• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

NetFamilyNews.org

Kid tech intel for everybody

Show Search
Hide Search
  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research
  • About NetFamilyNews.org
    • Supporters
    • Anne Collier’s Bio
    • Copyright
    • Privacy

Learning how to save lives in Facebook

January 13, 2011 By Anne 1 Comment

In a very sad story reported in the London Evening Standard, hardly any of the 1,048 Facebook friends of Simone Back of Brighton, UK, did anything to try to prevent her suicide after she posted a status update saying goodbye, she was taking “all my pills.” Her mother, who called the UK equivalent of 911 after someone texted her about the post, told the Evening Standard that no FB friends local to Back had tried to go see her, though people outside of Brighton “used the thread to beg her for the address and telephone number of Ms Back.”

Good for whoever tried to help! But the physical location of a social-site friend doesn’t matter. It’s time to help all social media users be aware that they can help, wherever they are. Here’s how: If a person seems to be in suicidal crisis, call your local law enforcement (e.g., 911 in the US or 999 in the UK). If they’re far from the situation, they’ll know who to call next. In Facebook, if the situation doesn’t seem as urgent: “The best thing to do when you see a post or any content from someone who says they are thinking about harming themselves is to use this form,” says Christopher Gandin Le, a suicide prevention specialist and CEO of Austin-based Emotion Technology. Through that form, Facebook will, through its triage team, get fast help to the person through law enforcement and the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline” in the US and Good Samaritans in the UK, both active 24/7. That form is in nearly 2 dozen languages around the world.

“Take all comments seriously,” Le said. “And if it turns out it’s just a cry for help, then let’s get the user help!… The 911 system has the capacity to transfer callers within the system, so even if you aren’t in the same area, please make that call and save a life. Otherwise, [in the US] you can always call the [National Suicide Prevention] Lifeline at 1.800.273.TALK. It’s a free, confidential call.”

It needs to become clear and intuitive to social media users that they *can* make a difference – act on warning signs or calls for help and turn bad situations around. This is why I write so much about the importance of youth agency online. Young people’s online contacts and experiences are not inconsequential and they are not just passive consumers of what’s going on. They are active participants, for good or ill, and they have a choice. Certainly, it’s not only users who are responsible for helping fellow users, but we’ve learned from the Lifeline that friends and peers, as in the Back case in the UK, are often the first ones to see trouble signs. Whether friends are being bullied or are in suicidal crisis, they can help, even save lives, to an unprecedented degree – anywhere in the world, not only locally anymore. [See also this video interview ABC News7 with social media security consultant Hemanshu Nigam about how all stakeholders – users, sites, mental healthcare people, emergency-response personnel, etc. – are needed to turn social media into a user-protection tool. And Dr. Irene Levine, psychiatry professor at New York University, in a commentary on the Back case in the Huffington Post, on the one hand shows how little things have changed and on the other hand what an opportunity we have now, with social media, to help friends and fellow digital citizens wherever they are.

Share Button

Filed Under: geolocation, mobile, Social Media Tagged With: 911, 999, Facebook, first response, good samaritans, National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, Social Media, social Web, suicide prevention

Reader Interactions

Trackbacks

  1. Pan-European survey of 25,000 kids | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    January 25, 2011 at 4:12 pm

    […] offline too, at home, daycare, etc. even before they pick up a phone or gameplayer. [See also "Learning how to save lives on Facebook," "Why digital citizenship’s a hot topic (globally)," and "For our kids’ sake, more than […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

NFN in your in-box:

Anne Collier


Bio and my...
2016 TEDx Talk on
the heart of digital citizenship

Subscribe to my
RSS feed
Follow me on Twitter or even better:
NEW: Follow me on MASTODON!
Friend me on Facebook
See me on YouTube

IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

Categories

Recent Posts

  • The missing piece in US child online safety law
  • Generative AI: July 2023 freeze frame
  • Threads: The new social media kid
  • Surgeon general’s advisory: Let’s take stock
  • Lawmakers, controlling and banning kids doesn’t help
  • New clarity on child sexual exploitation online
  • Game-changer: Child rights-by-design
  • Why I struggle mightily with the new Utah law

Footer

Welcome to NetFamilyNews!

Founded as a nonprofit public service in 1999, NetFamilyNews quickly became the “community newspaper” of a vital interest community of subscribers in more than 50 countries. Site and newsletter became a blog in the early 2000s. Nowadays, you can subscribe in the box to the right to receive articles in your in-box as they're posted – or look for toots on Mastodon or posts on our Facebook page, LinkedIn and Medium.com. She welcomes your comments, follows and shares!

Categories

  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research

ABOUT

  • About NFN
  • Supporters
  • Anne Collier’s Bio
  • Copyright
  • Privacy

Search

Subscribe



THANKS TO NETFAMILYNEWS.ORG's SUPPORTER HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM.
Copyright © 2023 ANNE COLLIER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.