Teenage hangs herself due to abuse on ASK.FM

[-:Undertaker:-]

I didn't want to get involved in this but it absolutely is possible to educate people on "life", and if that wasn't the case then empathy couldn't exist because no-one would be able to understand anything they haven't personally been through. I don't think bans on certain sites (or types of sites) will solve anything, but neither will saying WELL DON'T LOOK AT IT!!!! or pretending that verbal/textual abuse isn't abuse.

What I mean by the education bit is that whenever something like this happens, there are always calls for 'we need more educashun' or 'we need to ban X, Y and X' - all i'm saying is that there is only so much you can do on both a financial level and a school timetable level.

I personally think the best life experiences come from stories you hear from other people rather than lectures in the assembly hall - I have learnt a lot from talking personally with teachers about a whole manner of out-of-school things. I'm all for teachers talking about completely random things in class with pupils - probably the best form of education there is. Mercer always did it.

[FlyingJesus]

Also with regards to teen pregnancies and such, the places with the monstrously huge levels of occurrence compared to anywhere else are actually the places where abstinence-only is preached and no-one is actually taught the facts, so while rates may have increased (because obviously whatever you teach people you can't force them to take on board in any subject) they are dramatically lower than in areas without proper "training"

[Empired]

@-:Undertaker:-; I think you'll make a fantastic politician. You seem to have forgotten that we're talking about a child here. A real, human child. I totally don't understand how you seem to think that it was her fault (I'm not bringing parents into this) that she ended up dead. Have you never heard of the concept of cause and effect? The cause was the comments she got, the effect was her killing herself. From what I can see, you've totally ignored the "cause" part and decided that there must only be an effect. You know there has to be a cause for there to be an effect right?

Anyway, like I said. You'll make a fantastic politician. Ignoring all emotion and feeling and just shouting the same bloody argument over and over again, just phrasing it differently to make it look like you're saying different things.

[-:Undertaker:-]

Also with regards to teen pregnancies and such, the places with the monstrously huge levels of occurrence compared to anywhere else are actually the places where abstinence-only is preached and no-one is actually taught the facts, so while rates may have increased (because obviously whatever you teach people you can't force them to take on board in any subject) they are dramatically lower than in areas without proper "training"

That doesn't add up with rates pre-1960s to rates post-1960s of STDs, abortions and pregnancies.

@-:Undertaker:-; I think you'll make a fantastic politician. You seem to have forgotten that we're talking about a child here. A real, human child. I totally don't understand how you seem to think that it was her fault (I'm not bringing parents into this) that she ended up dead. Have you never heard of the concept of cause and effect? The cause was the comments she got, the effect was her killing herself. From what I can see, you've totally ignored the "cause" part and decided that there must only be an effect. You know there has to be a cause for there to be an effect right?

Anyway, like I said. You'll make a fantastic politician. Ignoring all emotion and feeling and just shouting the same bloody argument over and over again, just phrasing it differently to make it look like you're saying different things.

I could give an emotional argument for banning cars or restricting offensive words towards homosexuals. But I won't because that's an emotional argument and doesn't have any logic to it. Take the Iraq war for instance - I oppose it on the grounds of logical and rational debate, not on sob stories (as sad as they may be).

[Zak]

First off - I totally respect @-:Undertaker:-; 's point of view. The guy speaks a lot of sense.

Lets face it, if she did commit suicide over comments on ask.fm then that's pathetic. Growing up from a hard(ish) background myself where your dad is an alcoholic. You were beaten as a child. Your parents split up numerous times. Plus having two well-documented mental conditions, not to mention the stress and pressure that I'm probably putting on myself doing what I do.

I mean c'mon. I'm sure there are many kids out there who are much worse off then me but whats the point in being that down about it? I think I can speak first hand about **** lives and has it affected me? Yes, mentally. But I overcame the rest.. It's called manning the **** up.

As I said in my last comment .. It could have been a LOT worse for majority of these people. I recently watched a documentary about the holocaust and this 90 year old woman was talking of her experiences in death labour camps.. whilst being pregnant. Her whole family was either gassed or starved to death. Worked to death, crammed on a train for 3 weeks with no food or water during the final solution and having a baby on a trek to another death camp after the 3 week train journey. Did she commit? No. Now tell me their lives are that bad.....

I'm not trying to be harsh, it is a shame but why do it in the first place especially after something so trivial?

