One suggested cause for this rise in adolescent depression and suicide is the advent of social media (SM) ( McCrae, Gettings, & Purssell, 2017 Twenge, Joiner, Rogers, & Martin, 2018). Additionally, suicide is the second leading cause of death among youth between the ages of 10 and 34 ( Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, 2017), with a 47.5% increase since 2000 ( Miron, Yu, Wilf-Miron, & Kohane, 2019). In the USA, depression diagnoses among youth increased from 8.7% in 2005 to 11.3% in 2014 ( Mojtabai, Olfson, & Han, 2016).
Over the past several decades, adolescent depression and suicidal behaviours have increased considerably.