Social media snaps people to attention
In the twilight, they pointed the lights of their cellphones toward the students in the center of the circle. They numbered in the hundreds, gathered in a grassy park on a school night through the power of Snapchat.
They had done this at least twice before when they lost friends to suicide, but this time, the loss in Littleton was double: two teen suicides in two days. Sitting on the grass as night fell, they took turns rushing to the center to remember their friends, to hug and cry, to shout and swear, and to plead for no more deaths.
On Tuesday night, an Arapahoe High School junior took his own life by jumping off a mall parking garage, and on Wednesday night, another Littleton School District student, an eighth-grader at Powell Middle School, shot himself on the grounds of nearby Twain Elementary. Both boys posted on social media just before their deaths, panicking friends who tried to help but could not save them.
Middle schoolers “snapped” their friend’s location and called police when they saw the 13-year-old’s post with a suicide note and a gun, but he had already pulled the trigger. Several went to the elementary school playground. The night before, stunned high school students rushed to the hospital, crowding waiting areas as hospital staff offered grief counseling.
Adam Powers, a junior at Arapahoe and close friends with the junior who died Tuesday as well as a 16-year-old girl at Arapahoe who died by suicide in January, stood at the center of the circle of students in the park Thursday night and offered to help anyone who has thought about ending their life. “If you think about it, … call me. I’ll talk to you!” he shouted to the crowd.
Among the middle and high school students at Arapaho Park was the younger sister of the 16-yearold Arapahoe High student who died last week. She choked back tears and, as she was held up by her brother’s friends, said, “It just doesn’t feel real.”
A North Arvada Middle School student in Jefferson County who took his own life was the third local teen suicide last week.
Teen suicide in Colorado has spiked in the past two years. Statewide, 50 young people ages 10 to 18 died by suicide in 2014. That number jumped to 72 in 2015 and remained high at 68 in 2016, according to state health department data.
The suicide rate for that age group has increased from 5.4 suicide deaths per 100,000 people in 2006 to 10.5 deaths by 2016.
Arapahoe County saw teen suicides leap the same year. Dr. Kelly Lear, the county coroner, said her office handled four suicides of young people up to age 20 in 2014, then eight each in 2015 and 2016. More alarming: The office has handled eight teen suicides already this year, including the two last week.
“It takes a toll on my staff,” said Lear, who often talks to the community about suicide. “We see deceased persons every day, but when it’s teenagers taking their own life, it’s more emotional.”
Experts said the reason for the increase in 2015 is not apparent. “We want to know why,” said Sarah Brummett, director of the Office of Suicide Prevention at the state health department. “But the issue of suicide is so complex.”
The role social media plays in teen suicide and depression is also complex, she said. It connects people going through similar problems even when they aren’t close geographically, yet, on the flip side, the filtered selfies and endless posts of others having fun can plummet teens’ self esteem.
Regardless, social media “is the main outlet that this generation has grown up with” and it’s how they “communicate their deepest thoughts and feelings,” said Stephanie Ratner, a Mental Health Center of Denver therapist based at the Montbello school campus. She teaches kids how to respond when someone they know is “testing the waters to see if anyone cares.”
Take it seriously, Ratner said. “Don’t assume they are doing it just for attention.” Often the best response is “I’m really concerned. I’m going to message you.”
Just as important, Ratner tells teens not to try to solve it on their own and instead to involve their parents, their friend’s parents, a teacher, a principal or 911. She encourages parents to watch the shows their teens are watching, monitor their social media accounts and ask more questions.
“Kids are turning to social media because they don’t feel like they have a safe, supportive person to tell their deepest fears,” Ratner said. “The biggest thing for adults is to not shame kids for feeling this way. It’s hard being a teen. It’s hard growing up with social media. A lot more kids have suicidal thoughts than we realize. We’re just not asking the right questions.”
Social media can be valuable when kids post their plans online — and it gives others a chance to help, said Julie Cerel, a University of Kentucky professor, licensed psychologist and president of the American Association of Suicidology.
However, kids who have friends who attempted or died by suicide are more inclined to have their own suicidal ideation, she said. And it doesn’t always have to be a close friend — sometimes the kids most at risk are those who know the teen more peripherally but thought of themselves as similar, she said.
“I think it’s because starting in early adolescence, kids look to their peers much more than their families for support and acceptance,” Cerel said. “The jarring experience of losing a peer to suicide changes their whole world view.”
Social media can expand these risks. First, it can be a vehicle for often anonymous bullying, worsening a teen’s mental health. But also, when a teen posts about suicide or suicidal thoughts on social media, it can potentially reinforce the notion that suicide is a way to deal with psychological pain, she said.
“It kind of provides a model,” she said.
Cerel praised “gatekeeper” training in schools — programs that train kids how to respond when they see a friend posting about suicidal thoughts.
