This is one example of the type of sensationalist headlines that bombards our every day. Like most people, I’ve succumbed to the bold, striking text scattered across tabloids. Influenced by clever wording and imagery, my views contorted to fit the newspapers intentions - of buying the entire paper to read a singular story that’s been dramatised and twisted to sell it. But we are hearing more about teen suicide, so what’s going on?

The most shocking, hard to fathom and highly publicised of these stories is where seventeen young people took their own lives in the previously unheard of welsh town of Bridgend, due, as the above headline suggests, to an ‘internet suicide pact’. Another recent tragedy is that of teen, Hannah Bond, whose emo music taste is said to have led her down the same path. These stories and the above headline echo what many are starting to believe - that some young people are embracing a suicide culture that exists through every aspect of their lifestyles. Their music, their fashion sense, their internet worlds and even their hair. As a teenager, falling for the headlines yet knowing no other teens involved in these types of dangers, I started to question, how much of this is true?

Let’s look at the blame put on ‘emo’ music and culture. ‘Emo’, an abbreviation of emotional, describes an independent look and sound that many young people relate as an edgy and expressive subculture. In the last few years emo has become synonymous with self harm and depressive thoughts by those who dislike it. Hannah Bond was a big fan of emo band My Chemical Romance (MCR) and is said to have chatted online to other emo followers about her suicidal thoughts. As a result many believe emo culture was responsible for Hannah taking her own life. With MCR song titles such as “Hang ‘em high”, “Cemetery drive” and “Bury me in black” the band became an easy target.

It’s true that lyrics such as “Cut my wrists and black my eyes”, (emo band Hawthorne Heights’ Ohio Is for Lovers), would probably be felt on a different level by someone who was deeply unhappy, which Hannah Bond was said to have been, but alone they are not instructions. The fact that tens of thousands of teens continue to listen to emo music safely is overlooked to make for more paper selling drama. By putting the blame solely on emo, a whole heap of problems are created. Youths and adults become more alienated from each other and youth cultures are warped and sensationalised, which if anything is most likely to have a damaging effect on teens. And worst of all, it amounts the complexity of a person’s individual reasons to take their own life, into simply down to music taste.
Laced between the twisted tabloid views of teen suicide is in fact a clearer picture. In the case of Bridgend, officials have stated several times that they are NOT investigating the possibility that internet suicide pacts are to blame for the deaths. “They were all young people with big issues”, was one quote from an official spokesperson. But this is not exciting enough to make the headlines. And this is possibly the main thing that’s being overlooked in the media. That these teens are vulnerable and troubled and as a result may react to anything. Dramatic captions that demand national attention can be overwhelmingly appealing to young people who want that attention.

In the early 1970s the researcher David Phillips studied copycat suicides. He coined the term Werther Effect due to the many reported deaths of young men shooting themselves following the death of a novel book’s hero, Werther, in 1774. Philips’ studies suggested that people were more likely to copy the behavior of others if they felt similar to the person they were copying. This does in fairness show that internet forums, websites and even music may help to trigger suicidal thoughts or actions but in most cases, no more than any other external triggers that the person might come across or be drawn to. Every case of suicide is individual and bunching them together under ‘suicide headlines’ is where the problem lies. The media is in fact a huge disguised influence in itself. If the internet is helping young people or anyone to consider copycatting, then surely the media and papers are also to blame?

The parents of Nathaniel Pritchard, one of the Bridgend teens who took his life, back up this thinking. They said that the media only glamorises the ways a person can take their life and believes they see it as way of gaining attention “without fully realising the tragic consequences”. How many ‘cry for help’ suicide ‘attempts’ have gone wrong or too far that we will never know about? Does the media not itself contributed to making it seem like a viable way to express unhappiness? They even publicise quotes from social networking ‘memorial sites’ on how a person will be missed. Surely this is further appealing to those who crave being noticed? One Bridgend official said “Taking one’s own life may be becoming an acceptable option to young people for issues they are facing”. But isn’t misleading reporting of suicides, normalising the topic to make it seem more acceptable? If others are trying it why shouldn’t I?

We’ll never know all of the reasons why each of the Bridgend youngsters killed themselves but we can be sure there were many contributing factors. Issues such as depression, mental health problems, substance abuse, bullying, lack of prospects, or a combination of any number of complicated reasons can all lead to making a person so vulnerable, they may react negatively to anything in the world around them. Music, the internet and other aspects of youth culture should not be used as the scapegoats to explain away serious matters purely to sell newspapers. Papers have a responsibility to accurately report on serious matters and consider the full effects of their reporting on people of every age.

When the ‘un-sellable’ factors are put into the context of a teen’s life they’re the big issues that can be unbearable for an individual to cope with. Sadly, they aren’t compelling enough to make front page national news or quench our thirst for drama.

By Becky Perrin