Opinion

Ever growing is the number of American young people who are living every day in depression, despair and pains, giving rise to a serious social concern.

According to the recent report released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as of 2021, about 57% of the American girls are now suffering from chronic depression or despair, a 36% increase over 2011 and a record high in the past decade.

It also said the number of teenagers suffering from depression and violence has also increased to 29% in 2021 from 21% in 2011.

 American newspaper The Los Angeles Times reported that the number of girls who attempted suicide in the US has increased by 51% in 2021 as against two years before.

The question rises as to why the children, the synonym for dream, hope and liveliness, suffer from depression and violence in the US.

In a word, it is attributable to the US society rife with the “violence culture” as well as to all other social evils and the law of the jungle endemic in its life style.

The American children watch over 200 000 violence scenes through TV and other media until they reach the age of 18 and 16 000 of them are related to murder. And nearly all movies, cartoons and games are full of scenes of bloody violence and murder. All these scenes are making the children give in to an impulse to replicate the scenes in spite of themselves.

An American psychologist deplored such reality as follows:

We are living in a society where violence is beautified. Movies, social media and games are all about violence. The children and adolescents have been immersed in such contents for a long time and their cognition of violence is becoming paralyzed. As a result, they accept violence or imitate violent actions and take violence as a means of solving problems.

The spread of such “gangster culture” in the US leads to an increase in the number of young people who think of temperaments of killer and violent personality as “proud ones”. On the other hand, many other young people are suffering from depression, since they are not accustomed to such “culture”.

Young people who should be full of vitality and give full rein to their dreams have no other choices but to fall victim to immorality and social evils and groan in the abyss of death.

The “violence culture” of the US instills in the minds of the young people the wrong idea and perception that there is no limit to the freedom of human being. This casts a dark shadow and horror to their hearts, brings only pessimism and despair about future and society and makes them give up their lives in the end.

This is an inevitable outcome of the decadent and ailing American society where all sorts of social evil practices and the law of the jungle are rampant.