Are TikTok algorithms changing how people talk about suicide?

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Kayla Williams has never said the word “suicide” on TikTok, even though she uses the platform to discuss mental health issues with her 80,000 followers. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the 26-year-old student from Berkshire, England, has posted multiple videos about suicidal ideation and her stay in a psychiatric ward. Some of these clips are lighthearted, others far more serious. Yet Williams does not utter the word “suicide” to her front-facing camera, or type it in her captions, for fear the TikTok algorithm will censor or remove her content. Instead, she uses the word “unalive.”

The hashtag #unalivemeplease has 9.2 million views on TikTok; #unaliving has 6.6 million; #unaliveawareness has an additional 2.2 million. Though #suicideprevention is a frequently used tag on the app, the hashtags #suicide and #suicideawareness do not exist—if you search for them, TikTok pulls up the number for a local crisis helpline. It’s a well-intentioned policy, initiated in September 2021, a year after a graphic video of a suicide spread across the app. But users have also come to fear elusive content moderation filters that seemingly suppress or remove videos discussing death, suicide, or self-harm.

While the word “unalive” first became popular in 2013 (when it was used in an episode of Ultimate Spider-Man), Google searches for the term have spiked dramatically in 2022. From TikTok, “unalive” has spread to Twitter and Reddit; YouTubers also use it so their content isn’t demonetized. Depending on the context, the word can refer to suicide, murder, or death. Though “unalive” is often used comedically on TikTok, people like Williams also use it to talk candidly, forge a community, and signpost resources on the app. The rapid rise of “unalive” therefore raises a worrying question: What happens when we don’t openly say “suicide”?