As I continue to marinate in grief, I feel and I think. I process. In thinking, I have three major regrets as Cooper’s father. I regret the day I ever put a smartphone in Cooper’s hands. Secondly, though it was not my choice, I regret that I did not push back harder on Cooper’s decision to major in aerospace engineering. Lastly, I regret that I was not a better listener to my son. I did not hear him. I do now. 

I don’t believe suicide is due to a single cause; I think it’s multi-causal.

Suicide is an onion with many layers. I’m going to call it the suicide onion. I feel like I keep peeling back layer upon layer of a strong white onion, and I am standing at the cutting board crying, layer after layer. Nope, I don’t wear glasses—no “not-crying-peeling-the-onion” tricks—just a full embrace of peeling the suicide onion suck fest: feeling and thinking.

Or, suicide is a long chain with many links. One broken link does not lead to suicide, nor two, or three, or maybe four. But the broken links do add up, and the more broken links there are in the suicide chain, the more the risk of suicide increases. Broken links do not mean suicide is inevitable, but we should be mindful of rising risk.

Mt. Everest is the tallest mountain in the world. She stands tall and proud at over 29,000 feet, reaching into the heavens. She’s an eternal beauty. Climbers die each year attempting to summit Everest, but more climbers die during descent—approximately 75%—than during ascent. This is interesting. I think the reason is that climbers don’t leave any reserve in the tank; they give it all going up and forget they have to come back down.

Climbing deaths on Everest are not sudden, tragic events. There is a climbing system, and small events happen; links in the climbing chain get broken. A climber gets a headache, another can’t feel their toes, someone is getting low on oxygen. Each event, alone, by itself, is generally manageable. But together, collectively, these events add up, and the synergy can lead to tragedy.

I don’t believe Cooper suddenly took his own life. It was not random. There were many broken links in the chain—a synergy. This is how my brain is thinking about Cooper’s suicide: multi-causal, an onion with many layers of complexity, broken links, synergistic.

Again, I hate writing “Cooper’s suicide.” I hate it. I prefer “taking his own life.” A child dying is the worst day. A child dying by suicide adds so much complexity. It’s a double espresso of pain and confusion. “Why?” we scream.

Back to the onion, or chain, or mountain—whichever you prefer.

In peeling back the onion, I certainly believe technology, excessive screen time, and social media have been disastrous for our youth. Cooper was a digital native; he grew up surrounded by technology in a way I did not.

We were pretty good as parents, I think, in that we limited screen time. During the week, our children were not allowed to play games—only on the weekends. During the week, Monday through Friday, it was a time to focus on school and sports, not screens.

When we ate dinner, it was at the table, together as a family, no screens. No television blaring in the background. We hold to this today. Mealtime is sacred space; we look each other in the eye and ask how the day went.

We did not give our kids smartphones until they were in 7th grade. This was our family demarcation line for a phone. If I could go back and do it again, I would not give my children smartphones until they were 25. This is hardcore, I know, and totally unrealistic. I understand.

I recently tried to do a Google search for MRI pictures of the brain, before the smartphone era and today. I cannot find good compare-and-contrast examples. I imagine technology companies and search engines would be incentivized to not show me this information.

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) in the human brain is important in impulse control—such as not taking your own life, for example. I believe technology has stunted PFC development in our youth. I believe this is one factor, a layer of the onion, in the extremely high and continually increasing suicide rates.

If I were to compare Cooper’s brain and his PFC to that of a 23-year-old living in the mountains of Alaska in 1950, I don’t think they’d look the same. I believe the PFC of the mountain man would be functional and operational, whereas I don’t believe the PFCs of today’s youth are fully developed. And this says nothing of the wiring of the rest of the brain.

We already know technology adversely impacts childhood brain development. There is increasing evidence/research for this, but I don’t think we yet know how adversely technology and staring at screens almost all day is affecting brain development in our youth. My wager: it’s ginormous.

Social media is also harmful to children, and I rue the day my children used social media. There is a reason most social media CEOs and executive staff don’t allow their children on social media. Oddly, if you don’t have a smartphone or computer, you don’t have access to social media. Technology is the vehicle; social media is the hookers, pimps, and drug lords riding in the vehicle, driving to our houses, coming to play in our children’s developing minds.

I believe social media does two-pronged damage to children. First, there is damage to the nervous system through hundreds of thousands of dopamine-receptor activations over the years.

Social media companies are not idiots. They have billion-dollar operating budgets and lots of time and money to research how to keep kids on the screen. Why? The short answer is profit. Your child is the market, and they have been for many years.

