A wave of suicides among teenagers and young adults has swept across Kazakhstan. Parents and the Children's Ombudsman have said children were provoked to do dangerous things by the internet, and deputies have demanded that social networks should be blocked. The media, meanwhile, has been accused of creating a “Werther effect,” fixating on the rash of suicides and thus encouraging teenagers to repeat these acts of self-harm. However, experts believe the cause is much more nuanced and cannot be eliminated by blocking harmful content alone. Chronicle of a Fateful September On September 13, a teenager fell from an eighth-story window in Astana. The boy died of his injuries. The very next day, a schoolgirl plummeted from a fifth-floor window in Shchuchinsk. The 12-year-old girl is in hospital, and the causes of both incidents are still under investigation. On September 16 in Almaty, two seventh-grade students from school No. 25 named after the writer I.Esenberlin, left class and climbed to the attic of a neighbor's apartment complex. The girls both fell to their death from the roof. “I came, and I saw two girls lying there. They had jumped from the roof," an eyewitness stated. "The girls were about 13 years old; seventh graders. One had a backpack next to her, and the other had no shoes and was wearing black tights. She had taken her shoes off and placed them neatly. One fell on a car, and her body rolled away. The second was immediately killed on the asphalt.” Later, it became known that one of the girls was the daughter of a famous Almaty ecologist and artist. Deputy Interior Minister Igor Lepekha said that what happened "is a suicide; the case was opened based on it being suicide." On September 21, another schoolgirl fell from a high-rise in Almaty. Allegedly, the girl left the house to perform a routine task, but climbed to the 13th floor, from where she plunged. The Almaty Police Department confirmed the girl's death and has opened a criminal case. By this time, in schools, online, and on social networks, parents had started to spread panicked rumors about the impact on children of a particular computer game, similar to the semi-mythical game “Blue Whale.” In the past, Blue Whale has been decried as a malicious game which encourages teenagers to commit suicide and acts of violence, but no convincing evidence has ever been presented. The Almaty police stated that gossip regarding the involvement of dangerous internet games in the girls' deaths is not valid and reminded the public about their responsibility vis-à-vis spreading false information. On September 22, in the yard of a multi-story residential building in Almaty, the body of a 3rd-year cadet from the Border Academy of the National Security Committee (NSC) who was on regular leave was found. “The cause of death was a fall from a height,” the NSC press service reported. On September 23, also in Almaty, multiple sources reported that a young man had tumbled from a high-rise building. Police...