[Catchy]

Well i'll just give one example with sex education lessons. At one point it was decided, in order to lower the low numbers of teenage pregnancies, STDs and abortions - that sex education lessons would allow pupils to grasp sex properly and thus the numbers would decrease. It seemed a sensible idea, except that the numbers of all three of those have increased massively since ex education was brought in which suggests a correlation between the two. That's an example of a seemingly good idea but which backfired with unintended consquences.

In this regard, I return to the point you made that most schools now have these services in place - so my question to you was, and still is, assuming this girls school had these services in place - what more can you possibly do that would have saved her? you are seemingly calling for more to be done, but i'm not sure you yourself even know what more can possibly be done.



I send you back to the sex education example and look forward to your response to that.



Is it that you don't understand it or actually disagree with it? if you disagree with it, i'd like to know exactly what you disagree with.

Teenage pregnancy is currently at it's lowest since 1969 so something must be working (whole different debate all together though). I don't know where the girl comes into this because not once have I mentioned her or even used her as an example in any of my replies to you. We're not talking about my views on 'freedom of speech' as like I said, it's clearly none existent seeing as Ruth Patterson has just been arrested for saying comments which a lot of people most probably agree with anyway... Is this free speech? No lol.

[-:Undertaker:-]

Teenage pregnancy is currently at it's lowest since 1969 so something must be working (whole different debate all together though). I don't know where the girl comes into this because not once have I mentioned her or even used her as an example in any of my replies to you. We're not talking about my views on 'freedom of speech' as like I said, it's clearly none existent seeing as Ruth Patterson has just been arrested for saying comments which a lot of people most probably agree with anyway... Is this free speech? No lol.

Only because of other factors including the widespread use of pills, condoms and abortion. The fact remains that carefree sex amongst young people has never been more widespread than before, and without pills/condoms and abortion the figures would be astronomical.

So sex education in its aim to reduce risky sex amongst young people has failed, because we now have more of it than ever before.

[Empired]

That doesn't add up with rates pre-1960s to rates post-1960s of STDs, abortions and pregnancies.



I could give an emotional argument for banning cars or restricting offensive words towards homosexuals. But I won't because that's an emotional argument and doesn't have any logic to it. Take the Iraq war for instance - I oppose it on the grounds of logical and rational debate, not on sob stories (as sad as they may be).

Jesus ******* Christ! Here we go.. I literally just said you bring out the same argument again and again and here you are talking about wars and gay people and cars AGAIN.

I agree with @Zak; that you speak a lot of sense but you really need to apply your "taking a step back" method to some actual emotion for a change. I totally agree that, yes, you can't use an emotional argument for cars. But are you actually attempting to tell me that cars and fourteen year old girls are the same thing? In case you hadn't noticed cars are actually inanimate objects and they can't think or feel :rolleyes: so we don't actually have any empathy for cars. The same cannot be said for real thinking, feeling humans.

[FlyingJesus]

I personally think the best life experiences come from stories you hear from other people rather than lectures in the assembly hall - I have learnt a lot from talking personally with teachers about a whole manner of out-of-school things. I'm all for teachers talking about completely random things in class with pupils - probably the best form of education there is. Mercer always did it.

Then you agree that better education methods for these things is necessary after all, if that's not how the average school does it

That doesn't add up with rates pre-1960s to rates post-1960s of STDs, abortions and pregnancies.

Abortions and STD testing have become hugely more available since those times which partially explains why figures would be up, but regardless it's absolutely nothing compared to the difference between sex-ed areas and abstinence-only areas, and that difference is current so there are far less factors to take into account when comparing them. If growth rates of "problems" (not that pregnancy and abortion are always problems anyway) are slower in areas that have good education in the subjects than in areas that don't teach it at all then despite the overall figures being higher that is something of a success

Only because of other factors including the widespread use of pills, condoms and abortion. The fact remains that carefree sex amongst young people has never been more widespread than before, and without pills/condoms and abortion the figures would be astronomical.

So sex education in its aim to reduce risky sex amongst young people has failed, because we now have more of it than ever before.

This doesn't even make sense, if they're using proper protection more and more then it isn't risky sex, it's safe sex. Eating more meat with less BSE isn't bad

[Catchy]

Only because of other factors including the widespread use of pills, condoms and abortion. The fact remains that carefree sex amongst young people has never been more widespread than before, and without pills/condoms and abortion the figures would be astronomical.

So sex education in its aim to reduce risky sex amongst young people has failed, because we now have more of it than ever before.

It's always going to be a problem though no matter what. It always has been a problem however it's just been more of a taboo subject in the past. You say it's lowered because of the widespread use of condoms and then you jump onto saying that young people are reckless when it comes to unsafe sex. Don't contradict yourself.