That little red “like” button on social media is a feedback loop. When we get likes on our posts/pictures/snaps/tweets, it activates a chemical reaction in the body, namely dopamine.

For example, an orgasm releases dopamine. So do cocaine, meth, and, to a lesser degree, the little red like button showing up on social media.

How many dopamine hits did Cooper have over his lifetime? Thousands upon thousands. Hundreds of thousands.

This level of repetition and all that nervous system activity can’t be good, right? Envision many of our youth today. They have small, waxy hands that shake most of the time. These are not calloused hands. They have anxiety, are depressed, and can’t talk to another person face-to-face or look them in the eye.

To put this into perspective, it took me 23 years on the fire department, dealing with a lot of stress, to develop general anxiety. Cooper was anxious at maybe 15 or 16 years old, and I know he’s not alone.

His nervous system was not responding to being stalked by a lion all day, so what, then?

Humans, unless someone can prove me wrong, are evolutionary-biological creatures. I believe in God, of course, but I don’t discount biological-evolutionary development either. The two are not mutually exclusive. I am both an evolutionary creature and I have a God-given eternal spirit. I have a warm spirit in my biological chest.

The second negative prong of social media is existential. Humans have a strong, overwhelming need and desire to be part of the “tribe.” Why? Because one can’t survive long outside the tribe, the community. It’s a biological imperative to belong, and when we don’t feel included in the tribe, it’s harmful.

Have you ever watched an episode of the series Alone? If not, you should. The all-time record on Alone is 87 days. One cannot live very long alone, period.

Loneliness, isolation, and shame—the three-headed dragon.

The challenge with social media is there is always the perceived existential threat of being kicked out of the tribe. The threat is not real, but it is perceived as real. The brain doesn’t know the difference between perceived, simulated threat and real threat. The nervous system responds accordingly.

I am arguing that one of the causes—a layer of the onion, a link in the chain—in the increased suicide rates among young people, including Cooper, is underdeveloped prefrontal cortices due to excessive screen time and technology, fried nervous systems due to repeated dopamine hits, and the perceived existential threat on social media of being kicked out of the tribe because they don’t measure up.

This is why I have not been a very good Facebooker over the years, if at all. Aside from the serious privacy concerns I have, I know social media, including FB, is simply not a healthy medium in the biological-spiritual human experience.

Let’s peel back another layer of the onion.

My wife is a schoolteacher and she is super savvy at science, technology, engineering, and math—STEM. One, she’s just smart. But two, she had excellent math teachers growing up. Today, I believe STEM is called STEAM, as “art” has been added.

I mentioned in a previous blog post that we were, as parents, ardent Montessorians. This is true. Maria Montessori is one of my heroes, and I mean this sincerely. I’ve read a few of her biographies and she’s a fascinating person to me. She used her training in medicine to create a solid educational methodology for, originally, orphans in the slums.

Aside from remaining tethered to objective reality, Montessori methods help pupils understand abstract concepts through concrete manipulative material, like math.

Our kids are good at math and much of their strong math skills derive, I think, from their mom and their early Montessori education. Cooper was exceptionally good at math. He had stupid math smarticles. Me, not so much.

Cooper wanted to go into aerospace engineering because the degree aligned with his math talent, but also because he believed he would ultimately make a lot of money in the field. When I pressed Cooper on why he wanted to make a lot of money, it was because he wanted to live near the ocean, and, so it seems, you need a lot of money to live near the ocean. He was not wrong. This is sad commentary on life in general, but facts are facts.

However, I checked Cooper and pushed back a little. My concern with aerospace engineering was that it seemed to me that where Cooper would make his future money was necessarily in the “defense” industry. I don’t think it’s political to say the US weapons industry is obscene.

This is a moral, not a political, statement. If we eliminated the top five weapons manufacturers today, the world would immediately be a safer, better place. I believe this unequivocally, and I shared as much with Cooper.

Can I advocate for God and the “defense” industry? Does it help if the language is couched in “defense” or “just war” narratives?

The point is, morally, I did not want my son working in weapons proliferation to be able to live by the ocean, and sadly, this is where the money is made in aerospace engineering, in the main. As the Catholics—the Dominicans—say, the means never justify the ends. The Dominican dies hard in me.

Ultimately, I wanted to support Cooper (self-agency), and I did, but I expressed my concerns to him. I supported his degree choice, AE, and his future work.

Isn’t it our job as parents to help establish moral boundaries, to be confidants rather than “best friends”? I thought it important to share the truth rather than tell Cooper what he may have wanted to hear. What I hope he heard was, “I love you, I support you no matter what, and these are my concerns…”

This tension created a friendly conversation Cooper and I would have over the last five years. We called the conversation “Monk or Millionaire.” We both smiled when we had this conversation.

