Study: 2017 rise in teen suicide rates due to seasonal shifts, not 13 Reasons Why
Enlarge / Katherine Langford starred as Hannah Baker, a teen who dies by suicide, in the controversial Netflix series 13 Reasons Why. (credit: Netflix)
The controversial 2017 Netflix series 13 Reasons Why sparked years of contradictory academic studies on whether the show sparked a rise in teen suicides (suicide contagion, or copycat suicides). Some showed negative impacts, while others found beneficial impacts. The most damning study appeared in 2019, which reported a sharp increase in suicide rates among young people between the ages of 10 and 17 in the months after the first season's release-although it stopped short of finding a direct causal link between the two. In response, the streaming service edited out the original graphic three-minute bathtub suicide scene that ignited the controversy.
But Dan Romer, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center who studies media and social influences on adolescent health, was skeptical about that 2019 study. His latest paper on the subject, published in the journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, found a seasonal pattern to teen suicide rates that seems to coincide with the school year, declining in the summer months. Taking this and other factors into account effectively eliminated the contagion effect reported in the 2019 paper. (For an in-depth look at the controversy and an overview of several of those studies, see my 2021 feature.)
As I've written previously, suicide contagion is a phenomenon in which exposure to suicide within a family, among friends, or through the media may be associated with increased suicidal behavior. There have been many studies over the years on suicide contagion-sometimes called the "Werther effect," after the young protagonist of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 1774 novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther. However, the extent to which fictional portrayals of suicide may contribute to suicide contagion remains a matter of genuine academic debate.