in the long run. Science compels me to say; On with the experiment!

He makes some valid points, but applies them only to facebook; and only the negative points of facebook.
Facebook keeps me in touch with old friends, and has a lot to offer what in normal day to day life won't be possible (eg: like uploading a picture of a newborn baby only takes uploading it, for all my friends to see; no longer printing and posting, finding addresses etc...).

But take "facebook" out of the article here, and you'll notice a valid point which he makes, in that society has lost the patience to learn and deal with communication with each other.
Facebook really has nothing to do with that and is besides the point.

But people in the spotlight, think of our president, religious leaders, especially people with religious ambitions, are often mal quoted by the press.
A cut and paste, bring a sentence out of the context, and the meaning of someone's speech is easily changed, giving it a whole different meaning.
I thought the press was more mature than that... That it could at least mark the good things this person had to say...

I'm unbelievably confused. Should we have cut the word "Facebook" from the quotes of the Bishop's speech? Or did the Bishop begin by highlighting the positives of social networking, and we just didn't paste that part in the article? Or should Tom's stop doing tech and start covering all news?

While I am no fan of websites like myspace I find it ironic that this guy says they are "pulling teens out of reality" and like hes not?! Hes a archbishop he believes and teaches that a invisible deity made us from dirt and then made women out of the first man's rib. Like hes in any position to criticize something for bringing people out of reality.

another stupity of the church......why cuz church sux...live the way u wanna be dont let anyone or anything tell u have to behave

hahaha, sry, loved that one, i agree with your post though, +1

I personally never got into social networks, I have a facebook account i access once a week at best, why? I dont know, I have no use for it, and your right, in a while another form of "blind" communication will come about and that will be the new problem, shit just keeps hitting the fan for some ppl, teach children common sense (yes, impossibly hard for those who dont have it to begin with...) and right there everyone will be better off

Why would God stop you from killing yourself? If you want to be a retard, then go ahead, it's your decision to make. But don't come whining once it's time to settle the score.

I believe that bishop with regards to losing out on a bit of social skills, but that's about it. Anything in excess is unhealthy, that includes socializing exclusively online, but also the opposite. Suicides isn't something invented this millenia, but something that's simply heard of more often with the advent of global news systems such as the internet. I'm guessing the bishop is as misguided with reagrds to this as he is in his belief. But be that as it may, less experience equals poorer skills, and obviously with time not being flexible enough to compensate for skills not excercised, one does lose skills in that particular branch - in this case irl social interaction.

Being a retard is not a choice one can make for himself. It's a physical condition one is or isn't born with.
And in general nobody can blame god for anything. We're responsible for our own self, and if we fail, then it's our problem ; no matter which god, or gods, one happends to be most inclined to believe in. That's really one thing all religions I've heard about have in common. Responsibility is with the individual, not with the creator. Make the best out of whatever you've got ; end of story.

lol @ bishop he should go back to his cave. What a stupid thing to say from him.