A quarter of teenage suicides in the United Kingdom involve the internet, an official inquiry has determined, The Telegraph reports.
University of Manchester Professor Louis Appleby heads England’s National Suicide Prevention Strategy and the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness. He studied almost 600 suicides committed by young people, and found that 128 had used the internet for something related to suicide, including searching for suicide methods, making suicidal posts on social media, and being bullied online.
“It’s unacceptable that social media companies have shown little concern until now,” Appleby said. “The call from ministers for them to exercise greater social responsibility or face regulation is right.”
Teenage suicides rose by 67 percent in England and Wales between 2010 and 2017. Appleby notes that although suicide and self-harm are often driven by financial and emotional deprivation, social media does normalize these acts as being the “next step if you get into difficulties,” and “It becomes something that transmits across the subculture of young people, it becomes part of how they talk about their lives, how they talk about stress and how they expect to respond when stresses occur.”
Dr. Bernadka Dubicka, who heads the child and adolescent faculty at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said that “Seeing self-harm images or accessing online forums which promote self-harm will increase the distress of a child who already feels hopeless.
“That’s why we’re calling for the creation of a duty of care for social media companies and the formation of an external regulator to ensure that code of conduct is enforced. The Government must act decisively.”
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