The Social Responsibility of Social Networking Sites

I’m usually one of the first to criticize Facebook, but I’m really pleased about the new suicide prevention initiative they’ve rolled out.

About six or seven years ago I did a research paper on suicide prevention policies among online social networking sites (Facebook, Livejournal, MySpace and a few smaller sites.) Most had no policy at all, and the user base suffered - it’s a special feeling of helplessness, to know that a friend is in crisis and to have no way of checking in with them, to even let them know that you’re worried about them, because they’ve stepped away from their computer.

Livejournal and Dreamwidth users started promoting their own unofficial solution a few years back, by putting real world contact information in private entries and placing a link to it in their user profiles. Administrators could then use that information in an emergency, which, as the meme pointed out, is not limited to suicide:

Yes, the Abuse team occasionally hears of users who plan to commit suicide, but there are other situations where having this information could possibly be of use to the police. There have been, for instance, phone posts that were interrupted by physical violence before, and other such situations. The Abuse team often gets reports of these things, and oftentimes, there is nothing we can do to help, because we can’t find you.

With Facebook, the online/real world divide seems less relevant. The vast majority of my friends on these kinds of sites know an alternative way to contact me, and I imagine that’s true for most users. What’s especially helpful here is the promotion of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which many people don’t know about. Providing a one-click link to a chat with an NSPL volunteer makes the barrier to reaching out for help very low.

I really do appreciate Facebook doing this. It seems like a trend for big sites (such as Google) to recognize that they have created a public space and that they therefore have some obligation to the public good. Of course, it doesn’t really hurt their bottom line to link people in crisis to a lifeline. What happens when public good and profit are put at odds?