Online suicide notes, cyber-bullying, memorial 'shrines' to the dead - is the world of scoial networking sites such as Bebo too intense a place for young people, and can parents cross the digital divide, asks Kathy Sheridan
RECENTLY, A 17-YEAR-OLD Irish schoolboy logged on to his Bebo site, thanked "everyone who made me happy", typed "let my name be the household word that it was", and signed off with a "goodbye and good luck". Then he took his life.
When the story was broken in the Galway Independentby its deputy editor, Deirdre O'Shaughnessy, the boy's anonymity was protected. But in a national newspaper report, he was identified by name and photograph. As well as that, the "let my name be the household word that it was" line was interpreted as a twisted desire for his actions to make him a household name, another young martyr to a malign celebrity culture.
In fact, as the flood of angry, wounded online comments made clear, the boy was quoting a line from Togetherness, a poem often used in memoriam cards, a poignant, doomed hope that life would go on as normal for his loved ones: "Death is nothing at all . . . Play, smile, think of me, pray for me/ Let my name be ever the household word that it always was/ Let it be spoken without effort."
But it was the interpretative abyss between the teenage and adult responses - the language and so-called "digital divide" - that was most revealing. For parents in the region, the terror and tragedy of the boy's death was compounded by the response of his friends, who used the site to express their sadness. Typical comments, it was reported, were "good luck" and "I'll miss you". Said one shocked parent: "It was like they were saying goodbye to a friend travelling to America."
Another expressed concern that her son had known of the tragedy within hours, long before his parents.
"The kids knew before the adults - there was nothing to prepare them," she says. "But I think with Bebo . . . they're not in touch with reality and that scares me. From the reaction and the comments on the site, in a way, it's like they have seen it on TV. Children aren't shocked by anything any more. He said he looked forward to seeing them again in another place, and a lot of the comments were just things like 'I'll miss you' and 'good luck'. I mean, 'good luck'? I know they would have been in shock, but the fact that they responded in such a mild way, they're not thinking in terms of reality. I'm afraid they're thinking it's just a choice we're all allowed to make, and that some of them will follow it."
In online comments, however, the boy's friends protested that, far from encouraging others, they knew "of people who, after experiencing the pain and sadness caused, have made pacts never to do such things". They insisted that "the majority of comments were far from mild . . . they were full of sadness, questioning and loss"; that writing "good luck" was simply a response to the boy's last words of "goodbye and good luck"; and that "the majority of the comments said 'RIP', but you seem to have neglected that, haven't you?".
And what was wrong, asked one, with the teenagers finding out before the adults? "The people who loved and cared for found out before people who simply saw him as 'my kid's friend'. In my opinion, these are the people who deserve to know first (besides the family)."
Another asked why Bebo was being blamed for the boy's death. Where were the adults and teachers in his community and school when "this poor boy was suffering, being bullied and feeling like he did not want to continue living his life? . . . Do not blame Bebo, it was a means for him to say goodbye."
Another contributor, who had lost school-friends to suicide, also urged others to look beyond Bebo: "There are much larger problems to be dealt with. Suicide was here and in force long before Bebo or the like were ever created. Bebo offers young people a place to show their friends that they are not forgotten, just like placing flowers on a grave, placing a memorandum in a paper, or saying a prayer."
Daniel Sullivan, a researcher into collaborative practices and technology, agrees: "We publish memoriam cards and people send Mass cards and no one is suggesting that the print industry or the churches are seeking to glorify suicide . . . Blaming Bebo is like blaming people for having diaries because they may have confided in them."
And, as one adult UK blogger pointed out, "youngsters are not the only people who have discovered the real emotional closeness of online communities. I'm 55, but when my wife died, people in other countries sent flowers and shared my pain and helped me through it. We had never met outside words on a screen, but they considered themselves our friends, and their actions proved it. Of course there is a panic about the net: it's new. Twenty years ago, they blamed punk rock. Fifty years ago, they blamed television. A hundred years ago, they blamed cheap novels. Five hundred years ago, they probably blamed troubadours. That's the terrible thing about being afraid of novelty: except for brief periods of stagnation, there's always something new to fear."
THE PROBLEM FOR Bebo and similar websites, however, is that by dint of the sheer volume of young people using them - it claims that it has one million registered users in Ireland, and that 32 million use it around the developed world - they are often the single common denominator discernible between suicide victims.
