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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

>When researchers analyzed the data by sex, they found the increase in the suicide rate was primarily driven by significant increases in suicide in young males.

"13 Reasons Why" was a show about the suicide of a young girl and was primarily aimed at a young female audience. If the studies numbers were primarily driven by an increase in suicides among young males, the causation implied seems rather dubious.

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You don't think young men can find young women influencing?

That isn't my point. My point was that young men are less likely to be aware of or watch a show that isn't targeted at them. They can't really be inspired to copy something that they aren't familiar with. Similarly if the show was the cause of the spike and the audience was largely young girls, why wasn't there a statistically significant spike in the suicide rate of girls?

> They can't really be inspired to copy something that they aren't familiar with.

Can't they? Who's to say they weren't more influenced because the protagonist was female? The show still had a significant male viewership rate of 35%. That's not the majority, but it isn't small either.

The viewership of 13 reasons why was 65% female, 35% male.

The show would have to a have an inordinately, disproportionately, strong impact on males to cause almost a 29% increase in male suicides, but a non statistically significant increase in female suicides with that viewership distribution.

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