“The city is to blame,” he said through the tears. “How could they build a bridge over that river knowing that people would just use it to commit suicide? They should have guards on duty to make sure people don’t leap over the side!”
The reporters quickly jotted down the illogical condemnation and, rather than ask the grieving parent for the logic behind such a statement, made sure to highlight the comment with the intentions of twisting it into a juicy one-liner for the opening paragraph of their newspaper article. Tragedy moves paper, as their boss consistently reminds them. And nothing is more tragic than the loss of a child.
Another teen took their life last week while streaming the last moments of their sad existence to countless witnesses across the web. This unfortunate loss, announced only hours before on the person’s personal blog, involved an overdose of anti-depressants and required just a few short hours to unfold. It’s not the first time a teen has taken drastic measures in an attempt to seek attention, and it will not be the last. But, rather than take the people who reportedly goaded the severely-depressed Abraham Biggs into the irreversible act, I’d like to ask a question about that person’s family: Where were they?
Shortly after the teen’s death, the Biggs family condemned both the viewers and the operators of the website for not doing more to save the boy’s life. While I can empathize with the family regarding their loss, I cannot stand to hear that the operators of a wildly popular social media site should be held accountable for “not doing enough” to prevent such a tragic event. Using this train of logic, one could argue that people can condemn city planners for building bridges over difficult to traverse waters. More people kill themselves from bridges than overdosing on the internet, after all.
Did Anyone Talk To Him?
While studying psychology in school, one topic that I found quite interesting was that of suicide. Not only because I had considered this several times as an escape from situations that seemed larger than I could handle, but because there had been a string of suicides in my city at about the same time. I wanted to know more about it, and how people typically acted when they considered ending their own life. After lots of research, a few complex term papers and a hard-fought 90% on the assignments, one thing had been clear: people don’t just up and kill themselves.
There are signs that we should always pay attention to, especially with teenagers who have a lot of trouble dealing with the seemingly endless arrays of personal dramas, emotions, and relationships. One of the most obvious things to look for is depression, but we should also remember that loss of appetite, reclusion, and a disinterest in favorite pastimes can also be clear warning signs. When these things are spotted, a person should be taken to a café or somewhere they can relax, and we should talk with them. We don’t need to hit the problem head on, as this can often result in a person shutting the world out even further, but just talk to them about some of their hobbies. Sports, movies, TV shows … the subject doesn’t matter. The one-on-one time does. If they want to open up and talk about their emotional or personal problems from there, great. Otherwise, just knowing that someone is there for them can do more good than anything.
Is this always possible? No. Parents are forced to work long hours for minimal pay, and kids are spending more time online, which is something that some parents just don’t understand. But, despite all of this, it’s still a parent’s utmost responsibility to take care of their child’s emotional and psychological needs as well as the basic “food and shelter” needs that we’re expected to maintain.
That said, just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
Where Did The Drugs Come From?
One of the other questions that I have involves the prescription anti-depressant that was used in the overdose. Where did these pills come from? Were they his? Did they belong to someone else in the family? Were they bought from someone on the street? If my child needed anti-depressants to make it through the day, I would leave them with enough to get through one day, and no more. The rest I would keep with me, or locked away from the person who needs them. The last thing I’d want hanging over my head is a situation like this. If they belong to someone else in the family, again, why were they so easily accessible? For someone that wants to blame a website company for not running a tighter ship, they sure have an awful lot of loose trust within the household.
Before getting much farther, I don’t want to say that this televised suicide is completely the fault of the family. There are several factors involved and I do not have all the information required to make any serious judgment on this one situation. That said, before a person can go pointing fingers at others for “not doing enough,” they also need to point fingers at themselves to see where they fell down.
Big Brother Shouldn’t Protect Us From Ourselves
One comment that we’re seeing quite a bit from the “offline community” involves responsibility when something this unfortunate occurs. Mr. Biggs had condemned the social networking site and said that its moderators should have done more to prevent this suicide, but I am forced to disagree with him on this one. Although it is the responsibility of a website owner to remove content that is deemed hateful or seriously derogatory (when ordered by the court), it is not a website owner’s responsibility or duty to make sure that people are using the site as it was intended to be used. This is like blaming Toyota when a drunk idiot gets behind the wheel of one of their cars and slams into a crowded shopping mall.
That said, let’s examine what it would take for a popular website to actively monitor and respond to urgent situations. Depending on the type of content that is shared, this could be incredibly easy, or incredibly difficult. I’ll start with the easy one, first:
Text-Only Websites:
A text-only website would be one of the easiest types of sites to monitor as an administrator could easily create a notification if any “danger words” were put into the database. These danger words could be everything from “suicide” to “kill myself” to “sleep forever” as there would be no real limit to the number of words or phrases a person might use to express a desire to commit an action that would harm themselves or others. Let’s not forget about all the colorful ways to spell su1cid3, either, including versions consisting of horrid spelling mistakes.
Either way, once a danger word is recorded in the database then a moderator could be immediately notified through email, SMS, RSS, Twitter, or any other method that’s relatively quick and painless. The moderator would quickly check out the content and gauge its severity, notifying the appropriate police forces (somewhere around the world) based on the address or IP information of the person who said such a naughty thing. From there, police could be dispatched to a person’s home and the site could later be accused of playing “Big Brother” and overreacting to teenage angst and idle threats.
Multi-Media Websites:
Unlike text-only websites, multi-media websites allow people to communicate with pictures, video, audio files and text. This can certainly be a problem as some websites are inundated with uploaded pictures and videos. If every non-text-based file needed to be vetted by a moderator, then the whole concept of a social site would start to break down. No company would be able to move fast enough to approve, or reject, content unless they literally had an army of people who watched everything that came in from every person who might be using the site. While this might sound like a great solution, the sheer costs and complexity of such a system would make online interaction in such forums next to impossible.
But would this “impossible to maintain website” concept prevent people from writing about suicide online? No. The only way to truly prevent someone from saying such drastic things would be to prevent website visitors from posting content online at all, leaving everything to big corporations who would then use the opportunity to make the internet about as attractive as AM radio.
Finding Causes vs. The Blame Game
I have a great deal of sympathy for anyone that has lost a loved one to suicide and, while I can certainly accept the fact that they are both hurt and angry, I cannot simply accept the various places people try to lay blame. Instead of blaming something or someone for a loss, it’s often better to look for the real causes behind the action. Placing blame is in our nature, but it doesn’t mean that we should continue to fall prey to The Blame Game.
Was it school? Was it a broken relationship? Was it a bleak outlook on life? Did a friend recently join the military? The number of reasons for someone to become depressed and suicidal is as varied as it is infinite, but the true causes can always be found. Only by doing this can families and friends truly begin to look for ways to prevent such events happening to someone else in the future.
To Abraham Biggs: May you now find the peace that you could not before.
It’s interesting how something seems so simple at first, and then baloons into a seemingly-impossible task within hours. Take, for example, my recent decision to make some database modifications to the core WordPress tables. While this seemed relatively straight-forward, it is really anything but.
![](http://www.j2fi.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/slow_database.jpg "A Very Slow \\"Database\\"")
