what to do when someone on tumblr is suicidal
A pop meme that has been posted to Tumblr at least 37 times. (Tumblr)
In the past two months, at least 3 transgender teenagers have committed or attempted suicide after scheduling suicide notes on the weblog platform Tumblr.
First Leelah Alcorn, a 17-twelvemonth-old girl from Ohio, became a worldwide spider web miracle after her suicide note virtually trans acceptance and parenting went viral.
Less than 2 months later, 15-year-old Zander Mahaffey wrote his suicide note on Tumblr and scheduled it to mail service afterward he died.
And mere days later that, a xiii-year-onetime boy named Damien Strum read Mahaffey's letter, pronounced his thoughts "identical … to mine," and posted his note to multiple social networks. According to his sister's Tumblr, a reader tipped off police and Strum's parents before the teen actually went through with his plans — but he's at present in intensive, inpatient psychiatric intendance, and it'south unclear when he'll get out.
A screenshot of Damien's last mail on Instagram, which included a pop meme of Alcorn and Mahaffey. We've redacted some textile that might be graphic or upsetting. (Instagram)
Even less clear, equally more cases like these shake out: What, exactly, social networks and advancement groups should make of the unsafe, well-intentioned phenomenon of "viral" suicide. After all, when readers share notes like Alcorn's and Mahaffey'south hundreds of thousands of times, equally they've already done on Tumblr, they're doing it out of solidarity and back up with vulnerable LGBT teens; they are, in the words of one blogger, trying to "keep them alive."
But public wellness experts fear that the spread of the notes — and their attendant memes, photo collages, and highly idealized portraits — could actually present a very warped, romanticized narrative on suicide to the verbal group of kids who need to hear the opposite. In fact, in the days later Alcorn'due south suicide note went viral, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention wrote to Tumblr imploring it to have the note offline.
"[The postal service] has the potential to prompt copycat suicidal behavior," AFSP warned in a sternly worded e-mail. "Past removing this post, you lot could save lives."
The phenomenon that AFSP is referring to, called "suicide contagion," is, of grade, nix new. Psychology researchers accept been documenting information technology since at least the 1960s, when Marilyn Monroe'due south death was followed by months of all-encompassing news coverage — and a startling 12-percent spring in suicides. Repeat research has shown, essentially, that when a suicide receives a large corporeality of media coverage, specially if that coverage somehow glamorizes or romanticizes the death, more suicides are probable to follow.
A screenshot of art posted on #Leelah hashtag on Tumblr. (Tumblr)
To be articulate, explains Dr. Jill Harkavy-Friedman, the vice president of research for AFSP, that doesn't hateful that news of a suicide somehow magically convinces otherwise healthy people to contemplate their own deaths. But when that messaging reaches certain vulnerable, predisposed populations — say, transgender teens who experience depressed and isolated and helpless, to begin with — information technology can push them over the edge.
"We don't know every bit much about suicide contagion on social media as we exercise about contamination through newspapers or film," Harkavy-Friedman says. "But we exercise know that it'southward more full-bodied, and the information is disseminated more than rapidly" — which could be quite a unsafe thing.
Take the bear witness from a report published last May in the British medical journal the Lancet, which reviewed 53 teenage suicide clusters over an eight-year period — one of the more comprehensive reviews of the contamination miracle. The report plant a articulate relationship between media coverage and contamination, as accept other studies earlier it. But it also managed to pinpoint the exact aspects of media coverage that made contagion worse: front end-page stories, big headlines, pictures of the deceased, details on or allusions to the method of death.
In the social media historic period, of course, each of those factors is magnified tenfold: On Tumblr, you can not only view hundreds of glamorized, heroized pictures of the deceased, but read — in his own words — exactly how he planned to commit suicide, why he chose that method, and why he felt he had no other choice. (Experts stress that in that location's always another choice, and the implication that there isn't can exist very dissentious.)
