Online death dialogues prompt suicide?
A USF faculty team wants to
study whether sites with memorials and farewells encourage
kids to take their lives.
By ALEXANDRA ZAYAS
Published August 27, 2006
TAMPA — Before Jonathan Link, 20, shackled his feet and drowned
in Hillsborough Bay last April, he changed his MySpace.com
screen name to “Goodbye.”
The same month, Army Pvt. Dylan
Meyer also died in apparent suicide. Meyer, from Tampa, left
words of comfort for friends on his MySpace page.
“I just want to remind you not to be sad,” wrote Meyer, 20.
The world’s first generation to double-click its way through
elementary school is using the Web to stay connected — even in
death, where the popularity of MySpace has given rise to
MyDeathSpace.com. The site archives profiles of deceased MySpace
members.
Psychologists wonder if such electronic farewells and
self-memorials provide negative role models for teens in
despair, encouraging suicide. University of South Florida
researchers hope to answer that question.
Web sites frequented by teens are, in some cases, rife with talk
of death. They acknowledge suicides that might be discreetly
omitted from mainstream publications, which typically take a cue
from mental health workers who warn of a contagion effect.
“Sometimes people get concerned when a young person is
highlighted in the newspaper,” said Dr. Ilene R. Berson,
associate professor of the Florida Mental Health Institute at
the University of South Florida.
“People say other kids are going to hear about this and they’re
going to relate with that young person, particularly if everyone
is saying all these wonderful things,” Berson said.
Berson and a USF faculty team are seeking funding to study
whether social networking web sites create a suicide contagion
effect.
Researchers would design a computer algorithm to see if MySpace
members who kill themselves have been linked online to other
suicidal members. They will also tap into MyDeathSpace, which as
of Friday, registered 55 suicides and 457 other deaths.
Anger, curiosity and bravado reign on MyDeathSpace forums, where
strangers pick apart the writings of MySpace members who die.
They make fun of a 16-year-old California girl who died
re-enacting a stunt from MTV’s Jackass show and express sorrow
over a pregnant 21-year-old Massachusetts woman who died in an
alcohol-related crash.
Some members even flirt with the idea of their own mortality.
“Look at it. they don’t have to deal with everything anymore. no
taxes, no traffic jams, no working a dead end job, busting your
a-- just to hae (sic) enough to pay the bills, none of that, its
all over now,” member 997 writes. “life is boring, i’m just
waiting for it to end.”
MyDeathSpace gets hate mail daily. Founder Mike Patterson
responds to them on the forums.
“MyDeathSpace has helped countless teens,” he writes. “While you
can mouth off about how pathetic I am and how miserable my life
is, other people send e-mails thanking me for what I have done.”
Patterson writes that in late April, a young girl from Florida
contacted MyDeathSpace and threatened suicide. She gave him
passwords to all her online accounts and told him to save a spot
for her on MyDeathSpace.
“I called the sheriff’s department in her home town and they
went over to her house and picked her up and took her to the
hospital. Maybe she just wanted attention, maybe she was
serious, I don’t know,” Patterson writes.
“What I do know is that one of
the officers called me a few days later and thanked me for
getting in contact with them.”
Patterson could not be reached for an interview.
Researcher Berson doesn’t want to jump to conclusions about the
Web sites yet.
“We’re going to look at both sides of the continuum,” Berson
said.
On one end, because the frontal lobe of the brain doesn’t
develop until early adulthood, teens are naturally built to be
impulsive, Berson said.
“In an online environment, they’re bombarded with images and
digital stimuli that strengthens the response of that part of
the brain,” Berson said. “It feeds that sort of behavior to
engage in that activity.”
But she realizes that digital spaces also provide outlets for
grief.
“We may find that in general it provides a supportive part of
the grieving process,” she said.
Berson says plans for the study are evolving. But she’s certain
of this: MySpace is giving psychologists more insight than ever
into the teenage mind and social structures.
“We are getting access to things we never had before, or at
least didn’t have easily,” Berson said. “We can sort of watch
from behind the scenes.”
Alexandra Zayas can be reached at azayas@sptimes.com or (813)
226-3354.
