Parents Ban Teen From Facebook, So She Kills Herself

A teenager who decided to end her own life said in her suicide note that she couldn’t live without Facebook, which her parents had forbidden.

Aishwarya Dahiwal, a 17-year-old living with her parents in the western Indian city of Parbhani, was found dead Wednesday night. She decided to hang herself after getting into an argument with her parents over her excessive use of her cellphone and the social network Facebook.

In the note she left, she complained about her parents’ rules, but specifically wrote that she couldn’t imagine a life without Facebook.

“Is Facebook so bad?” she wrote. “I cannot stay in a home with such restrictions as I can’t live without Facebook.”

Investigating officer G. H. Lemgude of Nanalpeth police station in Parbhani concluded that the parents had attempted to limit Dahiwal’s use of social networks in order to get her to concentrate on her schooling.

“Like all parents, their intentions were only to ensure that the girl did not go astray. They advised her to concentrate on her technical studies and stay away from long mobile chats and social networking sites,” Lemgude told the Indo-Asian News Service.

According to Newsweek Pakistan, Internet access is spreading rapidly across India, and many high school students are even forgoing cell phone use in favor of communicating strictly via Facebook. Dahiwal’s parents said that their daughter used both, and would often have lengthy conversations with friends on her cell phone.