Whenever you hear of a young person committing suicide, if you are like most Americans, you wonder why anyone could become that desperate, but I don’t for a very good reason.

When I was 19-years-old, I decided to take my own life, but not for any reason many would expect. My life wasn’t bad. I was in college, making good grades. However, I lived in a town that has many thousands of retired people and that got me to thinking. I saw that most of these retirees worked their entire adult life and then retired and died. I asked, for what? I came to the belief that unless one made some kind of significant contribution to society, life in general was nothing more than years of toil before one died of some terrible disease or from old age. To be honest, I didn’t see myself making any significant contribution to society, and I definitely didn’t like the idea of working for the next 50 years just so I could retire and die. Basically, I saw life as being hopeless and decided I didn’t want to go through all that, so I planned and looked forward to taking my own life.

When I see reports like the one quoted below, I believe I understand why:

“The rate of U.S. adolescents and young adults dying of suicide has reached its highest level in nearly two decades, according a report published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.”

“In 2017, there were 47 percent more suicides among people aged 15 to 19 than in the year 2000. Overall, there are 36 percent more people aged 20 to 24 living in the U.S. today than at the turn of the century.”

“With more than 6,200 suicides among people aged 15 to 24, suicide ranked as the second-leading cause of death for people in that age group in 2017, trailing behind deaths from unintentional motor vehicle accidents, which claimed 6,697 lives.”

Today’s younger generation is suffering from the same hopelessness that I was, but perhaps for different reasons.

I’ve seen many reports that have correlated teen and young adult suicide to the increased use of cell phones and social media. Relationships used to be personal – face-to-face, but now, most of it is done via social media, leaving many young people feeling isolated and lonely.

By the time they come out of the public school system, they have been taught that their parents are wrong in most things, authority figures are evil and dangerous and you are the only thing that is important.

They look at our nation’s leaders and see government that is more dysfunctional than any family portrayed on television and more impotent than a century old man. They not only don’t get along, but obviously prefer to fight, quarrel and disagree on virtually everything, making our government inept and unable to accomplish anything. They no longer care about the American people as they operate with tunnel vision focused on themselves and their political party ideology.

Basically, our young people see a very bleak and hopeless future, politically and personally. They just don’t see a future worth living so, they opt to check out of life and while most fail to understand, I know exactly how many of them feel.

If America wants to reduce the suicide rates for teens and young adults, then we adults need to stop acting like spoiled children and start running our country the way our Founding Fathers intended us to run it.