Committing Social Suicide

Posted on January 23, 2008
Filed Under News |

Teenagers are particularly prone to suicidal thoughts and actions and tend to be more easily manipulated by peer pressure than other age groups.

Police investigating a spate of suicides in one particular town in Wales now think that they may be connected through the social networking site, Bebo.

There have been seven deaths over the last year and the young people all seem to have been connected in some way in the real world, but there may have been an underlying link through the internet, which may have prompted them to take their own lives.

The Australian Herald Sun has this:

Detectives believed many of the victims had their own web pages on the social networking site Bebo and could have been driven to kill themselves as a way of gaining prestige among their friends.

After their deaths, friends set up “memorial” websites for each of them so people could leave messages, photographs and video tributes.

“They may think it’s cool to have a memorial website,” one officer told The Times newspaper.

“It may even be a way of achieving prestige among their peer group.”

The Guardian has this:

Over the past year six young men have killed themselves in the area, several of whom had posted profiles on the social networking website Bebo. Following their deaths other youngsters set up memorial sites where friends post messages and contribute a “virtual brick” to a “remembrance wall”. Postings on the page for Natasha included messages reading: “RIP chick”, “Sleep Tight Princess” and “Sweetdreams Angel.”

Before her death, Natasha, a first year student at Bridgend college, had also posted messages dedicated to people who had killed themselves. One message, dedicated to Liam Clarke, 20, who was found dead in a Bridgend Park on December 27, read: “Tasha Randall says: “RIP Clarky boy!! gonna miss ya! always remember the gd times! love ya x “Me too!”"

The mother of Thomas Davies, who killed himself, said:

“I think the problem is they do not know how to speak like adults about serious issues like this. They can speak to each other on the computer but do not know how to express their emotions in other ways. […]

“He did go on Bebo and apparently he had a page on there. He must have discussed his other friends dying on there because it had upset him. Like most parents, I have no idea how to get on these sites or what other kids are talking about.”

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