The grief and terror following the death by suicide of three teenagers in the village of Laurelvale, Co Armagh, a year ago, was whipped into a frenzy by rumours of a suicide pact, which was said to have been extensively discussed on such sites.
In the Bridgend area of Wales, which suffered 14 suspected suicides among young people in a year, the media seized on Bebo and similar sites as the connection. One middle-market British newspaper led its coverage with the headline "Internet suicide cult?", describing those involved as having "lived and died online".
Yet, says Anthony Langan, of the Samaritans, who works with governments on suicide prevention strategies, "there is no proven link that being on those sites led to their suicides. Some were members of social networking sites . . . but there is no evidence that there was any use of the internet to propagate suicide."
In fact, it was the traditional media that came under fire in February, when academics and victims' families warned that newspapers had gone too far in their coverage of the Bridgend deaths.
"There is clear evidence that reports in the media that give descriptions of the method of suicide, and romanticise the deceased by giving descriptions of the attention they receive in the form of condolences and online obituaries, give rise to other suicides," said Sue Simkin, coordinator of the centre for suicide research at Oxford University.
"Studies have also found increases in suicides after a picture is used of the victim or the location, and where the story is sensationalised, is prominent in the paper and is repeated," she told the Guardian.
One Bridgend parent blamed the media for putting victims "on a pedestal . . . encouraging others to do the same". Another told a press conference that "the media put the idea" into her 15-year-old son's head. After a year of suicides taking place at the rate of roughly one a month, there were five, plus several failed attempts, in a single month after January 17th, when media attention was at its height.
The treatment of the issue in television drama has also come under scrutiny. An episode of Casualtyon BBC1 a few years ago, which featured an overdose using easily available drugs, precipitated a 17 per cent rise in cases of self-poisoning in the following week. Twenty years ago, within 70 days of a TV drama series featuring the suicide of a 19-year-old man, German researchers observed 62 suicides of men aged 15 to 29, an increase of 86 per cent on previous years
While the internet "community" prides itself on having its own agenda and momentum and gets the blame for many modern ills, there is little doubt that the traditional media still provokes most of its chattering points.
What makes Bebo different, however, is the extreme youth of its subscribers and the speed of communication. Most professionals in the suicide field, such as Dr John Connolly, of the Irish Association of Suicidology, agree that the sites are more a force for good than for ill.
"There are very useful sites, such as spunout.ie - run by young people for young people - and bigwhitewall.com," he says.
"The web in general and social networking sites have many positive aspects in allowing young people to express their thoughts and feelings and to find help and information for many aspects of their lives," says Suzanne Costello, director of Samaritans Ireland.
A recent British Medical Journal paper on suicide and the internet by Lucy Biddle, professor of epidemiology at the University of Bristol and others, noted that rates of suicide among people aged 15 to 34, the age groups who make most use of the internet, have actually been declining since the mid-1990s, a time when internet use has expanded rapidly. "So cases of internet-induced suicide may be offset by potential beneficial effects or other suicide prevention activities," she says.
However, using common key words for suicide methods and information, the authors also found it all too easy to call up dedicated suicide sites. Of a total of 240 identified (the first 10 sites of each search), just under one-fifth were dedicated suicide sites.
The research also revealed varying responses from different search engines. Google and Yahoo, for example, retrieved the highest number of dedicated suicide sites, whereas MSN had the highest number of prevention, support, academic or policy sites, suggesting that some companies exert more site control than others.
But information on methods is not the only internet contributor to suicidal behaviour, say the paper's authors: "Contributors to chat rooms may exert peer pressure to commit suicide, and facilitate suicide pacts. Such discussion may lessen any doubts or fears of people who are uncertain about suicide. Pierre Baume and colleagues observed that people posting notes concerning suicide on the web are often initially ambivalent but that their resolve strengthens as others encourage them, and backing out or seeking help becomes more difficult."
WHILE THERE IS no evidence that Bebo facilitates such activity, the speed of communication itself may be a contributor. For a generation armed with iPhones or similar, with immediate mobile access to the internet, it is possible for friends to receive a boy's Bebo farewell message before he has taken the final step. If their immediate reaction is to swamp his site with emotionally charged good-luck messages, what is the boy likely to do?
"He may still be sitting there, a bit uncertain, but then sees these comments pouring in," muses one young woman. "Is he likely to say 'well, I won't go ahead so', or is it going to make it harder for him to turn back?"
