Finished homework, got ready for school and then she was gone. Mr, Ian who lives in England lost her daughter two years ago.
There was a note saying “I’m sorry this is all my fault”. As he started to do research on her Instagram, there was the reason she committed suicide.
She was browsing lots of suicide related posts and suicide temptation posts and persisted that Instagram caused his daughter’s death.
“She was ordinary teenage girl. future-minded and passionate. she was such a good girl and now passed away.”
Social media has power to enhance light side and dark side extremely. It could be a bad place for sensitive and unstable teenagers. And what would happen if they see suicidal posts when they have suicidal thoughts in their mind?
There were wrist cutting pictures and videos, hanging picture, bridge picture with the word “JUMP NOW” on it, lots of sleeping pills picture, and more founded on her instagram account.
There was a picture of girl with no eyes sitting with teddy bear saying “world is crazy. I don’t wanna see it anymore”
Once you search some phrase on instagram, you’ll see few accounts related to that hashtag and algorithm will show you more posts or accounts related to that topic. Now, they banned suicidal hashtag, but it was there before and when she searched one suicidal hashtag, she had to see more of these posts since algorithm will keep show the posts that we search (like).
At first glance it looks convenience to have very smart system like algorithm and it is in most ways, but problems are unavoidable here.
