Suicide and using the Internet for self-expression
Katelyn McKenna and John Bargh in their 1998 study - Coming out in the age of the Internet: Identity ?de-marginalization? from virtual group participation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 681-694 - were early and perceptive in noting that the Internet lets you express your own individuality (via newsgroups in their study) and find others who share that, arguably helping to support groups society deems marginal. Fine in the case of gays, ethnic minorities etc - less good in the case of neo-nazis as they point out.
This popped back into mind the other day when I came across this BBC World Service programme:
In Japan, the internet is being blamed for a spate of group suicides - usually involving the young. Since October of last year more than thirty people have killed themselves with the help of strangers that they’ve met in so-called suicide chatrooms. Our Asia correspondent, Andrew Harding, has been to Tokyo to find out more about this phenomenon.
You can hear the audio from the programme (Analysis) until Friday - I also have an MP3 of it I have archived. Basically people who are too frightened to kill themselves alone are finding “suicide buddies” to help them go through with it.
Along similar lines Pro anorexia websites and weblogs abound, where teens and others who share this unfortunate (and sometimes fatal) disorder often encourage each other to keep up the practice in the face of societal pressure. (Danah Boyd romantically defends these subcultures (at least implicitly) in her passionate defense of the LiveJournal culture).
On the other hand, as “spacewaitress” points out in this moving video clip from blogumentary.org, if you are contemplating suicide you may only feel able to say so on your blog and in that case when you post about it your friends may give you the support you need (but couldn’t ask for) to get through your problems… Similarly one of the people interviewed in Japan found just being able to talk with other people seeking suicide and sharing problems was support enough that they decided not to go through with it and they maintained a support web page instead.
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January 28th, 2005 at 8:57 am
A broader topic might well be ‘life and death on the Internet’? When you see this guy posting his torment and hope online, the perspective broaden. And judging (bad, bad word) from the comments to his blog, he was hardly ever alone. Thanks David for this post.
Wainer
January 28th, 2005 at 1:44 pm
Along similar lines how about “Cancergiggles”? http://cancergiggles.blog-city.com/
January 31st, 2005 at 5:58 am
I wish i remember where i read of an anthropological study of suicide in Asian islands (it is quite probably Durkheim). There was an interesting point when the first person that anyone knew killed himself. It resulted in a rash of suicides that followed in suit. Suicide is frequently a marker of ultimate anomie, that state of unimaginable alienation. It doesn’t take the internet for people to engage in this practice and for it to spread wildly. But the internet can offer a solution for some, which is where you get into the +/- game. Just as you noted, there are plenty of populations for whom suicide was being contemplated but averted through internet broadcasting and building connections online.