A Research Proposal

On
HAS SOCIAL MEDIA PLAYED A ROLE IN
INCREASING SUICIDE RATES?

Submitted To:
DEPT. OF JOURNALISM OF MASS COMMUNICATION

Submitted by: Supervised by:

Muskan Kaur Dr. Deepika Arora
SOCIAL MEDIA AND ITS IMPACT ON INCREASING SUICIDE RATES

INTRODUCTION: HOW SOCIAL MEDIA AND INTERNET CAN INFLUENCE

SUICIDIAL BEHAVIOUR AMONG THE PEOPLE OF EVERY GENERATION.

OVERVIEW:
Today people of every generation are a constant user of internet and social media. It is vey
easily accessible to everyone and everyone is kind of dependent on it. One can look up for
anything they want and social media also gives us a space to showcase our life and as much
as we love all the attention, We ultimately hate it when our privacy gets invaded. Like
everything has a positive side also has a negative side to it. The age group that is the most
vulnerable to the content of internet are the ones going through their adolescence. This is the
generation where the suicide rates, attempted suicide and Self harm due to social media can
majorly be noticed.
The question is “HOW CAN THE WORLD OF SOCIAL MEDIA CONVENCE SOMEONE
TO TAKE THEIR OWN LIFE?”
The answer to this question is not a straight line, It can get very complicated.

“Social media addiction is like suicide in daily instalments” – Bharat Nain

The relationship we share with social media is a love and hate kind of a relationship.
Now we simply cannot imagine a life without Internet can we?
Over the past decade, suicide has gained prominence across all social groups as the world
experienced a significant change in lifestyle with the rise in technological advancement.
There is a massive change in the way people in todays world connect and the way
information is being shared.
Too much consumption of social media can have a severe efefect on mental health and
wellbeing. Unfortunately, social media usage has glorified the act of suicide both directly
and indirectly, from its means of information sharing to the influence and consequences it has
on emotional health. Social media have indeed resulted in the rise of suicide risk factors and
suicide-related behaviours.

SOCIAL MEDIA, USES AND ITS POPULARITY TODAY:

If we look around us, everyone is a user of internet from mere a 5 year old watching cartoons
on youTube to an 85 year old sharing WhatsApp forwarded messages. Internet has now
become a nessasity, having a fast internet connection is now a privilege. Who would have
thought? That people will start consuming internet like they consume food and water.
We now simply cannot imagine a day without using internet. Well there’s good to it too:
  Every piece of knowledge is easily accessible.
 A new platform for people to showcase their talent.
 No one is far away now: can talk to people globally.
 Businesses are growing on a global level.
 Internet is for rich and poor both.
From a public figure ton a normal person everyone now a space to keep their opinion and has
a voice. The best part is everyone’s voices gets heard.
The twentieth century has witnessed a surge in technological advancement. Social media is a
platform that makes it possible to connect with people globally by enabling communication
by sharing content and information by different means such as websites or applications. Some
of those very popular websites and applications are:
 Facebook
 Instagram
 WhatsApp
 Twitter
There are other platforms as well but these are the most popular and favourite ones.

Suicide and suicide related behaviours:

Suicide has now become a major global health concern. It is simply the act of an individual
ending his/her own life intentionally. According to other definitions, Suicide is defined as a
death caused by one engaging in injurious behaviors toward self to die as a result of the
behavior. It can also be defined as purposeful behavior carried out either to manage or
unbearable levels of pain in one’s present life circumstances.

The burden of suicide:

Suicide is a leading cause of death, particularly among young people. Suicide occurs all over
the world in all regions, across cultures, economic and social status and indeed all age groups.
Although suicidal behaviors might differ across age groups, sex and geographic regions, no
human is immune to it.
Suicide accounts for high rates of deaths in all regions of the world today. According to the
WHO statistics reveal close to 800,000 who take their own life every year and this estimated
amount differentiates from those who attempt that act alone which sometimes can be more.
Suicide is also known to occur throughout the life span with the highest occurrence
happening during adolescence. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among 15-19-year-
olds.
In America, suicide is one of the 10 leading causes of death overall and in persons within the
age group of 10–64 years. Every suicide is both an individual tragedy and a part of a public
health crisis that imposes a great burden on society. The burden of suicide reaches beyond the
deaths themselves, extending to family, friends, and colleagues of the individuals who have
died by suicide.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention it is estimated that between six
and 32 survivors (e.g. close family and friends) are personally affected by suicide mortality in
terms of increased mental health risk, and this may include increased risk of suicide for the
bereaved. Concomitantly, suicide results in financial burdens, costing society approximately
US$44.6 billion per year in combined medical and work loss costs. Thus, the prevention of
suicide has become a matter of paramount public health importance globally.

Risk factors involved:

Suicide is preventable as it comes with lots of warning signs that, if detected early enough,
can be cured. The more common cause of suicide known to many is depression. Although
this majorly leads to suicide, many other factors come to play in explaining the cause of
suicide. A combination of social, psychological, environmental, biological, medical and
genetic factors could result in suicide. Various studies have been carried out in assessing the
risk factors for suicide. Some risk factors associated with suicide are family history of suicide
and child maltreatment, family history of alcohol/substance abuse and mental illnesses
particularly depression, previous attempts at suicide, impulsive and aggressive behavioral
tendencies, feelings of hopelessness, isolation, loss of loved ones, job or financial difficulties,
physical illness, lack of access to mental health care, abuse, local epidemics of suicide,
stigma and other factors that hinders one from seeking help.
mental illnesses as depression and anxiety result in Suicidal Behaviors across the lifespan,
past and present studies have revealed that other factors as impulsive aggression, conduct
disorder, interpersonal conflict, antisocial behavior, and alcohol and substance abuse more
prominently result in suicidal behaviors among adolescents and young adults.

