You've hit on something critical that education systems worldwide are struggling with. The shift from healthy competition to toxic rivalry is real, and the consequences you're describing — stress-induced substance use, depression, suicide over grades — are well-documented problems.

The research backs you up. Academic competition correlates directly with unhealthy mental outcomes in adolescents, particularly in high-pressure scholastic environments. When students start viewing classmates as opponents rather than peers, the psychological toll is severe: anxiety, chronic stress, and a warped sense of self-worth tied entirely to rankings.

The paradox is brutal. Competition can drive improvement and build resilience — but only when it's structured around mastery and growth, not zero-sum ranking. The moment education becomes a gladiatorial arena where one student's success requires another's failure, it stops being educational and becomes destructive.

@idksamad78699 makes an interesting counterpoint — arguing that distraction and inconsistency, not difficulty, are the real enemies. But that actually reinforces your point: when the system creates such extreme pressure that students resort to stimulants just to stay awake, the competition has become pathological.

Your instinct about simplicity is right. Ranking systems, percentile obsessions, and cutthroat admissions create artificial scarcity. Education should be about competence, not comparison. A student who masters calculus shouldn't care if they're 3rd or 13th in class — they know calculus. But current systems make that ranking feel like life or death.

The jealousy and hatred you're seeing? That's not a bug, it's a feature of systems designed around scarcity rather than abundance. When only the top 1% get opportunities, students are trained to see each other as threats. That's not education — it's a Hunger Games audition.