I think the argument you are too young to die is simply invalidating of whatever pain that youth is in. Pain is pain despite age. It also addresses nothing useful and is busily engaged in one-sided prophecy. Just because life may get better when you are older and knowing that is a potential won't make a blind bit of difference to the person who is in pain in the present.
It is not helpful as advice and is dismissive of youth in general. Because they are often in a unique bind that adults no longer usually face.
For example, they are obligated to live with their parents. If your home environment is a toxic wasteland that does not result in broken bones but provokes consistent mental torment. Then too bad you are stuck in it and nothing is coming to the rescue. Unless you want to render yourself homeless like I did, but that just resulted in another toxic wasteland of experience. Going into care is also potentially pretty damaging experience even if you are rescued from broken bones it will leave different kinds of scars sadly.
Then add in the mandatory demand to attend school. If your school environment is also a toxic wasteland and you have been singled out as something to torment. Then your life is now officially a living hell.
What is baffling to me is how lightly bullying is treated. It should be treated like a fucking emergency that will result in soul death of never wanting to leave your room or be seen by people ever again. I feel the severity should be more in line with if you find out an elderly woman is being denigrated and abused daily.
I am aware it is children hurting children and criminalising them would be a mistake but at the same time, toothless bullying countermeasures do not send enough of a warning shot across the bow. In fact they seem to promote the opposite. That you can get away with it and nothing but a minor inconvenience that may even feel like a reward in of itself will happen. Stupid people will say they will grow out of it, or reference sticks and stones or other trite idiotic phrases. But child developmental psychology says otherwise. They will grow into it like any behaviour that is rewarded by an acknowledgement from their peers. A bully will eventually become an adult you find in a work environment... The damaged child may well also become a damaged adult.
I say nip it in bud early. There has to be some very sharply felt ramification on this issue. My thought on it is mandatory empathy lessons attended by the parents as well so they too are inconvenienced or gain greater insight into their own child.
Because it is not okay to torture anyone and age is the most asinine excuse for it being trivialised. A cat kicked in the face is often shown more compassion than a bullied child. I remember when I was bullied. Most responses to it were an equivalent of victim-blaming. Have you tried not to do things that will get you bullied? What like giving up my love of science and revelling in geek culture. Fuck off! Erm, sounds awfully like, have women that get raped tried not drinking alcohol and wearing short skirts. Most will condemn that view. But not so for the bullied it seems.
It is all so painfully absurd. Not enough is done to meaningfully address pain in either children, adults or elderly. The youth wind up uniquely trapped as a result. Being trapped in pain that seems eternal is a recipe for suicide in the making.
I am not interested in the age of the person in pain, more the question of what is your source of pain and how can that be addressed? Sadly there is not much in the way of meaningful support left that does not manifest like a mind-altering chemical thrown at a problem that is likely still occurring.
Which to me is as stupid as being repeatedly punched in the face and being told to take heroin so its not so bad. But at the same time nothing is done to get rid of the fist punching you in the face. A lot of society these days seems like that. Age is irrelevant to that awareness.
I could also go into the dismissive nature of referring to teenage angst like it is trivial. When they are inheriting a world on fire and will likely be breathing microplastics and witness the greatest loss of biodiversity. Whilst simultaneously being vilified for being entitled for wanting what my generation had and demanding more fairness and agency over themselves and their own future that current politics sure does not represent. It is grim to know that economically the younger generation is far worse off than I ever was in this country. That jobs for life are pretty much imaginary and at some point they will have to contend with automation. As well as being devalued by having to compete globally. Hell even just gatherings of youths that seem intimidating get broken up. Whilst simultaneously the places they used to go get shut down...
No wonder the youth is miserable and youth suicide is skyrocketing. Any way I waffled and ranted enough. I have no solutions either to these broken systems that consistently ignore sources of pain while trying to convince us we live in a civilised society.
