American children are dying; Congress takes on AI; Senator Feinstein’s Whereabouts; Sean Cooper on Philadelphia’s mayor’s race
The Big Story
A new analysis of federal death statistics showed that in 2020 and 2021, decades of progress in death rates among American children took a sharp U-turn. The overall mortality rate among those 19 and younger increased 11% in 2020 and 8% in 2021, the largest consecutive increases in 50 years. The increases are largely driven by homicides, drug overdoses, car accidents, and suicides. Some of those increases began over the previous decade before being exacerbated by pandemic-era lockdowns that accelerated the decline in mental health among children. Lois Lee, a pediatric emergency physician at Boston Children’s Hospital, told The Wall Street Journal that the hospital is seeing patients as young as 8 years old with “suicidal ideation.”
The decline in mental health has led some organizations, such as the American Psychological Association, to begin advocating for stricter social media use among American youth. Last week, the APA said social media platforms should restrict or remove content that encourages self-harm, eating-disorder behavior, or other health-risk behaviors.
But some fear that the cat is already out of the bag. A piece in the New York Post on Tuesday details multiple tragedies involving social media and teenagers. As we’ve covered previously, one Chicago teen, Nate Bronstein, killed himself last year after being bullied on social media for being unvaccinated (he was vaccinated). His mother, Rosellene, believes she could have saved him if she’d been able to monitor his Snapchat account and believes parents need to view social media as they view cigarettes or alcohol. Lucy Sayah, now 20, believes her anorexia was exacerbated by social media use when she was 17. “Social media does not allow children and young teens to live in the present and instead forces them to view false realities of other individuals’ lives, which has the potential to be harmful,” she told the New York Post.
