Social media, internet use and suicide attempts in adolescents

Abstract

Purpose of review Suicide is the second leading cause of death in youth aged 10–24 years old globally, but detecting those at risk is challenging. Novel preventive strategies with wide influence across populations are required. Interest in the potential for both detrimental and supportive influences of social media/internet use on suicidal behaviour has been growing; however, the relationship remains unclear. Recent findings A systematic search of articles from database inception up to 25 January 2019 across five databases: Medline, PsycINFO, EMBASE, HMIC and CINAHL revealed nine independent studies investigating social media/internet use and suicide attempts in young people less than 19 years old (n = 346 416). An independent direct association was found between heavy social media/internet use and increased suicide attempts in seven studies (adjusted ORs ranged from 1.03 to 5.10), although adjusting for cyberbullying victimization and sleep disturbance reduced the strength of this association. Two studies found that some social media/internet use, versus no use, may be associated with fewer suicide attempts. There were no studies investigating the relationship between social media/internet use and completed suicide. Summary There is an independent association between problematic use of social media/internet and suicide attempts in young people. However, the direction of causality, if any, remains unclear. Further evaluation through longitudinal studies is needed.

An Enhanced Social Networking Intervention for Young People with Active Suicidal Ideation: Safety, Feasibility and Acceptability Outcomes

“…Despite the potential of internet-based social networking interventions for supporting youth at risk of suicide, there is concern about possible risks such as normalising suicidal behaviours and reinforcing them [15,23]. Additionally, just as clustering and contagion of suicidal behaviour have been demonstrated to occur in offline social networks [24,25], there may be a risk of such phenomena occurring in online settings, perhaps to an even greater degree [26,27].…”

Criminal Manipulative Impacts On Minors With Internet Technologies: Countermeasures

“…In today's information (knowledge) society, higher manipulation efficiency can be achieved with Internet technologies. According to various scientists, virtual communities, which induce/persuade the minor to commit suicide, have always been (and still are) very dangerous (Fedunina, Vikhristyuk, & Bannikov, 2019;Safuanov & Sekerazh, 2017;Sedgwick, Epstein, Dutta, & Ougrin, 2019).…”

Suicide assessment and treatment in pediatric primary care settings

“…Other factors contributing to increased risk in adolescent populations include social media consumption (Sedgwick, Epstein, Dutta, & Ougrin, 2019); increase in bullying and cyberbullying (Shain & AAP Committee on Adolescence, 2016; van Geel, Vedder, & Tanilon, 2014); bullying and family rejection of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youths (Bouris, Everett, Heath, Elsaesser, & Neilands, 2016; Shain & AAP Committee on Adolescence, 2016); a history of physical or sexual abuse (Shain & AAP Committee on Adolescence, 2016); history of adoption (Keyes, Malone, Sharma, Iacono, & McGue, 2013; Slap, Goodman, & Huang, 2001); the potential glamorization of suicide in media, such as the 2017 Netflix web‐series “13 Reasons Why” (D'Agati, Beaudry, & Swartz, 2019); and, the persistent and bidirectional impact of stigmatization about suicide (Carpiniello & Federica Pinna, 2017). There is no one cause for the spike in suicide rates among this population (Little, Roche, Chow, Schenck, & Byam, 2016); it is an amalgamation of factors that play out differently in each individual.…”