In November of 2018, TIME published an article reporting that life expectancy dropped for the third year in a row, partly due an increase in the number deaths by suicide and drug overdoses (labeled as accidental injuries). The interesting fact is that these types of deaths have risen more than heart disease and cancer, which remain the 2 leading causes of death in the United States.
While the TIME article reiterated data that was available as early as February of 2018, the article went viral because it describes an emerging narrative that contrasts sharply from the typical crisis of cancer and heart disease. In the narrative of American health and longevity, of all things, death by suicide continued to grow for the third strait year. In some respect, I think this touches on an emerging narrative of mental health. But before you panic and can your therapist, take a look at the data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. The data brief concerning 2017 mortality illustrates the following:
In that sense, heart disease and cancer continue to be the proverbial elephant in the room. Meaning that if you’re concerned about your life expectancy (or quality of life), you are well served to eat right, exercise, and take care of your body. But in that graph, if you’re looking for increasing causes of deaths, unintentional injuries and suicide are pretty well defined. And since unintentional injuries includes drug overdoses, you have a story that more Americans are dying from depression, suicide, and drug overdoses. This is the picture, and it’s not pretty.
My Theory
As a non-scientist who has done absolutely no research to backup my opinion, I think that suicide and “unintentional injuries” speaks to a greater problem of clinical depression permeating through the United States. I base my observations upon the millions of hours I have spent surfing Reddit, Imgur, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms in which individuals frequently post satirical comments concerning death and depression. Oftentimes, these posts will speak about crushing debt, lack of career prospects, or serious issues with anxiety and overall health. That type of humor is something I just don’t understand. I certainly don’t think it’s funny to joke about suicide (and I struggle to relate to people who think it is). Perhaps I feel this way because life can be difficult. And sometimes I have moments where I think I really underestimated the strength of my parents, grandparents, and so forth. In many respects, their lives were much more difficult than mine.
That being said, there is one phenomenon that children incur today that is unique to our time. And that is the diffusion of electronic devices throughout lives. As a parent, I find it incredibly tempting to pull out my phone and read the news when I should be interacting with my family. And I really think my phone creates an environment where I’m okay with passive parenting. Or more specifically, passive attention. Now that my children are older, they are constantly deciding between going outside or watching endless videos of Minecraft. It creates a odd environment, and I think that environment is a little less wholesome.
Have you ever been on a date when someone pulls out their phone? Before you know it, both people are on their phones. And while I don’t want to be a crotchety, old grump attesting to “the good old days”. There is an implicit message that the phone is more interesting. And perhaps it is. But the problem is that the age-old human connection suffers, which has shown to be a strong influencer of good health and longevity. In the last iPhone release, Apple released a System app called “Screen Time” which reports the user screen time. Cell phones have become enough of an issue in my family that we’ve considered “electronic free Sundays”. We play board games and talk. Which leads me to my next point.
I have a bad habit of surfing the news for hours when I lie in bed before I go to sleep. If I let myself, I honestly could surf into the early morning, as all my news feeds are presented to me in an endless stream of data. I’ve often wondered how different our interaction would be if our data “streams” were concise reports that had clear beginnings and endings. Instead of a stream of Facebook friends who have more successful families than my own, I could review of report of my 5-10 friends and their weekend activities. Report completed? Time to go to bed. But I’ve noticed (with screen time) that my cell phone use has become an issue enough to influence my sleep patterns. Which influence my attitude, which influence my job performance, which influence my family. In some weird sense, my screen time is a subtle issue that colors my life. But Facebook in particular brings me to my next point.
Social media is overflowing with stories of the rich and famous, and their successful lives. LinkedIn (my personal favorite) contains more than 100,000 “life coaches” who will tell you that the secret to happiness, money, wealth, and fame is to wake up at 4:30 AM, run 5 miles, drink turbo coffee, work 18 hours, kiss your kids goodnight, and repeat. While I’m being somewhat facetious, Facebook is more seriously showing families that make me wish I was orphaned kid browsing through a catalog of wannabe parents. And part of it makes me feel depressed, because (like any beauty magazine), it leaves me wondering why my daughter was cut from the dance team, and why my other daughter didn’t make the A/B honor roll. In that sense, some of my favorite LinkedIn posts are people who are honest that sometimes life is hard. My mother used to tell me that every person puts their pants on 1 leg at a time. I’ll say it again. Every person puts their pants on 1 leg at a time.
Several days ago I saw a picture of Bill Gates waiting in a fast food line. The caption read “When you’re worth about $100,000,000,000, run the largest charity in the history of the world and stand in line for a burger, fries and Coke at Dick’s like the rest of us,” And this image couldn’t contrast more sharply than the life coaches on LinkedIn telling me to do more.
Which leads me to my last point. Social media is like a platform where nothing is real life. From instagram filters to touched up, carefully edited media, it creates an illusion of a good life that isn’t yours. And the more screen time I invest, the less happy I become.
If I were to prospect why there is an increase in drug use and suicides, I would imagine they are related to clinical depression. And I respectfully suggest that clinical depression is partly influenced by screen time. In that respect, I think Apple’s “screen time” is long overdue but tragically needed as our society becomes increasingly integrated with a perception of life that more closely resembles a beauty magazine.
So before I leave you with my theory that screen time is influencing American mortality rates (not to mention driving while texting), I want to leave you with a solution. Several years ago, I began a simple practice of writing down the best part of my day, on a daily basis. I got this idea from a TED talk by Shawn Achor titled “The happy secret to better work.”. In this talk, Shawn covers the obvious observation that happy workers are productive workers. And in this talk, he discusses a practice of changing yourself to be more positive. As someone who practices this daily, I can say it works. The oddity is that this practice has taught me to search for the best part of my day, if that makes any sense. For example, the other day I was biking home from work and I passed by a brand new wooden fence. The fence smelled wonderful. And at that moment, I didn’t say to myself, “Biking home sucks, it’s really cold.” I said to myself, “This fence smells absolutely wonderful. What a moment, biking home with the sun shining on my face.” At that moment, I knew this was the best moment of my day. This very morning, I spilled coffee in my car as I was driving to work. Thankfully, the coffee spilled in a plastic section of my car and was well contained. You know what? I was thankful that it was contained. Forcing me to recognize the positive has “rewired” my brain to search for the best moment. And oftentimes, that best moment is found in my interaction with another person.
If you are suffering from depression or anxiety, I strongly recommend that you seek out counsel from a medical professional. If you have thoughts of suicide, I strongly suggest you call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline (or a medical professional). I once heard someone say that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Don’t make permanent choices to temporary problems.
And lastly, put down your phone. It’s like reading a beauty magazine, it will make you feel ugly. And if someone didn’t tell you today, despite that the internet wants you to think – you are beautiful.