Suicide: Being Seen Through All Life's Phases, Even Death, is Epidemic Among Teens

By the time they arrived it was too late, and their discovery of Biggs’ body was also steamed live.

Seeing and being seen rules

So it is with today’s teens that being seen is the ultimate goal.

“If it's not recorded or documented then it doesn't even seem worthwhile," said Montana Miller, assistant professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

"For today's generation it might seem, 'What's the point of doing it if everyone isn't going to see it?'" she added.

She also said that from a sociological point of view, Biggs’ very public suicide wasn’t all that shocking in view of how today’s teens chronicle every aspect of their lives on Web sites.

Additionally, Miller likened Biggs’ suicide to other public suicides, such as jumping from a bridge, freeway overpass or rooftop.

This generation of “must be seen” children, who were raised by parents who were part of the “you can-do-no-wrong and don’t have to accomplish anything to be rewarded” generation, are even worse off than their “I’m terrific” and “I don’t have to prove anything to succeed” parents.

I know people who judged their worth by how many Christmas or birthday cards they received in the mail, or how many times a day their phones rang. After that it was how many answering machine messages that had when they got home. That morphed into the number of emails are in their inboxes.

All really bad measuring sticks of one’s worth as a human being.

Today, it’s see and be seen as often as possible on as many Web sites as possible.

Is this their version of 15 minutes of fame, or how they measure their worth?

If it’s a measure of self-worth, and if Miller is correct that they think they’re nobody unless the world sees them online, then I feel extremely sorry for these young people.

What a horrid way to live. I can’t imagine what the next dehumanizing thing we will do to validate ourselves.

I just had a horrid thought. What if the next phase in our backwards development is to establish people zoos where those who choose to can be view live doing all the things that used to make us uniquely human?

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