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Social Media Affects on Suicide
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Suicide is a leading cause of death worldwide. According to the World Health Organization, in the year 2020, approximately 1.53 million people will die from suicide. Suicide is not an individual phenomenon; many other outlets affect it. To be specific, social media has been a risk factor and preventative, simultaneously. Social Media fuses technology with social interaction via Internet-based applications that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content. In the case of suicide prevention, social media gives people a place to help them look for solace, so to speak. According to the International Center for Media and the Public Affairs (ICMPA) “students around the world reported that being tethered to digital technology 24/7is not just a habit, it is essential to the way they construct and manage their friendships and social lives. Social media forums such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, etc., hand people the opportunity to be heard and interact with others on different topics presented by their peers. It is a way of expression and what and whom you choose to express with is upon yourself. That sense of community through the Internet promotes resilience among growing teens and young adults. These communities open the floor for people to understand they re not alone in their situation or what they feel, there is someone out there just like them. That resilience helps push for that positive reinforcement and that feeling of being apart of something. There is more of an ability to find somewhere safe for a certain individual in the online world that could take a person off that edge that they feel they have reached.
Social Media, though can be seen as helpful, is also an enhancer. It leads children, young adults, and adults into pro-suicide mediums that couldn’t necessarily be reached in reality. Slate staff writer Amanda Hess says in her article, though human beings have always attempted to “determine” our worth based on how we stack up against others, “now” in the era of social media, such comparisons take place on a screen with carefully curated depictions that don’t provide the full picture. The Internet and social media combine the ability to break down physical barriers and open channels to pro-suicide attempters to explore and open a different reality that makes suicide an option or even the answer. With the ability to explore allows for people find an enabler, someone agreeing with suicide other than them. Sometimes, and “suicide” buddy is all it takes; a person, halfway across the world, agreeing with these actions that you met in your living room, searching the Internet. There are groups and websites dedicated to promoting suicide. Also, on the Internet within social communities, cyberbullying takes place. Cyberbullying typically refers to when a child or adolescent is intentionally and repeatedly targeted by another child or teen in the form of threats or harassments or humiliated or embarrassed by any means of cellular phone or internet technologies….<ref name=":0" /> Social media allows for freedom of speech and there is no boundary as to which everyone is free to roam where they are please. With that comes great responsibility, yet is abused. People use social media outlets as a way to share what they feel about the things around us and whatever one person decides to say may push another over an edge. The use of social media can go in either direction whether that is to support or deny suicide, but is completely in the hands of the user and what they are looking for. Not only what they are looking for but also what their influences are on the Internet. It makes a difference.
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