Sensationalism of suicide cases in mass media leads to increase of suicides – Minister Abayev

ASTANA. KAZINFORM Minister of Information and Communications Dauren Abayev has commented on reports in social media about virtual games leading to teen suicide, Kazinform correspondent reports.    

“Our society actively discusses today the information on attraction of teenagers to virtual suicide games. The resonance of this problem is clear – we are speaking about our children’s safety. But we should remember that mentioning these games in  mass media is a some kind of advertisement of such destructive groups. We should not forget about the so-called Werther effect, when urgency and sensationalism of news about suicides leads to the increase of suicides,” Dauren Abayev wrote in his Facebook account.

“Our Ministry constantly monitors social media to identify suicide groups.  Hundreds of groups have been blocked and removed in the past years. By the way, in 2016, the Ministry of Internal Affairs investigated into 9 criminal cases on inciting teenagers to suicides. However, there was no information on impact of social media and groups on their behavior,” he adds.

In case of finding suspicious groups in social media, the Ministry asks to send information about them via the link   http://mic.gov.kz/ru/complain .