Federal law shields website operators from liability for most harmful content posted by users. While most states have laws against assisting suicide, they are inconsistent, rarely enforced and don’t explicitly address online activity. Editors decided to identify the site and the preservative used in many of the suicides - as some other news outlets have done - in order to fully inform readers about the dangers they pose, particularly to the young and vulnerable.Īustralia, Germany and Italy succeeded in restricting access to the site within their borders, but American law enforcement officials, lawmakers and technology companies have been reluctant to act. In considering how much detail to provideĪbout the website and its content, Times journalists interviewed mental health officials and suicide researchers, as well as parents and former members of the forum. That age group roughly aligns with the demographic in the United States - 15 to 24 - that had the sharpest rise in suicide rate from 2009 to 2019, the most recent data available. Most members reported that they had experienced mental illness and were 30 or younger, according to a survey last year by the site.
The site now draws six million page views a month, on average - quadruple that of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, according to data from Similarweb, a web analytics company. Reporters analyzed more than 1.2 million messages from the site, examined members’ online histories, reviewed hundreds of pages of police and coroner records, and interviewed dozens of families left behind. While 10 of the identified suicides have been previously reported, the Times investigation reveals the broader scope of the deaths, the growing use of the poison and the influence of the site. “There’s no question that this site, the way they created it, operate it and allow it to continue, is extremely dangerous.”
Daniel Reidenberg, a psychologist and the executive director of Suicide Awareness Voices of Education, a national nonprofit. “It’s disgusting that anyone would create a platform like this,” said Dr. Yet many public health and law enforcement officials are unaware of it. By promoting the preservative as a poison, the site has helped give rise to a means of suicide that is alarming some coroners and doctors. Most of the narratives cited the same lethal method, a preservative used for curing meat, The Times found. Some described watching as other members live-streamed their deaths off the site. In many of them, people narrated their attempts in real-time posts. More than 500 members - a rate of more than two a week - wrote “goodbye threads” announcing how and when they planned to end their lives, and then never posted again.
Though members are anonymous, The New York Times identified 45 who had killed themselves in the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada and Australia - and found that the trail of deaths is likely much longer. Participants routinely nudge one another along as they share suicide plans, posting reassuring messages, thumbs-up and heart emojis, and praise for those who follow through: “brave,” “a legend,” “a hero.” Strangers seek out partners to meet face to face and kill themselves together. On the site’s public forums, in live chats and through private messaging, they discuss hanging, poison, guns and gas. The four young members were among tens of thousands around the world who have been pulled in.
Easy ways to kill yourself how to#
This one - started in March 2018 by two shadowy figures calling themselves Marquis and Serge - provides explicit directions on how to die. Most suicide websites are about prevention. Soon after joining, each of them was dead. And Daniel Dal Canto, a 16-year-old in Salt Lake City, shared his fears that an undiagnosed stomach ailment might never get better. Roberta Barbos, a 22-year-old student at the University of Glasgow, first posted after a breakup, writing that she was “unbearably lonely.” Shawn Shatto, 25, described feeling miserable at her warehouse job in Pennsylvania. “I know it is all just a distraction to blow time until the end.” “Any enjoyment or progress I make in my life simply comes across as forced,” he wrote on the site after signing up. Searching online, he found a website about suicide. As Matthew van Antwerpen, a 17-year-old in suburban Dallas, struggled with remote schooling during the pandemic last year, he grew increasingly despondent.
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