This seems common in discussions of suicide. One universalizes one's own experience, so that one hears other opinions of suicide in general or even different specific suicides as opinions about the specific suicide of one's own relative or friend. This doesn't lead to rational conversation, since how is some stranger on the internet entitled to an opinion of my loved one's suicide? It would be healthier to realize that any specific suicide is its own event, and that it's not healthy to make of it a Procrustean exemplar of all suicides. However, grief is often heedless of what is healthy.
Tut, tut. They did not say it means less, they said that it was more understandable (and it is).
The older person has more experience of life and gotten more from life because they (surprise, surprise) have lived longer than a younger person. And we all know those final years, quality-wise, can be pretty fucking awful whereas a young person has checked out before the complexities of middle age kick in. If you had the choice would you prefer your son or daughter to kill themselves at the age of 22 or 62 if it was inevitable they were going to take their own life? Or you think it doesn't matter?
The loss of a loved one is a tragic painful thing, but I do think that teenage suicide is especially tragic for two reasons.
1) Teenagers lack the perspective and maturity to understand that decision.
2) Teenagers (in general) have much more of their lives ahead of them. I think it is tragic if someone losses the last decade of their life and more tragic if they lose the last 7 decades.
Suggesting that the completed suicide of an older person means less than that of a teenager is fucking abhorrant.