Samaritans founder Chad Varah was that most British of things: an old-fashioned gentleman with a pronounced enthusiasm for the modern world. Besides his work in suicide prevention, he promoted progressive attitudes towards sex education in Picture Post, and was the astronautical consultant to Dan Dare, the “Pilot of the Future” whose exploits thrilled the readers of the Eagle. So it is fair to say he would have approved of the latest innovation by Samaritans: a box with the organisation's helpline number (08457 90 90 90) that appears at the top of the page in response to searches for terms relating to suicide on Google UK.
It has been there since November 2010: a small change, but a significant one. This is not by any means the organisation's first foray into cyberspace—that came as far back as 1992 with the piloting of the jo@samaritans.org email address—but it represents an important advance in the way Samaritans engages with the public, and an indication that it is keen to address the challenges posed by a future spent more and more online.
The first of these challenges will be to bring some sense of rationality and proportion to the ongoing discussion about the role of the internet. Although the perception of the online environment as something novel is wearing off for adults—and is probably a source of complete bafflement to teenagers—its involvement, however tenuous, in any episode of self-harm, suicide, illness, or violence guarantees intense media interest. And behind these stories lurks the assumption—made in the absence of any solid evidence—that the use of the internet, and specifically social networking sites, is intrinsically damaging. In 2009, for example, the UK Sunday Telegraph ran an interview with the Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols: it was reported that the Archbishop “warned that the sites are contributing to a trend for teenagers to put too much importance on the number of friends they have and that this can ultimately lead to suicide...”
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Niall Boyce @'The Lancet'
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