One such program is Sources of Strength, a nationwide effort that reached Colorado about five years ago, beginning in Douglas County and opening three years ago in three Jefferson County schools. More than 70 Colorado schools now have the program, with about 50 more adding it this year, including some in Littleton. Students are trained as “peer connectors,” able to link students who are depressed and suicidal to trusted adults, said Jon Widmier, director of student services for Jefferson County.
“What we know is that if a student doesn’t have a trusted adult in their life, but their friend does, that the student without a trusted adult is safer because they can leverage the support of their friend and get connected to a trusted adult,” Widmier said.
In a Sources of Strength study, students were asked to write the names of seven friends. The names were mapped, connected with lines to form a giant spider web on paper linking all the ways students were connected. But some students named no one and no one named them. They were called “isolates.”
Jefferson County, similar to many districts in Colorado, assesses students for suicide risk when there is concern from another student, a parent or teacher, or the student self-reports depression. Many of the concerns come from Safe2tell, an app that lets students report anonymously.
In six years, Jefferson County has done about 6,000 suicide-risk assessments. Three students who had assessments died by suicide, which is “three too many” but shows the assessments work, resulting in the vast majority of kids getting the right help, Widmier said.
Another “gatekeeper” program in Colorado, Voz y Corazon, is an art-based club for youths. Members of the club meet at schools and community centers throughout Denver to paint, write poetry or dance. To join, students must complete a suicide-prevention training, learning how to recognize the signs among their peers and get help.
Littleton and Jefferson County schools notified parents about the suicides last week through email, listing support services available through the school and beyond.
“Many of you are aware that this has been a sad beginning to the school year,” began a letter to parents from Littleton Superintendent Brian Ewert, who added that he believed school was the “best place” for students to be following the deaths and that counselors would support them. School officials declined to talk about the deaths with The Denver Post, referring it to the letter.
The night the Powell Middle School student died, a grief counselor went to a home where dozens of devastated students had collected.
The students did not want to separate, so the school sent a bus to pick them up and deliver them to Powell, where students cried together late on a school night, said parents, who were grateful for the school’s response.
Sophie Engel, though, was among the many Arapahoe students exhausted by another suicide, pouring out her frustrations on Twitter and asking, “Do you see us yet?” She criticized what she sees as the same-old approach by schools. “No more ‘We have a counselor for you (along with a couple hundred other students)’ or ‘Call if you need anything’ crap. Wake up. Do something different. Change the culture,” she wrote. “Let’s get real.”
Arapahoe, with nearly 2,200 students, has just six counselors and two psychologists on staff. Mental health providers from Douglas and Jefferson County school districts spent days helping in Littleton last week.
On Thursday, Littleton students from multiple schools connected throughout the day on Snapchat, circulating an invitation to the vigil/rally in the park. “Everyone needs to come together,” 17-yearold Powers said in an interview. He has known five teens who died by suicide since he has been in high school. Each time, students connect and are more inclusive, but that fades, he said.
Social media’s power to bring kids together, including for a vigil, is part of the reason Barbara Becker, director of Mental Health First Aid Colorado, calls it both “a blessing and a curse.”
“There is more connectedness and fewer relationships,” Becker said, calling social media relationships “superficial.”
Students were rocked by friends’ final posts last week, and parents struggled once again with how social media affects their kids’ well-being, especially those parents whose children knew exactly when and where the suicides were happening, in real time.
David Luxton, a psychologist and researcher at the University of Washington School of Medicine, is trying to answer the question of why some people choose to publicize their suicide. Sometimes, he said, it is because they see it as a way of getting back at those they feel have wronged them.
But Luxton said social media has introduced a new element — sending one final message.
“It’s just the way people are communicating these days, especially young people,” he said.
While it’s well established that media coverage can lead to suicides, research is still catching up about social media’s impacts on suicide clusters. Still, Luxton said, there is ample reason for concern.
“I’ve been calling it socialmedia contagion,” he said.
Google, Facebook and other social media could use more sophisticated algorithms to identify people whose language suggests suicidal thoughts, he said. Already, when someone searches Google for “how to commit suicide,” the top result is for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, noted Luxton, who is also a scientific adviser for an app called Bark. The app allows parents to monitor their children’s social media accounts for sexting, cyberbullying and suicidal thoughts or actions.
Because of the contagion phenomenon, schools can struggle in determining how to memorialize a suicide death. At Arapahoe High, one student brought chalk so students could express themselves on sidewalks. The high school held a flower ceremony and students lined bouquets along Clarity Commons, an on-campus memorial for Claire Davis, the single victim in a December 2013 shooting at Arapahoe by a fellow student who then shot himself to death.
“They don’t want to glamorize the suicide,” said the University of Kentucky’s Cerel, “but, at the same time, I think the best guideline is treating it like a kid who died by car accident or who died by cancer.”