Suicide related behaviour:

 Feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness
 Neglect of personal welfare
 Lack of interest in usual fun activities
 Irregular sleeping and eating habits
 Social withdrawal and isolation
 Overwhelmed feelings of pain
 Anxiety and irritability
 Suicidal ideation in which the individual engages with thoughts on how to end one’s
life
  Suicidal plan in which the individual makes plans and preparations toward ending
his/her own life
 Suicidal attempt in which the individual attempts self-injurious behavior with an
intent to die
Although suicide is commonplace globally, there is still an existing stigma associated with
this act and with any form of mental illness in some parts of the world today. This often
prevents those who are at risk from speaking up and from seeking help. A study [10] revealed
that although there has been a reduction in the stigmatization of mental illnesses, suicide
remains as stigmatized as ever. Many developing countries of the world today, including
Nigeria, do not have meaningful statistical records of suicide and suicide-related behaviors.
Because there is no proper record of deaths and their causes in most developing countries, it
can be said that suicide rates are grossly underreported globally.

Literature review;
Social media and suicide prevention:
Jo Robinson,Georgina Cox,Eleanor Bailey,Sarah Hetrick,Maria Rodrigues,Steve Fisher, Helen herman :

Social media platforms are commonly used for the expression of suicidal thoughts and
feelings, particularly by young people. Despite this, little is known about the ways in which
social media can be used for suicide prevention. The aim of this study was to conduct a
systematic review to identify current evidence pertaining to the ways in which social media
are currently used as a tool for suicide prevention. Thirty studies were included; 4 described
the development of social media sites designed for suicide prevention, 6 examined the
potential of social media in terms of its ability to reach or identify people at risk of suicide,
15 examined the ways in which people used social media for suicide prevention-related
purposes, and 5 examined the experiences of people who had used social media sites for
suicide prevention purposes. No intervention studies were identified.

Natural Language Processing of Social Media as Screening for Suicide Risk

Glenn Coppersmith, Ryan leary, Patrick cutchlerry
We have demonstrated state-of-the-art results for the detection of people at risk for suicide
through the automatic examination of the language posted on social media. These results
from what we consider to be a foundational piece of a new kind of screening system, often
discussed in the crisis prevention community, but not yet implemented. These machine
learning algorithms are of sufficiently high accuracy to be fruitfully used in an envisioned
screening system, but the remaining parts of the system are not yet ready for implementation.
We examined the ethical and privacy concerns around the use of these algorithms for
screening and monitoring, concluding that there are novel ways to consider using information
from these algorithms to aid intervention, but the general public has voiced opposition to
related approaches. Although the design of an intervention system powered by algorithmic
screening is technically possible, the cultural implications of implementation are far from
settled. It is our hope that this serves as a forcing function to have the discourse about the
ramifications on culture and society.
Social media, internet use and suicide attempts in
adolescents
Rosemary sedcwick, Sophie epstien, Rina Dutta, Dennis Ougrin

Current evidence suggests that excessive or ‘problematic’ use of social media/internet does
impact suicide risk, specifically increasing the risk of suicide attempts. Longitudinal studies
are vital to establish the direction of the potential association, the impacts of potential
confounders, such as sleep disturbance and cyberbullying and recommendations on safe
amounts of use. As internet and social media platforms develop, more understanding of the
specific risks and mechanisms associated with different types of digital activity, by different
population groups will be essential to understand risk and pave the way for specific
interventions.

The following databases were searched with a predefined search strategy: Medline, PsycINFO,
EMBASE, HMIC and CINAHL. The search strategies were developed and adapted to include both
subject headings (i.e. Child, Adolescent, Social Media, Internet, Suicide, Suicide Attempt) and
keywords, that is, ‘Facebook’, ‘Instagram’, ‘hashtag∗’, ‘suicid∗’ relevant to each respective database.
The full search strategies for each database are available in the online supplement. In addition,
backward and forward citation searching was conducted and the reference lists of existing
systematic reviews on similar topics were reviewed to identify any further relevant articles.
Objective:

The main objectives to conduct this research are:

 To study the psychological pattern of people commiting suicide due to social media
 To understand where to draw a line while consuming everything available online
 How social media can be toxic place for teenagers and all the generation
 How social media can change onse thinking pattern
 How can we prevent such things from Happening

Hypothesis:

 What are the situations under which people commit suicide due to social media?
 Can the society’s social norms be the reason behind the reason of people taking their
own life?
 Can educating people by making them study about their value can help/\
 How can social media become a safer place for people/
 What are the precautions should be taken by the authorities to prevent such things
from happening?
 How can social media be transparent about its pros and cons?

Research approach design:

Considering the objectives nature, qualitive and quantitive tecniques will be used with
systemic reviews along with case studies.
Also followed the: patterns and nature of social media and internet use, and content viewed or
shared online. Due to the high prevalence of social media/internet use in young people,
studies comparing different types, or levels, of internet or social media use were included.
Only peer reviewed, observational studies, where the full text was available were included.
Qualitative studies, case reports or comments/editorials were excluded.
The outcome of interest was suicide or suicide attempts in children and adolescents. Due to
the practical challenges of determining intent from the wider ‘self-harm’ literature, only
studies specifically stating ‘suicide attempts’ as their outcome were included. NSSI and self-
harm, without suicidal intent or where intent was not specified, were not included