Assignment 5: SafeAssign Assignment - Social Work Research
1.
Coyle, Sue. "Social Media and Suicide Prevention." Social Media and Suicide Prevention. Social WOrk Today, Jan.-Feb. 2014. Web. 16 Dec. 2014. .
The article is about the link between social websites and suicide. Although many
believe that there is a link between social websites and suicide in the sense that they
can help to cause suicide, Sue Boyle argues that social websites can infact prevent
suicide. She starts her argument by stating that even though social websites can alienize
a teenager through cyber bullying or by making the teenager feel like hes not part of a
certain group of friends that these are irrelevant as a cause of suicidal thoughts, as
teenagers are more likely to become suicidal naturally with or without any social
websites. She goes on to explain that there are certain phrases that can be posted to
social websites that can be used as "trigger phrases" that can alert others that this
person could be suicidal, such as “People would be better off without me.” She then
goes on to explain how there are programers working on a program that could pick out
these kinds of phrases.
I agree with Boyle that teenagers are at a higher risk of being suicidal with or
without suicidal thoughts. Someone could post something on a social website in a
similar way that people write in a diary, feeling that because they are in front of a
computer screen it seems annonymous. I think that this program is a great idea if it can
pick out certain trigger phrases like these and alert others that can help, that this person
is a suicide risk. As long as the program can run without bugs this can be a great tool to
prevent suicide, but it would need to be tested very well, as not to falsly make a report
that someone could be suicidal when they arent suicidal at all. If the program has bugs
like this, it could lead to a personal privacy issue similar...