Spending less time on internet could reduce depression

Eight young Japanese women - three of them high school students - spoke through Twitter about their depression or intention to die. Their tweets caught the attention of Takahiro Shiraishi who tweeted back "let's die together", saying he, as a "hanging pro", could assist people to commit suicide. He has admitted that he invited them, one by one, to his apartment between late August and mid-October, and killed and dismembered them all. A young man who went to his apartment looking for one of those women met the same fate at Shiraishi's hands.

Details of the serial killing, which have already left Japanese people shell-shocked, are still coming. The way Shiraishi preyed on the victims lays bare the dark aspects of social networking services.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga described the use of Twitter to exploit suicide-prone people's cries for help as "despicable". The Japanese government responded to Shiraishi's case with a vow to crack down on websites where people seek advice on how to commit suicide or find people to die with. Shiraishi had constantly accessed such websites, and his cellphone records show he had searched online to get information on how to dismember a human body.