Singapore's digital generation and the contagion of despair

A teenager is introduced by his friends to a story that seems to speak directly to him. In it, he discovers a young man overwhelmed by unrequited love, spiralling into hopelessness and finally taking his own life.

- Jared Ng

The boy reads with growing fascination. The words echo his own feelings of loneliness, and he begins to wonder whether his life, too, might be beyond repair.

It sounds like the kind of narrative that circulates on TikTok or on hidden online forums, where vulnerable young people stumble across content that romanticises despair. But this was not written in 2025. It was written in 1774, when Goethe published The Sorrows Of Young Werther.

The book was a sensation.

Young men across Europe copied Werther’s style of dress and, tragically, his manner of death.

The authorities banned the novel in several regions. The fear was not only about the deaths themselves but about what books could do when released to the public. Could they corrupt morals? Could they incite dangerous ideas?

These concerns sound familiar.

Today, we ask the same questions about social media platforms, messaging apps and the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots that young people use daily. The medium has changed, but the anxieties remain.

THE NEW FACE OF CONTAGION IN SINGAPORE

This digital threat is not an abstract, overseas problem. Here in Singapore, suicide has tragically remained the leading cause of death for those aged 10 to 29 for several years running, according to the Samaritans of Singapore.

The pressures our young people face are immense, and their digital worlds are a key part of that reality.

At the Institute of Mental Health (IMH), I once saw a young girl admitted after her parents discovered she was participating in the Blue Whale Challenge, a “game” that demanded a series of tasks culminating in a final, fatal one. Hidden in her email inbox were chilling instructions: Throw away your antidepressants, isolate yourself from friends, complete increasingly harmful tasks. The “final mission” was clear: to end her life.