but is our society creating more people willing to murder. more people who feel they don't belong with nothing to live for and nothing to lose?

people like to point to japan. aside from the gun control aspect, is there something else they have that we are missing?

First thing I notice about social media is that adults are out openly, prominently promoting combat fantasy, and teens aren't so much.

Kind a always knew you had some deep issues mat by the way u handled a scenario a while back and just your attitude about it all. Thought to myself yeah this is an unhappy guy. Not trying to be a jerk but it all makes a little more sense now

And there's the students who come to school armed because they are scared and want to defend themselves from their perceived threats of various determinability only found in each particular circumstances. So add not enough fear to the potential reason why they aren't happening daily. However which adults are using fear as an influence on students in their environment? Do they use social media?

I've often wondered why no one's shot up a poker room considering how absurdly upset some of the players are when they storm off. And in a place like Arizona, where everyone except me has 29 guns or so, it's even more surprising.

Why do you think our society has become broken? Are you suggesting that Earth / USA is a worse place to live in the 21st century than the few dozen preceding centuries?

in some ways, yes. for people who feel so alienated they turn to murder and/or suicide.

Maybe anger isn't exactly or widely stigmatized by poker players because you want the mad player to come back calm but steamy? People get mad at video games too, but rarely if ever do you hear of the tv being shot up. Anger has a lot of context and experience that never adds up to violence or acting more aggressive than "flipping the table".

Having a pressure valve to release the emotion in smaller more frequent doses, imho. Bad beat—->Steam and Frustration—->catharsis.

When the “game” is totally within the mind of a hormonal teenager and played out over social media and there is only an ever increasing pressure to get revenge, there is no small healthy way to express anger.

Fwiw in the Florida case, social media *should* have been beneficial since this particular case involved a shooter with serious diagnosed mental problems and the social media was clearly indicating this individual was capable of harm.

If you email a threat to someone the FBI visits you. Maybe if you post a facebook whatever and threaten to harm, you should also get a visit.

But back to the thread, sorry for derail, our youth need healthy ways to experience and vent healthy amounts of anger and frustration.

Related to this topic, NPR has had a lot of interesting pieces addressing the issue.

This interview, for example: http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2018/...-school-attack

VeeDDzz,

I'm terrible at getting my thoughts across, always have been.

The competitions (sports/chess/debates/etc) would involve other schools. The festival activities (car night/book night/Goth dress and body art night/etc) would be community focused but open to the kids who travel from visiting school on that given Friday.

This would be a significant change in culture and a not simple logistical undertaking. On average, these would take place every other week at middle schools and high schools, as do HS sports events. Surrounding each festival, if done well, would be booths for food, local businesses, etc.

To create the sea change in children's empathy, understanding of each other and respect for the myriad differences among the throng, these changes at the middle school and high school level are tantamount, but the building blocks to make it work must start in elementary school. How and what that would look like in the elementary schools is beyond my experience and I won't pretend to have an answer.

Thanks for the response, and cheers!

School shootings are up, but violent crime rates in the US as a whole are dropping, so I don't think a general claim that the desire and willingness to kill is increasing is justified (or you'd expect that to carry on past school as well). Same for empathy.

Right now there are about 55.9 million students in elementary and secondary schools. According to wiki there were 9 school shootings last year. No social theory about the effects of video games, bullying, or social media, etc can give you an answer that will apply with that level of accuracy.

Good point. So the problems are likely schools, themselves?

That makes sense from my personal experience.

Really? I don't think there is any consensus on if the "desire and willingness to kill is increasing."

I also don't think American young adults are any more prone to being isolated, angry and socially misfit than when compared to other countries. However, I admit that our young adults seem much more likely to commit mass murder.

However, focusing on teenage angst, violent video games, lazy parents, etc. are all canards to avoid discussing the ready access Americans have to weapons of war.

what if you include suicide? i already said i don't care about the guns. you can take them away.

this latest incident and the coverage just reminded me how tough i believe kids might have it these days. and i am really just wondering what's going on there. and it has a strange personal note for me because of my own highschool memories.

Common sense, right?

Depression rates are higher, sure.

Why?

Here's a crazy theory: greater female influence in the culture.

Mat, can you cite this? I don't believe it is true.

As others have noted, violent crime overall is down. What we as a society are reacting to recently are school shootings and mass gun shootings. We are not reacting to increased mass knife killings or rocket launcher murders. The overall desire and willingness to kill is not necessarily greater, but the easy access to do so, via guns, is.

The rational answer to this situation imo, is that easy access to assault weapons capable of quick and easy mass murder, makes it easier for those individuals that already have a desire and willingness to kill, to do so.

You say that you are not interested in the gun debate, ban them, that's fine, but you still want an answer to your question. If the above is true, then the answer to your question is that your premise of an increased desire and willingness to kill is not accurate, and the reason for increased mass shootings recently, is easy access to mass shooting weapons and repeated copycat situations.

i hope my perception is wrong.

I don't post enough in this subforum to be able to tell if you are being sarcastic or not.

This would actually be a better discussion, since suicide is a much higher frequency event than mass murder, and consequently, there is a lot more research as to its causes.

However, you still can't discuss suicide in a vacuum without discussing guns, since the availability of guns does skew the gender comparison statistics (at least here in the US, where guns are easily obtainable), whereby men are much more likely to be successful in their suicide attempts, due to...wait for it...GUNS.

Depression or not, greater female influence overall is a net positive.

What's become of the old-fashioned macho-types? The strong, silent types? The masculinity in the culture seems certainly lacking compared to even in the 60s. The old-fashioned values for men, have been transformed into a kind of value-equality where it's acceptable for man to be emo.

Overall, this is a positive. Men have problems too.

However, this change of values may also have an unintended influence on the way that men see their problems and deal (or dont) with their problems.

Really? Why not prohibition's influence on culture? In which teens find out all the time they been lied too about about drug users being bad people? Oh and it's a very alienating influence too. You may end up with a bad reputation, in solitary confinement, or worse.

So do you have any indications of female influence to articulate related with depression?

The transformation of gender-laden values associated with masculinity; dealing with your problems head on, not giving up, "being a man" and so on. They've been transformed into gender-neutral values, such as "talking it through with someone" or "seeking support".

These may not be the best types of values for men to excel in a difficult new world. A world full of men lacking in pure grit, persistence and unyielding determination. We don't have the kind of mind-set that was needed during the industrial revolution, for example; where you'd stick it out inside a factory line all day, in what nowadays would be described as 'miserable conditions'.

The issue of increasing suicide rates is not gender specific, but it is increasingly becoming more common amongst men. Perhaps a part of the explanation resides in the transformation of the culture, from greater levels of patriarchy to lower levels of it.

And don't get me wrong. I don't believe this transformation is a bad thing overall. I am simply interested in the causes of the present observations.

WTF? The Winner Takes It All is not a murder/suicide song. And now I'm going to keep trying to see that it is every time I listen to this awesome song.