Have you heard of cyber suicide?

Nineteen year old Abraham Biggs overdosed on prescription drugs last week in Florida, while streaming live video to Justin.tv. It’s being reported that he had a history of depression and bipolar disorder, which is why he had the drugs he used to kill himself. He blogged that he was planning to commit suicide about twelve hours before he was found dead, after some kind of online altercation at a body building website where he apparently posted fairly regularly. [Read the MSNBC article here.]

This isn’t the first time something similar has happened.

A British man in his forties hung himself last year as a chat room full of people watched, some of them encouraging him to hurry up and get it over with.

There have been a few other cases reported, as well, and they’ve been given the name cyber suicide.

I can’t help but wonder what this tells us about how technology is changing the way we interact with each other. I can’t imagine how lonely I’d have to be to decide the people I wanted to talk about my desires to kill myself were random people I met in a chat room. And I can’t imagine feeling so completely overlooked by the world that I wanted to broadcast my death on the internet... or wanting to get back at someone I’d met online so badly that I’d actually kill myself.

It’s sad. Really sad.