Deathstream – Social Media Livestreaming and the Uprise in Public Deaths

Arjun Bhardwaj, Sitora B., Katelyn Nicole Davis. This is just a small list of a much bigger one with a collection of the names from people who’ve died live while livestream.

As social media continues growing widespread with more and more platforms introducing live streaming, there have been more people who can easily broadcast whatever they would like on the internet. This includes suicides and violent crimes.

“I think it’s a good way to further our social media, in the sense that it’s like a video chat with several people. But I feel like it can also be a bit much.” Isabelle Dovalina, 11th grader, said. She isn’t wrong, as live streaming viewing has increased by 81% between 2015 and 2016 alone.

In the case of Steve Stephens, though, while few may have saw the video at the time, no one could prepare anyone for the travesty he caused.

“An event like that is always tragic, in the sense that, like, innocent people are being killed and it was being put out like that publically and that matters.” Dovalina said. “But at the same time, I feel like people forget that things like that happen, and that could happen to anyone. With that being said, with that event happening, I feel like more people should know that there’s not only predators in your social media accounts interacting with you but also in the streets. We walk past people like that every single day.”

Even, keeping in mind, that you’re actually extremely likely to encounter a future or already convicted murderer at some point in your life, there’s still one huge question left: Why do these people commit these acts live on camera for all the world to see?

“For suicide, I’d say they do it more for attention. But for other crimes, I’d say it’s just them being stupid.” Quintin McCray, 10th grader, said.

He’s rather close. With the recent uprise in deaths on livestream, psychologists have pinpointed it to mainly ‘people wanting to create a legacy and becoming apart of history.’

“That honestly doesn’t surprise me. I can understand where that comes from, wanting to be remembered.” McCray said.

While wanting to be remembered is a passionate feeling, many still debate as to what needs to be done to prevent such gruesome public executions. It’s still up in the air, though, as to what facebook and other social media platforms plan on doing. “That’s hard to say, because some of them can go live at any moment and they can take a video of crime or anything and they can upload it.” Muaath Adly, 12th grader, said. “Maybe they should have someone to review the video before it gets posted. That’s probably the most they can do.”

Methods and motives aside, there are multiple ways to view how people may leave this earth, whether it’s valiant or it’s absurd. “I myself, I wanna be remembered when I die. But not like that.” Adly said. “Not like Adolf Hitler kinda way, like a Barack Obama kinda way, something like that. They can do something good instead of in a bad way, so everyone is gonna remember them. To be honest, another two months go by, and no one will be talking about this. So that was a complete waste of his life.”