To people who deny the correlation between the Internet and teen suicide,

 

You walk into your room. On a beaten wooden table sits your phone, cool and motionless. It is off.

You contemplate whether you should turn it on or not, wondering if you have missed anything or if anyone has even bothered to communicate with you.

You realize that this action could go two ways.

You could turn on your phone, and it will go into a seizure of vibrations, the bright screen displaying countless missed calls and text messages from group chats and tweets you were mentioned in.

Or it could go another way.

You could turn on your phone, the bright screen displaying your lock screen of some shirtless celebrity, but no notifications.

You could decide to unlock your phone, thinking that she’s gotten many notifications and that this silence is just the calm before the storm.

You could then wait five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five minutes. And still there could be nothing.

You contemplate this as you stare at the black screen of the phone, the same black screen that is capable of sending you into a void of self-love or self-doubt.

You decide to turn on your phone.

As you press the lock screen button down, you suddenly regrets your decision.

But it is too late; the phone has already begun to turn on.

The phone turns on. A picture of a shirtless celebrity with the time 9:05 PM appears on the screen.

No notifications.

You decided to unlock your phone, thinking that you’ve probably gotten so many notifications that this is the calm before the storm.

5 minutes pass: You turn your Wi-Fi on and off again to make sure that the Internet is working properly.

10 minutes pass: You decided to turn your Wi-Fi off; your data is probably faster than your Wi-Fi anyways.

15 minutes pass: You decided to refresh the notifications tab on all your social media accounts, just in case your phone happened to not be working properly.

20 minutes pass: You refresh them one more time, with Wi-Fi on and off, just to be sure.

25 minutes pass: A feeling of loneliness replaces the blood flowing through your veins.

At 27 minutes you feel the vibration of your phone against your sweaty palm and your heart begins to pound with excitement. You happily look at the screen.

It is just one of your “friends”, asking for a like on her Instagram photo, as if you would’ve done so anyway.

You locks the phone and put it back down.

At 29 minutes she gets a notification that says that one of your contacts has just made a twitter account.

Only the account is not named after the contact, but yourself.

You unlocks her phone and turns on the notifications for this account, wondering why someone would be stealing your identity; you’re not even that interesting.

At 33 minutes your phone begins to go into a seizure of vibrations, with tweets and mentions so insulting they are unspeakable.

You close the app and turns off the phone.

After playing these two scenarios in your head

You decide that maybe today is not the day to be social.

 

 

This issue

Is more incredibly concerning

Than many of you may think.

Lives lost because of ones piercing

And bloodstained words.

Open your eyes.

 

Sincerely,

A believer