When the budget is being done every year, mental health is the first on the chopping block: the counselors, who are our first defense against suicide by young boys. Of course, we cannot afford to do this, but who cares? Mental health is the flogging horse. No one is willing to bell the cat. People die by suicide and in shootings. Nearly 47,000 people die a year, and no one cares. Guns are available freely to the mentally ill to accomplish this.
Look, what we have seen, Bill, is that tech companies care about one thing, and that's their bottom line. Time and time again, we have exposed what they are doing to children, what these algorithms do. Look, the data speaks for itself. Bill, I know that you have taken a look at this, but one in three high school young women last year said she actually considered death by suicide.
Sixty-one percent of the transgender people lost to suicide were between ages 15 and 24, a finding the report connects directly to the dismantling of youth protections, the loss of crisis resources such as the LGBTQ-specific 988 suicide crisis line option 3 ended by the Trump administration in June, and the continued spread of misinformation about gender identity from the highest levels of government.
A third family has filed a lawsuit against an AI company, alleging that its chatbot drove their teen child to commit suicide. As the Washington Post reports, the parents of 13-year-old Juliana Peralta are suing AI chatbot company Character.AI, saying the company's chatbot had persuaded her that it was "better than human friends" and that it isolated from her family and friends, discouraging her from seeking help.