Death Toll For Internet Teen Suicides Hits 17
After the body of a teenage girl was found hanging in the woods of a Welsh village last Tuesday, media attention is once again focused on the only thing seeming to link the suicides together -- the Internet.
When the body of Jenna Parry was found, it marked the 17th young suicide in just over a year near the town of Bridgend, South Wales (pictured, above). Though no evidence has been found of a suicide pact (or any sort of "cult" responsible for the series of deaths), nearly all of the victims used a social networking Web site -- similar to MySpace and the like -- called Bebo, that's popular with young British children.
The string of deaths began with Dale Crole, an 18-year-old who hanged himself at an abandoned warehouse on Jan. 5, 2007. His friend David Dilling, 19, took police to the scene. Then, just a few weeks later, Dilling died the same way. A week later the boys' friend Thomas Davies, 20, hanged himself in a local park. And so it has continued.
The Internet has been a recurring theme in the hangings. Most (possibly all) of the victims were members of Bebo, and many of them posted messages on the public memorial pages of those who preceded them in suicide.
"I'm sure they all knew each other," Ferdinand, 14, who lives near Parry's house, told Newsweek. "I knew six of them myself. I've been on some of their personal pages on Bebo, and they were talking about 'I don't think I can cope with it,' and 'I'm going to end it.' I didn't think they'd really do it."
As we reported earlier this year, it's believed by some that the friends were all trying to gain notoriety with their own memorial pages.
Sad to say, but the Internet has long been a breeding ground for group suicides -- just three years ago, an Oregon man was arrested for organizing a mass suicide pact -- but this is the first time that such trends have hit the social-networking space. Given that Facebook employees seem to have the ability to see whose profiles you've looked at, or keep personal profiles after they're deleted, it would follow that at least this lack of privacy would help catch potential suicides in their tracks before anything tragic occurs.
From CNN
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