Every show with a suicide now has a disclaimer with a suicide hotline at the beginning. Is there any evidence that these warnings make a positive difference?
Every show with a suicide now has a disclaimer with a suicide hotline at the beginning. Is there any evidence that these warnings make a positive difference?
Idk, but I bet they think it’s the least they can try. If it saves just one life, it has been worth.
That’s not it. It’s simply that if someone comes suicide after watching, no one can point the finger at the producers.
Businesses do not care about people, I can pretty much guarantee those were added in order to waive liability. Example: person commits suicide because they see it in a show, family sues show company because that is linked to the person’s suicide, arguing the show encouraged the person to do it.
Would that hold up in court? I don’t know, probably not, but the company doesn’t want to deal with that. So they add a warning instead so they can just point to that and it gets thrown out immediately.
But do we have evidence they’re effective?
It still takes effort/time/money to do this, and if it has no impact, then that effort/time/money could be used on things that are known to be effective.
I have no idea how much affect they have. It’s possible they have a negative effect.
Op’s question is do we have that information?
How much effort/time/money do you think they put into that white text on black background that’s on screen for like 5 seconds?
It’s negligible, I would be shocked if it wasn’t the same recycled card over and over again that they have some unpaid intern throw in at some point in the final editing stages
It’s not about the production cost, its about the opportunity cost.
A quick google search tells me a national ad costs $200k-$1m for a 30s slot. That means 5 seconds of screen time costs $30k-$150k.
Yeah it’s like a 0 effort thing to try
Except it’s not zero effort, zero cost.
Pretty much is in reality. But not literally zero, no.
It’s a job creator, so in effect it makes money.
/s