We've talked about this with our son a few times...people committing suicide over posts on the internet.A girl my son went to school with committed suicide about 18months ago. While not directly responsible, I dont think facebook helped.
For my 18yo son and his friends it really put into perspective all the silly nasty comments they post about each other on facebook.
I've even shown some nasty posts and private messages thrown at me from this site.
He was a bit shocked, and I told him that these are the ones that weren't deleted by the moderators. The PM's are worse - they don't get deleted by mods as far as I know.
I asked him; "now; how do you think I should respond?" and then proceeded to show him some of them to illustrate.
He asked me; "weren't you upset?"
I replied; "No. The opposite - the nastier they are, the more funny it is to me. These are people who are either misreading what I've said, or don't agree with me and don't like me for various reasons and have to reply in a nasty way, but it's only words and I have learned to grow a thick skin - you need to do the same."
The object is to teach them about how the kids can react when confronted with nasty comments and name-calling..
You can take it to heart, and get all emotional and upset, and get into a slanging match where no-one wins or worse - someone dies - or you can let it wash off you like water off a duck.
And you can turn it off.
We've tried to train him not to respond in a nasty way - he has done this previously and got himself into trouble he wasn't expecting, so a good lesson learned.
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