This style of article -- the attempt to will truths into existence through the imposition of a specific perspective -- is always so patronizing...

Any time the word "objectively" is bandied around, you should be extremely skeptical. Very often, it is used to impose a values system pre-emptively on the conversation, and then make its argument from illusorily high ground. A true discussion on the subject would of course start with "what are the values we are trying to encourage in a healthy society, and how does that view differ between teens and other people?" which NY Mag doesn't seem interested in examining.

I suspect this is because the imposition of an external values system itself is what's killing teens. You will have to take me at my word that I have personal experience with this question among people who are in this demographic.

To me, teen suicide is making my life worse. It's making your life worse, too. If we want to play this game of counterfactuals, let's take it to its logical ends: how much will we miss these potential future inventors, stewards of good will, and powerhouses of industry when they are gone?

Also, objective measures are pointless when suicide is and only ever will be a subjective experience motivated by subjective viewpoints. If the point is "look how great everything is out here, outside of your little poisoned head!" then we can expect a spike, not a reduction, in suicides.

I didn't even have high hopes for this article but wow, this is an astonishingly out-of-touch take. Shame on the author, truly, for this.

Especially this part:

> It seems possible that the story of the teen-suicide crisis will come to resemble that of the opioid epidemic. Perhaps in a few years, we will find the U.S. economy’s structural inequities had less to do with American adolescents’ declining mental health than did the sudden introduction of a highly addictive (digital) technology.

Come on! There has been vigorous debate over exactly these things, and where they fit into our society (incentive structures for doctors and pharma companies to push their products on vulnerable populations, incentive structures for social media companies to promote or demote certain kinds of potentially harmful content) precisely because this is a question of societal values! The question "Do we subject unwitting populations to things we know will harm them?" can be answered in different ways. In our current society, we've decided that permitting companies to act in these ways is in our best interest in order to legitimize this method of organizing capital markets (the profit motive) and refusing to apply different rules for different companies or industries on the basis of appeals to "free market" principles.

I will note that, without access to the internal research of e.g. Meta or e.g. Purdue Pharma, the "consumers" of such "technologies" are literally, legally incapable of consenting to the set of possible outcomes that may result from their use. Furthermore, especially in the case of opioids, the people making the decision to accept such products are by definition under duress, as opioids are typically prescribed for constant and unbearable pain.