Youth suicide and hopelessness have risen sharply over ten years

Evidence

Consider: Over the past ten years, suicide attempts and feelings of persistent hopelessness among high school students have increased by a staggering 40 percent. Girls are at greater risk—one in ten American female teens actually attempted self-destruction in 2024, and studies suggest that nearly a third experienced suicidal ideation. Never before have young people found themselves to be so disconnected from the things that make life worthwhile. We are confronting a pandemic of loneliness, and an unprecedented spike in “deaths of despair.” — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 47

Categorization

• QUESTION: Falsifiable numbers worth verifying: 40% rise, 1 in 10 female teens attempting in 2024, a third with ideation. Test the bet’s factual base.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader reading on the loneliness pandemic and ‘deaths of despair’ literature.