Are smartphones having a serious impact on the mental health of teenagers? That’s what George asked on this evening’s The Right Hook, when he talked to family psychotherapist Dave Kavanagh about a growing concern that smartphones are pushing teens to suicide. Listen below:
The worrying relationship between adolescents and their phones is not just a concern in Europe; South Korea’s Education Ministry has created a new app in order to reduce its high levels of student suicide by warning parents that their child is at risk.
The state-sponsored application, which will be releases presently, is programmed to detect when children and teenagers use words or phrases relating to suicide on social media or Internet searches on their smartphones.
Such usage would then cause an alert to be sent to parents.
Education Minister Seo Nam-Soo says that the he hopes that parents will install the app on their children’s devices as an additional aid to combating stress in schools.
"Student suicide has become a social problem requiring systematic and comprehensive steps to prevent it," Mr Seo said in a statement.
The rate of suicide in South Korea is the highest of any of the member states in the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). The crisis is particularly prevalent among school students, with a spike in the number of suicides observed during the period of the year when the competitive university entrance exams are completed.
These exhaustive exams determine admission and matriculation to the country’s elite universities, with most South Koreans believing this to be essential to secure a good job, and even a marriage. Security is tight in the country during the exams, with airport take-offs and landings delayed to accommodate start times and traffic banned from a 200m radius of state test centres.
The Education Ministry revealed that almost 900 students took their own lives between 2008 and 2014, with problems in the family home, depression, academic achievement and career concerns cited as the reasons behind the high numbers. More than half of all South Korean teenagers aged between 14 and 19 said they had experienced suicidal thoughts.
A Ministry survey revealed that South Korea’s teenagers are either reluctant or lack access to professional mental health care support, and many turn to friends as a source of counsel. Mr Seo said he hopes that the app will monitor those conversations in text messages and on social media for any warning signs.
But South Korean teachers have been slow to welcome the app, claiming that the government should be addressing the causes of suicidal thoughts among the country’s youth rather than trying to spot the symptoms.
"Instead of a stop-gap policy, we must work out a fundamental and eventual solution, because various factors lead to the suicide of students," the Korean Federation of Teachers' Associations said in its statement.
