To Facebook or not to Facebook? A New Gate to the Emotional World of Adolescents.

 By: Eleonora Cavalca, M.Sc. 

            Since its origins in February 2004, Facebook has gained increasing popularity as the most used social networking service. As of February 2012, Facebook count more than 845 million active users. While the membership was initially limited to Harvard students, now anyone aged 13 and over can join. Is that a good thing?

            “ To Facebook or not to Facebook” has become a popular conversation topic among all age groups. It is interesting to notice how, despite the majority of people claim to be against it, they spend most of their time while waiting for the metro/bus checking their friends’ new status or the new uploaded pictures. Why not call people to see what they did the night before instead of checking their status updates? Is there something more in the status updates that it is hard to communicate through the phone?

            It has been observed by experts in the field of mental health that adolescents, in particular, use Facebook as a way to express and share their emotions. Dark emotions. Emotions that they cannot voice anywhere else. Amanda Cummings, a 15-year old girl who committed suicide on December 27^th wrote “then ill go, ill kill myself, with these pills, this knife, this life has already done half the job”. Maybe this girl’s life could have been saved, if her status would have been read more carefully.

            According to a study conducted at the University of Washington and  the University of Wisconsin- Madison, 30 % of adolescents like Amanda, meet the American Psychiatric Association’s criteria for depression in their status updates. But who should be responsible for interpreting them and take action? Some steps have been taken to address the situation. In 2007 Facebook began collaborating with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: readers who identify “suicidal” comments have the option to inform Facebook. A link  of the prevention lifeline is then sent to the person, who expressed suicidal ideation.

            Is that the best way to address this problem? It is definitely a first step, but it seems that adolescents voicing despair on Facebook are looking for more personalized help. A professor, a therapist, someone close to them. Not an impersonal lifeline. But how can therapists or professors respond to adolescents’ call for help, when it does not seem to be ethical to add your patient or student to your Facebook contacts?

            Some therapists seem to have found a compromise to deal with their young clients’ cry for help. They let their patients add them to their contacts, but with a limited access to their profile. This way, they can monitor their clients' train of thoughts, without being intruded upon. Even though this would have never happened a decade ago, isn’t it important to be aware and open to what the evolution in technology brings to the psychotherapy field? There a lot of cons associated with the use of Facebook, but if a better monitoring of status updates by experts in the field would allow to save more young people’s lives, wouldn’t this be a good enough reason to overlook the negative?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/us/facebook-posts-can-offer-clues-of-depression.html?ref=health.