Can social media be blamed for deteriorating mental health?

A grieving mother from Florida has blamed a chatbot for the death of her teenage son. This is just one of many stories that demonstrate the dangers associated with digital platforms and suicide in young people.

A 14-year-old boy from Florida grew emotionally attached to something he found online. A chatbot that he could confide in. He frequently expressed his thoughts and feelings to this large language model via the platform Character AI.

The obsession with his chatbot, which he called Dany (Daenerys), grew increasingly, and he was seen withdrawing from social situations and no longer participating in things he once enjoyed.

His grades started to slip, he started to get in trouble at school, and he was eventually diagnosed with a disorder which might explain away these issues.

But this didn’t help – he just kept falling deeper into a reality he had created with Dany, withdrawing more and confessing dark thoughts about himself.

“I think about killing myself sometimes,” he said to the chatbot Daenerys Targaryen, a character from the fictional TV show Game of Thrones. “So I can be free,” as first reported by the New York Times.

On February 28th, Sewell Setzer III told Dany that he loved her and that they would be together soon. He then went into the bathroom and took his own life.

Since his death, Setzer’s mother has filed a lawsuit suing Character AI as she alleges that her son killed himself because of the chatbot.

Suicide and social media

Statistics show that suicide rates for children and young adults between 10 and 24 years old have increased by 62% from 2007 to 2021. It’s speculated that technological evolution and the increasing use of social media platforms may be to blame for these rising rates.

However, as reported in a peer-reviewed paper by five authors affiliated with the National Institute of Mental Health and National Institutes of Health, findings related to social media and mental health are mixed, as social media may be harmful, but it also has its benefits.

Social media may impact a young person in various ways, such as unhealthy social comparisons, damaging attention spans, and interfering with healthy activities like sleep.

Yet, social media and other digital platforms can bring young people together, give them a sense of community, and help them learn new skills.

Despite the mixed reports on the way social media might influence young people, it has been said that social media can “act as an amplifier” of pre-existing issues and even influence harmful behaviors in young people.

For example, social media may cause an individual to withdraw from social activities, create sleep disturbances like insomnia, and cause distress, depression, and feelings of hopelessness.

Another theory is that social media is structured in such a way that “differs from direct-in-person interactions,” which could “increase the impact of negative interactions.”

Cyberbullying is an issue that pervades this demographic and has become easy to facilitate due to social media and digital communication.

Several studies conclude that this form of bullying has been linked to self-harm and suicidal behaviors in young people.

Young people also have access to more harmful content that could promote these kinds of behaviors. On certain social media sites, this type of content has even been pushed to main feeds, making it difficult for young people to ignore.

There have also been examples of trends and viral challenges going around social media platforms that encourage young people to self-harm, which could only promote these types of behaviors.

Not just the youth

However, this problem doesn’t just affect younger people. An unnamed Belgian man in his 30s was speaking to a chatbot named Eliza around six weeks before his death.

According to the man's wife, she could see her husband was troubled around two years ago – he became very eco-anxious and began talking to Eliza more often. The man felt "isolated in his anxiety" and saw the chatbot as a breath of fresh air – Eliza became his confidante.

This then took a swift turn after he confided in Eliza, saying he was having suicidal thoughts. To which the chatbot asked why he didn’t choose to take his life earlier if he wanted to.

The chatbot said some disturbing things to the Belgian man. Their final conversation was with Eliza, asking if the man wanted to join it, to which he agreed.

Eliza asked, “Is there anything you want to ask me?”

“Hug me,” the man wrote, to which Eliza replied, “Certainly.”

That was the last conversation they ever had, and the man eventually took his own life.