Hacker News Reader

Comment by x2f10 | Hacker News Reader

>This stands under my general concern that tech companies are neither cognizant of nor culpable for the impact they have on society.

I have to imagine this is not a new phenomenon. How many young adults have listened to music and been persuaded (or influenced) to commit suicide?

View on HN

Why do we credit the last thing that a suicidal person listened to, and not the long line of shitty life events that lead them up to that point?

I think the conjecture is that across a random sample the last thing a (potential) suicidal person listened to will have no correlation. If millions can binge watch the same thing in the same day/week, we have the potential for be the thing that pushes a disproportionate number of people over the edge. Something as simple as normalizing a behavior can have a powerful effect for some people.

I'm not going to address "listened to," because that is limited to one medium. But we have learned that even when people may have had suicide ideation for some time, the actual decision to do it is often an impulsive act. So their state of mind immediately leading up to an attempt is relevant.

Why shouldn't we examine the last thing as much as the others?

If I drive a rental Ford Focus to the location where I commit suicide should Ford be investigated as strongly as my documented major depressive disorder and the breakup I had with my spouse? Should the DJ at the radio station I was listening to during the drive be scrutinized? Should you stake out the McDonald's that I went in to piss and grabbed a coffee from?

Well we would never know the answer to these questions, and more, unless we looked.

Maybe there is no causation or relation, maybe there is, what is the issue with finding out?

I'm sure at one point studying many of the attributes of what makes a serial killer were considered with the same contempt.

Because there may be 100 things before it, so it's only 1% of what lead up to the event. & the things which came earlier had a longer time to cause impact. ie a series of early events can lead to a result, whereas what is the actual percentage of people immediately committing suicide after listening to something suicidal? Better to focus on how to mitigate people reaching this point, as opposed to the straw that broke the camel's back

I agree but mitigating the risk of breaking the camels back is worth it if the only side-effect is one less crappy Netflix show.

> as much as the others

Which is to say, not at all? Nobody takes the mental health of students seriously. If we did, our schools would look quite different.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com