When Emily Litman was in middle school, kids whose parents grounded them would blithely lament: “I just want to die." Now she's a middle school teacher in New Jersey, and when her students' phones and TikTok access are taken away, their out-loud whining has a 21st-century digital twist: “I feel so unalive.”
Litman, 46, teaches English as a second language to students in Jersey City. Her students don’t use — and perhaps have never even heard — English words like “suicide.” But they know “unalive.”
