Facebook taps the Trevor Project to prevent LGBTQ youth suicides
The Trevor Project volunteers will provide support over the Messenger app.
Until Facebook has AIs that can detect suicidal ideation from users' posts or the expressions of their faces on video, the social network will continue adding more suicide prevention tools. It even teamed up with a number of crisis and mental health organizations to provide support over its Messenger app. Now, the company has announced that The Trevor Project will also be on Messenger to serve as a suicide hotline for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and/or questioning/queer youth. Teens might have Snapchat and Instagram, but some surveys show they haven't abandoned Facebook altogether -- the social network's partnership with The Trevor Project could help save lives.
Anyone can chat with Facebook's partners on Messenger if they need help, though volunteers from The Trevor Project aren't quite available yet. They'll start providing support sometime in the coming months. For now, you can tell anyone who might need someone to talk to that they can contact the Crisis Text Line, the National Eating Disorder Association, Partnership for Drug-Free Kids and the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, among other organizations, on the social network's chat app.
