Suicide, except to end irreversible pain and debilitation, is a tragedy. The best science should be applied to prevent it.
Yet, authorities and media reporters distort suicide by teenagers as a mere commodity manipulable to whatever serves their self-aggrandizement, alarmism, and profit.
Back in 1997, before the Los Angeles Times became the closed-up billionaire-owned mess it is today, I convinced a reporter to write an article on the city’s massive decline in suicide, including among teenagers. Figure 1 illustrates the trend.
Source for figures: Centers for Disease Control, Compressed mortality file, 1968-1998; Multiple cause of death, 1999-2024. Includes certified suicides and suicide-suspected undetermined deaths. Rates for teens are all suicides for under age 20 divided by population age 15-19. Trendlines (dotted) are logarithmic (y = a * ln(x) + b).
I had thought such a massive, encouraging decline would break the press’s rigid negativism on covering teenagers. Was I dumb.
The resulting front-page article began by claiming 2 pre-teen children killing themselves had never occurred before in history. (Tragedies? Yes. New? No. I sent them the oldest vital stats record available showing 3 suicides among L.A. children 9 and younger in 1908. No correction, of course.)
Then followed paragraphs and paragraphs of scary sensationalism about how parents and professionals should panic that bleak music, violent games, television, and baffling “teenage” rashness was driving ever-younger 1990s teens to kill themselves.
Oh, by the way, the final paragraphs murmured, L.A. teen suicide rates HAD FALLEN sharply in recent decades. In short, the article you just read was a crock.
I was furious at the time but, in retrospect, should have been grateful. At least the 1997 article mentioned, albeit at its ass end, that teen suicide was declining. The Times back then (but not now) published op-eds like mine challenging such bad reporting.
My naïve conceit was that genuinely concerned, well-motivated authorities would be eager to study why teen suicide fell so much to… you know… learn what might prevent more. L.A.’s pioneering Suicide Prevention Center founded by concerned professionals had organized a conference at which experts would confab on how to build on these highly encouraging youthful trends. They had to cancel it when only four people registered.
Things got worse
In 2026, the Los Angeles Times spiced its unhinged prose on the “social media addiction” trial (an article Taylor Lorenz dismembered) with a link to another recent piece headlined, “As teen suicide surges…”
The headline led an article stuffed with standard-issue garbage: “In California, teen suicide has been rising faster than in most states”; “the age at which children kill themselves has been falling”; “the same strong social connections long considered protective for girls are now putting them at risk”; “the rate among Black and Asian youths is now higher than among white ones”; on “social media… graphic details and salacious speculation are algorithmically funneled to children”; “school policies may be making things worse”; more “pediatric psychiatrists” are needed; the usual.
Rising? Check. Younger? Check. Girls? Check. Minorities? Check. Pop culture? Check. Schools? Check. More shrinks? Check. The article’s boilerplate nonsense appears in EVERY article about teen suicide going back decades.
All junk
Teen suicide has not been “rising in California.” It is not rising “faster than in other states.”
CDC suicide numbers show that L.A., a giant county with 1.1 million teenagers, now averages around 40 suicides among ages under 20 per year, including 7 among teens under age 15 and 14 among girls. Small numbers like these fluctuate, allowing any unscrupulous player to pick any years to compare to declare whatever they want.
The general trends: rates plummeted from the 1970s to around 2000, went up and down in the 2000s, rose in the 2010s, then fell in the 2020s for both teens and adults (see Figures 1, 2). Normally, analysts would look for trends that affect all ages, such as the 2008 economic crash, 2010s opiate epidemic, 2020-22 COVID-19 pandemic, and massive increase in student debt. But that assumes interest in real causes.
Teen girls’ suicides remain rare, even in a huge metropolis
Back in the early 1970s, around 70 L.A. boys and 50 girls committed suicide every year; in the 2020s’, about 25 boys and 14 girls per year; in between, a general decline with small numbers bouncing around. The larger trends are shown in Figure 3.
The Times article hyped girls’ hospital emergency visits for “suicide attempts.” Yet, nowhere did it (or any other article I can find) ever mention that teen girls are far less likely than males of every age and females of every adult age to commit suicide. A teenager is 2 to 3 times more likely to suffer a parent committing suicide than the other way around, but when have you ever seen an article on that?
None of the experts quoted put two and two together to contemplate whether “suicide attempts” are troubled girls’ way to get attention for severe problems before they result in actual suicide. These are forbidden topics. Rigid press rules ban comparing teens favorably to adults or treating girls as anything other than brainless self-destructors.
Instead, the article declared that “new data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show 1 in 3 teen girls has seriously considered suicide, sparking fears among some suicidologists that the same strong social connections long considered protective for girls are now putting them at risk.”
Unconscionably, the article ignores that the same CDC’s survey showed the biggest reason by far that teen girls attempt suicide and harm themselves is not their “social connections.” It is their parents’ abuses and parents’ “severe” mental health, drug/alcohol, and violence problems in their homes.
Blacks’ and Asians’ suicide rates are not “higher than among Whites.”
That subterfuge results from redefining Hispanics as “white” while just omitting Hispanics – beyond ludicrous in 60%-Hispanic L.A.
In short, the Los Angeles Times story apes the same old lying-press dictates:
· Today’s youth are always bad and getting worse.
· Girls, minorities, and “younger and younger” teens are always driving crises.
· Teens may never be compared favorably to adults or to teens of the past.
· Teen problems must never be connected to adult abuses and troubles.
· Teens must never be portrayed as improving (exception: only if a big interest is positioned to grab credit).
· Instead of citing low teen suicide rates (i.e., that 2,499 out of 2,500 L.A. teenagers will not commit suicide at any time during their teen years), every reporter is required to ritually recite in tones of alarm: “suicide is a leading cause of death among teenagers.” (Of course it is; teens rarely die from cancer, heart disease, COVID, etc.)
Reporters – all reporters – follow these dictates so slavishly they might as well carry criminal sanctions.
The tragedy atop tragedy is that Americans stigmatize suicide as a moral failing. Mental health professionals, politicians, and reporters exploit this stigma by relentlessly presenting suicide as a problem of stigmatized populations like teenagers – especially girls, minorities, and younger ones – and by blaming easy cultural scapegoats rather than popular institutions.
Los Angeles has among the world’s most diverse, dynamic youth whose overwhelmingly encouraging trends deserve tough, fair analysis – not the same-old trashings founded in authorities’ and the press’s ancient press dogmas.
Well said as usual, Mike! What do you think is the reason why California seems to have had better trends than the rest of the USA?