Web Suicide Pacts Lead to Thousands of Deaths   2/9/2006 - 1,408 views,

Back when we first talked about suicide and the Internet, reporting the man who hung himself during a video chat session with his girlfriend, we got quite a few comments, some taking us to task for covering such a morbid event, saying that it didn’t seem to have anything to do with our subject matter.

We disagreed, and sadly, our belief that the Internet can play a direct role in people taking their own life has been borne out to a degree that even I could not have predicted.

Police in Japan are reporting this week that nearly 100 people took their own lives in Japan this past year as the result of web suicide pacts. In fact, the trend is so alarming that, according to Headline News, Japanese Internet service providers have started to report suspected “suicide circles� to the authorities.

There is something about the paradoxical anonymous intimacy which makes taking that final step just that much easier, and authorities theorize that it makes it more accessible to those who do not want to die alone.

In one of the latest cases, three men and a woman who found each other on the Internet got together, climbed into a car, and lit charcoal burners, taking their own lives through carbon monoxide poisoning.