UAE | General
UAE residents have shocked reaction to live TV suicide
He committed suicide while the world watched. 19-year-old American teenager Abraham Biggs overdosed on pills and died - 1,500 people were witness to this extreme act telecast via a web cam on reality television.
- By Huda Tabrez , Community Journalist and Nasheet Jaffer Khan, Community Solutions Editor
- Published: 23:24 November 28, 2008
- Image Credit: Supplied photo
- Shalini Radia says a growing number of teenagers use the internet for outrageous activities for fun.
Dubai: He committed suicide while the world watched. 19-year-old American teenager Abraham Biggs overdosed on pills and died - 1,500 people were witness to this extreme act telecast via a web cam on reality television.
Gulf News readers ask, as many others across the world do, once this macabre news broke - why did it take hours before anyone called the emergency services? Has reality TV gone beyond control or have we become so desensitised that a teenager's slow death failed to rouse any reaction?
"Had one person intervened, he might have been alive today. I worry for the teenagers who watched him die. I wonder if they regret not doing anything in order to save Abraham," Shuili Dutt Dey, a Dubai-based expatriate and writer said.
Renadev Mattatholi, an electronics technician and father of two believes that such incidents question human morality.
He said: "My eldest daughter is as old as Biggs. The news broke my heart. Rescuing a life is every individual's duty. We must think about what happened."
While Mattatholi refuses to blame the internet for the incident, other readers narrowed down the problem to an increasing number of teenagers spending more time online as opposed to watching "quality television". Reality TV shows topped the list of "senseless airtime".
Dey said: "Nothing is more unreal and impractical than such shows. The characters do not behave or emote in a realistic manner and have absolutely no relevance to our world."
A thought echoed by Mattatholi. He said: "Too much exposure to reality TV is leading people towards exaggerated reactions to life's problems."
Shalini Radia, a 17-year-old British expatriate, said that a growing number of teenagers use the internet for outrageous activities for fun. She said: "I came across a petition on Facebook where the person said that he would set his hair on fire if 1001 members signed the petition."
Radia affirms that by watching Biggs commit suicide, such silent spectators encourage erratic behaviour among young adults. "Even if Biggs was seeking attention at the cost of giving up his life, what I am more concerned about is how this will affect younger children who do not understand the enormity of the situation."
According to Dr Ron Villejo, a psychologist and management trainer, if individuals are afforded anonymity or privacy, they may do things they don't normally do. He said: "Given a steady dose of aggressive and inappropriate behaviour on TV or internet, people become less sensitised to rules or decorum of proper behaviour. They might not behave in an improper manner but are less likely to be shocked or stop such acts simply because they are used to it."
However, he cautioned that it might be easy to say that society is degenerating. "But I would advise against making judgments based on one incident. There are many people in our society who are committed to doing good," Dr Villejo said.
Issues: Website could have intervened
A technical question that the death of Abraham Biggs has raised is, whether it would have been possible for the operators of the website to have acted to save the boy.
Mohammad Hamedi, CEO of Sphere Networks - a Dubai-based company that develops network management and monitoring solutions - feels that it could have been done.
Talking about the repercussions of having a cheap and easily available medium for people to communicate and interact in, Hamedi said that the only way to take action is by monitoring all suspicious activities on websites. He said: "The responsibility of detecting anomalies lies with the people who provide such a web service. For example, in the case of Abraham's video, it was possible to check the content, especially since a lot of people were logging on to watch it. Such videos can be checked without it taking up a lot of time."
Hamedi said that society needs to step in and raise an alarm if they come across a video that may be offensive or harmful as in the case of popular networking websites, like YouTube and Facebook that allow users to flag content that might be offensive.
Although, he added: "Anyone can launch a website and others can log on and be active members. Therefore, blocking harmful content is an extremely challenging task." Hamedi stressed on how filtering becomes a problem when it involves audio or video streaming.
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