Yesterday the Telegraph reported two new teen suicides in the town of Bridgend, South Wales. Cousins Nathaniel Pritchard and Kelly Stephenson hanged themselves within a day of each other, the 15th and 16th in Bridgend's year-long cluster of self-hangings. Despite speculations of suicide pacts or "cult" activity, authorities have been unable to find a traceable connection between the deaths. In the absence of another explanation for the rash of suicides among the area's teens, detectives offered the suggestion that popular social networking Web sites such as Bebo or Facebook might be responsible. The Telegraph explains, "As well as the deaths during the last 12 months, several more have attempted suicide and police fear they are being driven by a desire to achieve prestige by having a memorial Web site set up in their name." Would a happy teen really kill himself just to get a memorial page on Bebo? It seems unlikely. "I think that to even imply that people kill themselves to get a death page is frankly pathetic, and its an outrageous insult," was one teen's comment to the Telegraph piece. "People don't kill themselves to get attention, they kill themselves because they honestly feel life is not going to get any better. I'm seventeen, I use social networking sites and I suffer bouts of depression. Getting a death page just isn't even tempting, its the welcome relief of not living that is." The teen concluded, "I'm afraid this news story will be seen as another example of how many older adults not only don't understand younger adults, but also underestimate them. This isn't going to make anyone at risk of suicide want to talk to someone who could actually help." This teen's point is well taken. Presumably teens who are not already depressed and leaning toward suicide are not going to see glamour in a memorial page. But if the problem isn't social networking sites alone, what is it?  According to Columbia University's Madelyn S. Gould, "Suicide contagion is not a new phenomenon. Evidence of suicide clusters and imitative deaths has been reported in accounts from ancient times through the twentieth century. Concern about suicide contagion has increased due to a number of highly publicized suicide outbreaks among teenagers and young adults in recent years and to new evidence that a significant number of suicides appear to be associated with suicide stories in the mass media."
Police and other public safety experts have long known that suicide rates tend to rise when famous suicides are highly publicized. They also recognize that those at highest risk for imitating suicide are those who have a record of previous suicide attempts, depression and highly-charged emotional states. Because of the intense hormonal changes they undergo, it should not be surprising that teens may fall into one or more of these high-risk categories. What can parents do to minimize their child's risk? First, make sure lines of communication are open. Teens should know their parents will listen to their feelings without ridiculing or minimizing them. Learn to use the Internet—it isn't likely to go away in the near future, and it is, after all, the most massive of the mass media. Parents need to know where their teens are getting their news and should ideally be able to discuss it with them. If a teen knows how to build a page on a social networking site, there's no reason for a parent to be ignorant about how to visit that page. As veteran teacher Vicki Davis says, "We would never dream of going days at a time without speaking to our family. Well, children are speaking all of the time but adults who ignore their Internet presence are ignoring their children." She also advises, "If your kids are on the Internet, you should be too. If your kids are on MySpace, get your own MySpace account and be added to their friends list. Is this invasion? No. Is it raising your kids? Yes." Once upon a time, television used to take the blame for every evil that befell children. Now it's the Internet. Perhaps someday there will be a new medium for society to cast as the source of all sorrows. But what if the source actually lies elsewhere—in human nature, let's say. If that's the case, in every era, no matter what the popular medium, parents will always have a role to play in protecting their children.
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