• 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

Will the global village have a ‘911’?

December 13, 2011 By Anne 7 Comments

This is an important next step for suicide prevention as well as social media. Facebook and the US’s National Suicide Prevention Lifeline have just announced a partnership that links Facebook users expressing suicidal thoughts directly to live chat with a crisis counselor at the Lifeline. Before, and like other social-media services, Facebook would just send the distressed user the Lifeline’s toll-free phone number – in addition to contacting authorities local to the user and the Lifeline with the user’s city and email address. Some people may be more comfortable in a text-chat format than talking on the phone, so this is an additional option that also reflects increased resources and flexibility (and support for social media) on the Lifeline’s part.

Friends are a huge part of support and intervention in this environment. More than anyone else, they’re the “gatekeepers” of social media, as suicide prevention experts call this important role – the first responders. And, in this case, the truly wonderful thing about this media environment of long, diverse friends lists and news feeds about everyday life playing out in real time is that there are many more who can see that someone needs help. I remember reporting back in 2007 that MySpace had become the Lifeline’s No. 1 referrer, surpassing the 800 number (MySpace had “only” 160 million users then; Facebook now has 800+ million). In a user-driven media environment, “the village” – though now global as well as local (and every measure of distance in between) – is newly important in support, crisis prevention, and intervention.

Friends as first responders

Given these changing (media) environmental conditions, what does “emergency response” look like now? In a little suicide-prevention-in-social-media meeting I participated in about a year ago, we had global companies talking with “merely” national support and intervention organizations. It occurred to me as I looked around the room that, even with the US federal government behind crisis response – even with our national lifeline and all the 911 dispatchers in the country involved – crisis response is a shared responsibility. The other key “responder” is necessarily the people in a person’s online/offline social network. Neither a Web site nor a national hotline can immediately or fully be “there” for someone if the people on that person’s friends list – the people he or she interacts with from day to day – aren’t there to notice. We need to develop a lot of education around how to be there for our friends when they’re in crisis, in a way how to be each other’s 911 dispatchers (though dealing with a spectrum of need, not just emergencies) and get the right help to each other, knowing that sometimes it’s just being there to listen.

Does the global village need 911?

In a way, we’re talking about the 911 of the social Web, the 911 of the global village. It’s necessarily global as well as personal. The Associated Press’s story was picked up immediately this morning by the Times of India, where there are some 100 million Internet users and Facebook is the No. 1 social network site.

The way the new process works is, “if a user spots a suicidal thought on a friend’s page, he or she can report it to Facebook by clicking a link next to the comment. Facebook then sends an email directly to the person who posted the suicidal comment and encourages the user to call a hotline or click on a link to begin a confidential chat with a counselor,” Slate reports. The Facebook triage team also contacts authorities local to the user and the Lifeline with the user’s email address and city. This is for users in the US and Canada for now. It’s a courageous move by both Facebook and the Suicide Prevention Lifeline, knowing that the announcement would be picked up by news outlets around the world, and Facebook says it has users in every country. At least EU countries have Internet helplines through the EC’s Safer Internet Centres, but there will no doubt be growing pressure on other governments and international agencies to coordinate crisis intervention work as – along with all the other aspects of life – the social Web makes suicidal crisis more visible to more would-be friends, gatekeepers, and upstanders in all countries. Let’s hope more and more users of social media will see what they can do to be there for their friends.

Related links

  • For any young person who’s seeking help or needing to know s/he’s not alone – or who wants to help other young people: ReachOut.com (a nonprofit deserving of our support this holiday season)
  • US Surgeon General Regina Benjamin’s message about the Facebook-Lifeline partnership
  • Facebook’s Help Center page for the question, “Where can I find resources for identifying and helping a friend who may be suicidal?”
  • About a small but mighty conference hosted by SAMHSA.gov (the part of the federal government which funds the Lifeline) in which I had the privilege of participating in Washington two springs ago: “A summit for saving lives”
  • “The social Web’s lifeline” (2007)
  • About why a “panic button” called for in the UK last year wouldn’t work
  • ConnectSafely’s page of Resources for Youth in Crisis
  • My ConnectSafely co-director Larry Magid’s audio interview with the Lifeline’s spokesperson about this development at CNET
Share Button

Filed Under: Risk & Safety, Social Media Tagged With: 911, crisis intervention, Facebook, first response, helpline, hotline, National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, risk prevention, Social Media, suicidal crisis

Reader Interactions

Trackbacks

  1. Facebook Empowers Friends to Prevent Suicide - Personal Injury Attorney and Connecticut Accident Lawyers says:
    July 22, 2016 at 1:52 pm

    […] her blog post about the announcement Anne Collier called this the “911 of the social web,” adding that […]

    Reply
  2. Facebook Empowers Friends to Prevent Suicide says:
    December 28, 2011 at 10:01 pm

    […] her blog post about the announcement Anne Collier called this the “911 of the social web,” adding that […]

    Reply
  3. Facebook Empowers Friends to Prevent Suicide | Facebook says:
    December 24, 2011 at 11:05 am

    […] her blog post about the announcement Anne Collier called this […]

    Reply
  4. Facebook's 'Timeline': More than a new look | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    December 23, 2011 at 8:52 pm

    […] the potential for support, it also increases exposure to others’ interests and needs (see this about how we can be “there” for each other a lot more sensitively than 911 and […]

    Reply
  5. Shaping Youth » Using Media to Uplift and Inspire: When to Tune In, Not Out. says:
    December 21, 2011 at 4:46 am

    […] The ability to “live chat with a crisis counselor” via text rather than phone line adds just one more preference option into the comfort zone of an angst-ridden youth that could exponentially save lives if sheer numbers and eyeballs of friends’ newsfeeds are any indication. From NetFamily News: […]

    Reply
  6. Facebook Empowers Friends to Prevent Suicide | blu-delta.tk says:
    December 15, 2011 at 9:16 am

    […] her blog post about the announcement Anne Collier called this the “911 of the social web,” adding that […]

    Reply
  7. Facebook Empowers Friends to Prevent Suicide | Safety Village says:
    December 14, 2011 at 6:06 pm

    […] link to a Lifeline page where people can have a liveconfidential chat with an expert.In her blogpost about the announcement Anne Collier called this the “911 ofthe social web,” adding […]

    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

Connect with me on LinkedIn
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

  • Safety by co-design: How we can take youth online safety to the next level
  • Much-less-social media on Facebook’s 20th birthday
  • What child online safety really needs, senators
  • Welcome to 2024!
  • Supporting the youngest witnesses of this humanitarian crisis
  • Should our kids learn how to use generative AI? Well…
  • The missing piece in US child online safety law
  • Generative AI: July 2023 freeze frame

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 © 2025 ANNE COLLIER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.