For unhappy teens thinking about death as a solution, Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why could be glamorizing suicide, writes Constance Grady on Vox. The show was just renewed for a third season.
In the first season, a 17-year-old girl kills herself after a sexual assault, “leaving behind 13 audio cassette tapes for 13 of her classmates on which she explains exactly why she blames them for her death,” writes Grady.
Research suggests that after graphic depictions of suicide, suicide rates go up because of the phenomenon of suicide contagion.
One suicide expert says Netflix hired him to review the series before it came out to guide its release. He told them that it shouldn’t come out at all, he says, “but that wasn’t an option. That was made very clear to me.”
A study published last fall found that Google searches about suicide — including “how to commit suicide” — spiked after the show’s release.
Why are kids killing themselves?
The number of teens “hospitalized for thinking about or attempting suicide doubled in less than a decade,” according to a recent study. Anxiety and depression diagnoses are way up for teenagers. Nobody’s quite sure why. Is it social media? School bullies? Pressure to get into top colleges?