Sometimes the status updates we see on Facebook aren’t always about announcing and celebrating milestones in life, like getting married, having a baby, moving to a new country, launching your own business, and so on. Sometimes those updates are actually a cry for help from someone suicidal that we might miss.This is something Facebook hopes to change as they have recently begun rolling out suicide-prevention tools for users. These tools will be available via a drop-down menu in which users can report posts that will then be flagged by Facebook’s global community operations, who will then monitor the post to ensure that the person isn’t suicidal.
Users who flag the posts can also send a Facebook message directly, or coordinate with a mutual friend to figure out a way to reach out and help the person in need. Facebook will even provide suggestions on the kind of messages that they think would be effective/useful in situations like this, which according to Vanessa Callison-Burch, a Facebook product manager working on the project, “People really want to help, but often they just don’t know what to say, what to do or how to help their friends.”
Over the years, it seems that many NGOs and researchers have pushed Facebook to be more involved and to step up their game in helping prevent suicide, and it looks like this tool is a step in the right direction.
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