Particularly inside Tumblr'southward LGBT community, where the deaths of Alcorn and Mahaffey accept been especially painful, it'southward not unusual to see the teen characterized as martyrs for a cause, or victims who were pushed to suicide by factors far outside their ain control. On Tumblr, Alcorn is called "princess" and Mahaffey is "star boy." Swain bloggers draw them in beautiful, idealized portraits, surrounded past flowers or stars or angel wings. They've go slogans and symbols, their names markered onto forearms and school lockers and notebook margins.
Fifty-fifty Tumblr'due south epitaph of choice — R.I.P., for "rest in power" — seems to propose that their deaths by suicide were somehow empowering or ennobling, the exact opposite of what public health experts say other vulnerable teens need to hear.
"If y'all want to be helpful or support this community," Harvaky-Friedman said, "reach out and say suicide is non the answer. Say, 'you're non alone.' Keep educating people on means to go help."
Unfortunately, it'south not e'er quite and so piece of cake. Tumblr has fought a long, losing battle against its teen cohorts over the outcome of dangerous content: Fifty-fifty after the site banned blogs promoting self-impairment and eating disorders in 2012, they flourished in the shadows and on fiddling-seen hashtags — numbering well-nigh 200,000 a full twelvemonth later. The site has partnered with organizations like the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and the National Eating Disorders Association to serve up PSAs and assistance-line numbers to the many users searching terms like "thinspo" and "suicide."
Predictably, when Tumblr began to have downwards copies of Alcorn'southward suicide annotation — at the behest of AFSP, among others — users revolted. (The site has not yet moved to take downwards copies of Mahaffey or Strum's suicide notes, which, as of this writing, have been shared a combined 100,000 times.)
"How dare staff accept this down?" one blogger wrote side by side to a screengrab of Alcorn's suicide note. "We will Not allow you delete her!"
That'southward a natural and understandable impulse, advocates admit. And it's of import to address the very real difficulties that many transgender teens face, and that Alcorn and Mahaffey both discuss in their notes: feelings of confusion and helplessness, lack of acceptance from parents, no adequate support organisation or social network.
Simply in the aftermath of Alcorn's death, advocacy groups like Transgender Law Center encouraged concerned people to back up their transgender friends and relatives and to refer them to helplines like the Trevor Project, if they demand it; they urged media non to create "an aureola of celebrity" around the victims or to "normalize suicide" by making it audio like a natural upshot of gender-related bullying and rejection. They never encouraged people to share Alcorn's story, however. And they certainly never encouraged readers to share her suicide note.
A screenshot of a Tumblr post that's been liked and shared more than forty,000 times. (Tumblr.)
A better way to memorialize her, they suggest, would be to stop sharing the words of transgender teens who committed suicide — and kickoff looking out for other transgender teens before it'southward too tardily. ("Don't wait until we become a hashtag," one very viral Tumblr post reads.)
"We know that the Internet can also be a fast way to become help," Harkavy-Friedman said. Merely readers, have to "accomplish out, continue trying, help them to get help."
On February. xix, the xiii-year-old Strum posted a disturbing serial of messages to Instagram: "Would any of yous notice I'thou gone?" he wrote. And "if I died … would there exist a 'his name was Damien' tag?"
"Stay stiff darling," one follower wrote.
"Your [sic] beautiful. DM me if you need me."
"Damien, we dear you!!" — lots of those, many times over.
On Tumblr, Strum'southward hashtag has become #HisNameIsDamien: is, not was. This time, at to the lowest degree, someone from social media acted in time. And hopefully, that story will go as viral as the times when no 1 acted at all.
Liked that? Endeavour these:
- Self-harm blogs pose problems and opportunities on Tumblr
- Suicide and social media: the dangers of sharing "Genie, you're free"
- Leelah Alcorn'south death was tragic, just harassing her parents is non the reply
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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/02/24/inside-tumblrs-teen-suicide-epidemic/
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