There was a research about the influence of media reporting on suicide rate after a newspaper strike in the USA, made by J. A. Motto in 1967. He collected information from 7 cities in the US, and discovered that reports would lead to the drop of the suicide rate. Moreover, three years after, he found that there was a significant decrease in the suicide rate for females, aged under 35 (Norris et al., 2006). It is observed that responsible reports may have an educational character and help those, who want to commit suicide, and, consequently reduce the number of suicides. How can social media influence the suicide rate in the USA? Until 1998 in the USA, one of the ten leading causes of death was suicide (McKeown, Cuffe, & Schulz, 2005). The suicide rate in the USA was relatively stable from 1950 to 1990, and then it was decreasing in the late 20th century (Brickman, & Mintz, 2003). According to the National Institute of Mental Health statistics, every completed suicide has about 8-25 attempts. This is not exact information because it is …show more content…
Over 30,000 and about 1 million suicide deaths are registered in the USA and in the world respectively every year (Luxton, June, & Fairall, 2012). In the course of researching the problem of suicide, there was a question whether social media prevents or promote the suicide. However, it is difficult to identify the influence of social media on suicide. Luxton et al. (2012) acknowledged that it occurs “because of the indirect and complex association between Internet use and suicide” (para. 2). Moreover, there are many legal difficulties, such as freedom of speech and civil liberties. Many people tend to believe that the Internet has a great deal of information about the suicide and its methods; therefore, it can promote the suicide-related behavior among young people. On the other hand, there are many studies, which stated that social media can be used as a suicide prevention