There's a new Twitter-backed app that aims to help people who have suicidal tendencies by alerting their friends after they have posted suicide-linked messages online. The app scans tweets that involve phrases such as "need someone to talk to," "help me," "depressed," "hate myself," and "tired of being alone."
Samaritans Radar was created by the charity organization called Samaritans, which helps to prevent people from committing suicide. It is a downloadable app through which individual users can monitor the people they are following on Twitter and check tweets that have potential suicidal meaning.
"We know that people struggling to cope often go online looking for support; however, there is still so much we need to learn about why this happens," said Joe Ferns, executive director of policy, research and development at Samaritans.
Other tweets that could get flagged by the app include those that express the absence of a future and a sense of hopelessness, exhaustion, or feeling trapped.
Jonathan Scourfield, a professor at Cardiff University's School of Social Sciences, said that there is a pattern found in suicidal language posted online. He added that the number of suicidal messages shows how there is a need to keep track of online activities; one such way is to monitor tweets.
"Through social media there has been a normalization of suicidal language through repeated use online," said Scourfield. "Twitter is important because past studies have found that a correlation between suicidal statements posted online and resulting suicide exists."
Any Twitter user can activate the Samaritans Radar by going to the app's official site. Users need to provide the site with their email address to receive alerts.
After activation, users can start receiving an alert through email when a potentially worrying tweet is found. Once a user logs in to his account, he can start seeing tweets and confirm if it suggests suicidal tendencies.
The people from the Samaritans group say that the process of verifying a tweet is enabled because they believe that a person knows his friend better than anyone else. Moreover, the verification process helps to tighten up the computer algorithm used in looking for troubling keywords.
Patricia Cartes, Twitter's global head of trust and safety outreach, lauds the Samaritans for their experiment in finding new ways to support online those who need help and are reaching out in cyberspace.
