Net causative in UK teen suicides?

"At least seven" teenagers in Bridgend, South Wales, have committed suicide recently, the Times of London reported this week, calling them "copycat suicides" and linking them to the teens' social networking. The Guardian, however, reported that both the coroner and police in South Wales "downplayed suggestions that they were investigating an internet 'suicide chain'" as reported in "the tabloids." They said they've taken one of the deceased girls' computer to "build up a picture of what happened" rather than investigate any particular Web site. The coroner, who told The Guardian that "the number of suicides in the area had been increasing 'year on year' over the past three years, also said social-networking sites are "global, so why would they cause an issue in Bridgend in particular?" The Net may've had a role but not a causative one, the Times suggests in its article - maybe a role more like that of traditional media. It cites University of Bristol professor David Gunnell as saying that "research had shown a connection between reports of suicide in the media and copycat deaths, and it was likely that discussions of suicide on websites would have a similar effect."

Extreme cyberbullying: 2 cases

By “extreme,” I mean bullying that has led to teen suicide attempts. Two such cases involving three New Zealand girls have come to my attention in the past week – one through our BlogSafety forum and the other covered in that country’s national news media.

The Sunday News in NZ reported this week that two 15-year-old secondary-school students were tricked by another girl into believing two teenage boys whose online profiles she’d created with scanned photos of magazine models had become their online boyfriends. The scam was discovered by the mother of one of the victims, according to the Sunday News, when she “found a scalpel under her daughter's mattress and an email on the teen's computer from her ‘boyfriend,’ instructing her how to kill herself.” When the mother called the imaginary boyfriend’s cellphone number, she found it belonged to the bully’s mother. The girl had conducted these online “relationships” with her victims for 10 months, the Sunday News reports, even going so far as to send both victims a number of gifts from the “boyfriends,” “including flowers, teddy bears and T-shirts.” This peer-to-peer grooming process culminated in an unfulfilled suicide pact between the two victims, the Sunday News.

My awareness of the second case started with this post in the forum: “Four weeks ago, my daughter, in a weak moment, attempted suicide because she was grieving a boy that she had met and communicated with” online and via phone texting. The mother, Karen, later emailed me a copy of her full story, detailed in a letter to New Zealand’s Health Ministry (published here, with her permission). The “boy,” she wrote, was - as in the Sunday News case – imaginary, the creation of another teenage girl, who enlisted the help of another friend to create the profile of this imaginary surfer sponsored by Rip Curl and named “Ben.”

I had read many posts about imposter profiles created about real people; this was the first I’d heard of profiles created about fake people – yet another kind of cyberbullying.

But that’s not the worst of the story. Before this experience, Karen wrote, three young people in their small community had been lost to car accidents and suicide, one a friend of the family. Then this past January “Ben” committed suicide while texting her daughter, Karen wrote. “Sophie [who believed he was a real person] was obviously desperate and was furiously trying to call him and text him, telling him not to do it … to no avail…. On asking Sophie more about this boy, she proceeded to tell me that he had suffered from depression, partly because he had witnessed a previous girlfriend hang herself, and that [another girl] had swallowed razor blades a few months before…. This was Sophie’s reality.” I’ll leave the full story to Karen.

If you're interested in my own take-aways from these cyberbullying cases, please click to this week's issue of my newsletter.

Prevention on the social Web

A tragic teen double-suicide case in Australia underscores the importance of loved ones and caregivers monitoring what at-risk youth say in their online profiles and blogs. Two 16-year-old girls in the Melbourne area apparently killed themselves in a suicide pact, posting "their own death notice – a farewell message to their online friends" in MySpace, The Star in Malaysia reports. The Star reporter seems to be making the assumption that "the idea of suicide emerged from the Internet," but I don't think the posting of a farewell message in a social site profile necessarily indicates this was where the girls' suicidal tendencies got started. Profiles and blogs are, however, the first places parents should check for what kids are really thinking if the latter are acting strangely at home. "The likelihood of a 'depressed, disaffected and disaffiliated' young person communicating with a soulmate online is a sure thing," The Star cites an Australian professor as saying. And there is certainly the possibility that at-risk people are getting the wrong kind of reinforcement online, such as sympathy or even promotion of destructive behavior from other people with mental health issues.

5,000 calls to his cellphone

A young Massachusetts man with some time on his hands thought he'd give some of it to people seeking help. So he posted a video on YouTube.com showing his cellphone number on Friday and – apparently by Monday – had received 5,000 calls and text messages, the Associated Press reports. He said he "was inspired to act by a video of Juan Mann, whose 'Free Hugs' campaign became world famous after video clips of Mann hugging strangers appeared on YouTube," the Boston Globe reports. He may have to do some fund-raising to pay for all those minutes. He heard from people all over the US and Europe. "About 70% of the callers, he said, wanted to shoot the breeze for a few minutes about their plans for the day, and to inquire about his," the Globe adds (maybe they should get Twitter). For free help for established sites focusing on the subject, people might check out: Help.com, CarePlace.com, and SuicidePreventionLifeline.org (the last one helps with a lot more than suicidal tendencies – see "The social Web's 'Lifeline'").