---
title: "Facebook Announces New Efforts to Prevent Suicide and Self-Harm"
description: "Facebook has announced a trio of new initiatives designed to prevent suicide and self-harm amongst the platform's many users."
date: "2019-09-10"
modified: "2019-09-10"
authors:
  - name: "Kristin Houser"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/kristin"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/facebook-suicide-prevention"
categories:
  - "Future Society"
tags:
  - "facebook"
  - "self-harm"
  - "suicide"
  - "the digest"
---

# Facebook Announces New Efforts to Prevent Suicide and Self-Harm

![Facebook has announced a trio of new initiatives designed to prevent suicide and self-harm amongst the platform's many users.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/facebook-suicide-prevention.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: Facebook/Victor Tangermann\</em\>*

## Brighter Future

On World Suicide Prevention Day, Facebook [announced](<https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/09/tightening-our-policies-and-expanding-resources-to-prevent-suicide-and-self-harm/>) a trio of new initiatives designed to prevent suicide and self harm among its users.

Firstly, the company is hiring a health and well-being expert tasked with, among other things, helping Facebook address the issues of suicide and self-injury on the platform.

It's also giving two academic researchers access to CrowdTangle, a social media monitoring tool, so they can analyze how Facebook users talk about suicide in the hopes the information could improve prevention and support efforts.

Finally, Facebook is adding Orygen's [#chatsafe guidelines,](<https://www.orygen.org.au/Education-Training/Resources-Training/Resources/Free/Guidelines/chatsafe-A-young-person-s-guide-for-communicatin>) which are designed to help young people safely talk about suicide online, to its Safety Center.

## Looking Back

Facebook also took the opportunity on Tuesday to detail its previous efforts to prevent suicide and self harm.

Those include a ban on "[graphic cutting images](<https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/02/protecting-people-from-self-harm/>)" and any content promoting eating disorders, which the company has made harder to find on photo sharing site Instagram, which it also owns. Earlier this year, it also began placing a "[sensitivity screen](<https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/04/instagram-will-hide-self-harm-images-behind-sensitivity-screens/>)" over any Instagram images of healed self-harm cuts in an attempt to prevent the images from triggering unsuspecting users.

Ultimately, these past changes and the new initiatives are a welcome example of a powerful tech company taking steps to keep its users safe — and with suicide claiming a life [every 40 seconds](<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-suicide/suicide-kills-one-person-every-40-seconds-says-who-idUSKCN1VU1AH>), such efforts are highly welcomed.

**READ MORE:** [Facebook says it's doing more to prevent suicide and self-harm](<https://www.engadget.com/2019/09/10/facebook-instagram-suicide-self-harm-prevention/>) \[*Engadget*\]

**More on suicide:** *[A Japanese City Is Using AI to Prevent Youth Suicides](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/school-bullying-artificial-intelligence>)*

### Author social links  
[LinkedIn](<https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinjhouser>)