You see, I believe Cooper’s pursuit of an aerospace engineering degree mentally broke him on some level. It’s another layer of the suicide onion, a general consideration on my mind map, a possible break in one of the links on the chain. The AE degree at the University of Arizona (UA) is rigorous. I have heard it’s the second or third most demanding degree program on campus, out of over 150 majors.

Over Cooper’s four years, I often felt like I was running a triage unit when he would come home for breaks. He was wiped out. I know he was going hard at the frat partying and studying hard, but I would often ask him, “Is this degree worth it? Why not study economics or business administration?”

I asked him to balance his math courses with courses in the humanities. He did. He took courses in Islamic studies and Buddhism, for example.

I would even throw my old fire department logic at him: “You can’t help anybody if you don’t arrive safely.” I would ask him, “What good is an AE degree if you’re all broken down when you complete it?”

Mt. Everest—75% of fatalities occur on descent.

Cooper was not a quitter; he was tenacious in the things he started. No, tenacious is not the right word—that sounds forced. Cooper was patient and persistent in the things he started. He finished them. When Cooper was little, he would work on a 500-piece puzzle in the middle of the tiled hallway, and I would watch him come and go to the puzzle over the course of several days until it was complete.

Another good example: Cooper was a black belt in Taekwondo. He stayed the course in training over three years until he achieved his black belt rank. Slow and steady, he stayed with it.

Cooper stayed in the AE program at UA because it was an academic, intellectual challenge for his gifted mind; because he started it and wanted to complete it; and finally, because Cooper fancied having enough money so he could live near the ocean.

The thing is, Cooper knew the system—this whole thing—is rigged and is a joke. We would talk about this. I would counter, “Yes, ‘the matrix’ is a joke and we’re all pawns. I concede.”

But, I would argue, breaking bread with friends, having a bitter beer or coffee with another, hiking a mountain, skiing, petting a dog, helping another, reading a book, watching a sunrise, listening to music, gardening, praying, meditating, raising a family, loving another, laughing, and dancing—these are not nothing.

It’s possible to concede the game is rigged and still live a happy life within the matrix, no?

So I would argue with Cooper, “If it’s all rigged and you know it, then drop it all and become a monk. Drop out of the system. Give a full bird salute and opt out. Take your talent and walk.”

I had visions of Cooper leaving America and living in one of those yellow wooden houses on the shores of some picturesque bay in Norway. He was married to a beautiful Jewish woman with long, dark curly hair, and they had two children. He fished a lot in the bay. He worked remotely for MIT or some such smart educational institution. Cooper was at peace and contented in the relative silence, and, to the degree possible, he had taken steps to remove himself from “the matrix,” as he called it.

And I used to tell him this: “You’re not going to win, but resistance is important, and studies in resilience validate this. Tiny acts of resistance have meaning,” I would say.

This was my “monk” vision for him, as contrasted with his millionaire vision. So we bantered about Monk or Millionaire over the years, and I am deeply grateful for these fun conversations, but also saddened that he didn’t opt out, as, in retrospect, I think he would have found peace for his soul. But, as with so many things these days, we will never know.

Finally, my last major regret as Cooper’s father is, I didn’t listen. It’s not so much that I didn’t listen as that I didn’t hear him.

I remember seeing this little depression meme one time. There’s a little stick figure curled up in a ball in bed. Another stick figure crawls into bed with them, and they both just lie there. No words.

It’s not that I was trying to problem-solve for Cooper and not listening. I listened well, I think. The problem is I did not hear him with my third ear. I did not hear what was said below the words. In hindsight, his pain is evident. My memories of past conversations are blurry, but I know now that more was said than what I heard.

If I watch a sunrise, or the moon drop over the horizon throughout a long night, or watch a dog sleeping, something is being said.

Cooper was saying something. I don’t think he even knew what it was, and I never picked up on what was unsaid but said. Probably because I, too, am a product of the matrix, and I scuttle and hurry about and don’t really see or hear the things moving in slower motion.

Were I a monk—and if my wife ever predeceases me, it’s what I will become—I imagine, in my spiritual imagination, Cooper leaving his home in Norway to come visit me. During our visit, as he tells me about his family, the fishing, and his work, I would hear him say what he wasn’t saying. I would hear him, perhaps for the first time.

If Cooper had never had a smartphone, never engaged with social media, had pursued more of the “A” in STEAM, and had I heard him with my third ear, I do believe this blog post would not have been written today.