Furthermore, contributing to a memorial site is not comparable to placing flowers on a grave, argues Suzanne Costello of the Samaritans. "Flowers die after a week or so, but 'memorial sites' and 'shrines' on social networking sites to people who have died by suicide are often still up two or three years later, still with highly charged messages on the site.
"The mourning period is going on too long; it should be limited. It is entirely natural to want to remember a loved one in this way and it is very important to express grief, but it is equally important not to glorify or romanticise a death by suicide. Adolescents experience emotions very intensely, and often at that age may not completely comprehend the finality of death. To a vulnerable or isolated young person, the prospect of being almost 'venerated' in this way can seem appealing - and can almost minimise the consequences of suicide."
Nor is it safe or reasonable to expect teenagers to cope alone, aided only by a keyboard, with a sudden traumatic death.
"Grieving is an important process, but young people need to be supported through this process," says Costello. "Peer support is important, but equally important is the support of adults who have experienced bereavement before and can guide a young person through this process. Grieving alone in cyberspace is not ideal."
Deirdre O'Shaughnessy, the 23-year-old Galway Independentjournalist, has been reflecting long and hard on the Bebo phenomenon. "Having a Bebo page as a tribute to the dead person has become something very common now, and it does allow teenagers to express grief in a more continual way than they would have had before," she says.
"I was speaking to an older colleague of mine the other day who has just come across one of these pages for a deceased family member, and she was horrified . . . but for the 'Bebo generation' it's like visiting a graveside, but with pictures and added interaction . . . "
What has changed dramatically, however, is the access to such powerful technology for the very young. "Bebo was always intended for a young audience, but I think it has become more juvenile since I began using it," adds O'Shaughnessy.
"People of my age began using Bebo almost as soon as it was invented, but at that stage we were college age and mostly well able to handle any issues that arose there. Since then, it has become more directed towards young teenagers, with 'cartoonisers' where you can turn your pictures into cartoons, 'ratings' for friends, 'tagging' and 'top friends', which allows people to show only their top 16 friends on their page."
All mighty clean fun, you might think. But what hasn't changed is the significance of "best friends" and being in with the in-crowd. In that context, brutal hyper-realities are confronted day after day by children online, who find themselves suddenly outside the top 16, or summarily dropped as "the other half" on a friend's Bebo profile.
A lesson parents have to learn at some point is that it's not always possible to "fix" their children's problems. To that extent, Bebo is not all that different.
"I think the role of parents probably hasn't changed," says O'Shaughnessy. "You can do no more about what your child does on Bebo than you can do about any other time your child is away from you. It's probably a matter of doing what you always did, watching for signs that someone is unhappy, agitated . . . And in one respect it's easier to handle: you can't sit in the classroom with your child, but you may be able to gain access to their Bebo page if they will allow you to. At least, in that respect, you can see what's going on . . ."
The positive side is that, in recent years, support services from voluntary organisations, government bodies and the internet service providers themselves have been reaching a rapprochement on how to square massive revenues and galloping technology with the safety of vulnerable children.
Bebo prides itself on its partnerships with organisations such as Childline, the Samaritans and the National Office for Suicide Prevention. But the general feeling is that there is much more to be done than merely folding hands and telling parents to cross the "digital divide".
"There are some aspects of social networking sites that concern us particularly," says Suzanne Costello of the Samaritans.
"Firstly, the concept of 'community moderation' - that is, the belief that any inappropriate use of the site will be reported by users of the site to the network owners. We are not in any way advocating that the sites be censored, but there is a belief that the community will moderate itself . . . which relies on the fact that the community is informed and alert to risks, something which is clearly not the case."
In Australia, it has been illegal since 2006 to use the internet to provide practical details on suicide, and internet service providers in countries such as Korea and Japan have attempted to block specific sites. At the request of Japanese police, websites have this month been removing a specific recipe that has been blamed for several deaths.
Although efforts to clean up the web are easily circumvented, the varying content identified by the four search engines researched in the British Medical Journalpaper suggests that internet service providers can go much further.
But ultimately, it seems, the way to go is the way already identified by organisations such as the Samaritans: help support sites to appear further up the ranking in searches using suicide-related terms, maximising the likelihood that suicidal people will access helpful rather than harmful information in a time of crisis.
Help websites: www.samaritans.org, www.spunout.ie, www.bigwhitewall.ie