Suicide Craze Linked to Social Networking Site
It's a question that we've all been asked: "If your friends all jumped off of a bridge, would you?" It's meant to be rhetorical, but the question is getting an answer that few would expect from a group of friends in South Wales in the U.K. Seven teenagers in Brigend, Wales have killed themselves in a string of suicides, with two more hospitalized after attempting to do the same. According to a string of articles in the U.K., the teenagers were seemingly trying to earn themselves a memorial page on social networking site Bebo.Bebo, which stands for "Blog Early Blog Often," is a social networking site popular in Europe, thanks to its availability in numerous languages. On the site, the grieving friends of Welsh teenager David Crole created a memorial page after his suicide in January of 2007. David was the first to hang himself, and his death seems to have started the trend. Six of his friends then hanged themselves over the following year, with 17-year-old Natasha Randall being the most recent.
It's believed that the friends were all trying to gain the same notoriety David received, each with their own memorial pages, a thought that is hugely tragic and difficult to comprehend.
From NEWS.com.au and Brand Republic
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Pamela @ Jan 23rd 2008 9:24PM
See, this is way my children can't go to those social networks. My oldest sons have told me it's crazy on them. People arguing all the time, and people hacking you webpage. One of my oldest sons is dating a girl he met on the Myspace, I really don't like it but he is grown and has to live his life the way he sees fit. I think she was talking to someone else before him, and my son told me that this person kept text messaging his phone and he thought it was funny. Well I didn't think it was funny and I asked him who gave him his cell phone number? Then my son started looking stupid, lord, help us.
web @ Jan 24th 2008 6:47AM
Darwin was correct. Also, what is up with people and this mob mentality of sports, shopping, and going to sit in movie seats and stare at a wall of colors for 90 minutes?
bebo @ Jan 28th 2008 7:00AM
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Daniel Gaunt @ Jan 28th 2008 8:39AM
I'm not surprised that young people feel suicidal in the uk, we're over run by chavs and the government is just dumb. if someone just told them that there are better countries out there it might have stopped these suicides
http://freeextras.blogspot.com/
Lauren @ Feb 17th 2008 9:15AM
Social contagion is a powerful force in adolescent life, but parents and siblings can offset negative influences by showing an active interest in the thoughts and dreams of young people. There is nothing quite so powerful to a young person (or anybody else, for that matter)as a caring other who wants to share your experiences.
ronda @ Mar 12th 2008 12:51AM
My son also committed suicide, the youth today just seem to live for the day. I am AMAZED at the My Space contents, many of the youth in this area have a goal for their life, and that is to commit suicide. Is there not anything that a parent can do to stop these kids from making this tragic mistake? Is there not a way to hold the wed sites partly liable? My son was a minor, just 16, and I hear that he had My Space sites that I didn't even know about. He was bipolar and austistic. How can we protect them when they can post all these feelings that they have and we as parents are NOT allowed access to the sights.
K.J LEE @ Mar 13th 2008 6:16PM
The ultimae tragedy of this situation is the fact that we are watching a new form of "poupulation" control. Suicide has always been a part of our "taker" culture meaning that as a society we take resources and lives and leave behind a footprint of destruction. Life is cheap in a taker society and that should deeply concern each and evryone of us, as humans. This exemplifies self-destruction that many argue is human nature, I believe otherwise. In my opinion it is the nature of the civilization we currently live in. Yes the world is Overpoupulated by 10 times, but this would never had been an issue if 10,000 years ago we became a "leaver" culture and civilization would never had flourished. This makes me sick because I yearn to live in this leaver culture because every person is very important because they are depended on by all others in the tribe. A society where the Elders raise the young, I think this would give young people confidence and wisdom to know that such a permanent soulution to a temporary problem is just not an option. I personally have been depressed enough to contemplate it and there was nobody there to care or even talk to me as why I would chose this path. The parents are not to blame. Instead we shall place the blame on society itself. This is a wake-up call to create new ideas and ways to live as to how we conduct ourselves daily and as a group. the internet is great when the conversations are productive. But it also has a darkside and the ones who chose to be the Darkones are cowards because they know that if they were to say these things to a person face to face they would have a conflict. so technology becomes a tool for the wicked just as it is an important tool for the good.