Hiding in plain sight: Inside the online world of suicidal teens
‘I SHOULD FEEL SAD’
Dreamstime
Martina Velasquez of Weston was 13 when she first became aware of secret societies for depressed teens on Instagram and Tumblr. “When you are in a position of absolute depression and hopelessness, you think you are completely alone,” she said.
“Girls like me were posting about devastating break-ups and romanticizing suicide,” Velasquez said. “After a while, you start thinking, I should give in to this. I should feel sad.”
Jackie Feliciano, a Palm Beach County 2019 high school graduate, said she often felt alone and sad during her teen years and spent an entire summer without leaving her house. When she posted on Instagram about feeling like a loser, her post drew comments designed to humiliate her further.
“They said things like, ‘Why not kill yourself, you’re better off dead.’ The way teens treat each other online can be so cruel,” she said.
In the last two months, two South Florida teens, Alejandra Agredo and Bryce Gowdy, posted final public messages on Twitter or Instagram — “I bon voyage” and “to be or not to be” — before their suicides. In both cases, dozens of their teen followers “liked” the posts, while others commented long after it was too late, saying “I hope all is well” or “I wish I had seen this earlier.”
Alejandra’s father, Freddy Agredo, said he had spoken with his daughter just hours before she posted her farewell on social media and tried to cheer her up. “She had several accounts and I tried to monitor them,” he said. “We had talked about how people can be mean online and I told her ‘you have to learn to let it slip away.’”
Broward County high school teacher Kelly Oddone said because a student shared a disturbing Snapchat post of a friend, Oddone was able to stop a suicide. The suicidal girl denied she needed help, but Oddone used a screenshot of the post to get her to open up and get help.
