Netflix Has Their “Han Shot First” Moment with 13 Reasons Why

Media Companies Shouldn't Cave to Moral Panics.

Note: This is yet another in my Areo Magazine resurrection series. Published roughly 5 years ago when Netflix (foolishly) caved to moral pressure and removed a graphic suicide scene from 13 Reasons Why, despite that, ultimately, evidence did not link the show to teen suicides.

Last week, Netflix announced they had bowed to pressure from complaints that their show 13 Reasons Why was insensitive in its graphic portrayal of a youth suicide. They stated that they planned to edit the suicide scene from the first season to be less graphic so that it occurs largely off camera. The declaration comes just weeks after Netflix announced it would cut smoking scenes from all shows rated for teens or younger. With these two moves, Netflix appears inclined to portray itself as concerned about media effects on youth health. But in engaging in self-censorship under moral pressure, is Netflix really helping kids, or doing harm to protections for artistic expression?

Let’s look at the evidence. The controversy over 13 Reasons Why got a lot more attention, and many people are concerned about youth suicides. However, good data has never linked the show as a causal factor in youth suicides. A recent meta-analysis I conducted of studies on this topic found that evidence did not link suicide-themed shows to actual suicides in real life. Other studies examining 13 Reasons Why specifically concluded the show might actually have some benefits in reducing suicide risk, at least for some viewers.

However, bad news tends to travel more widely than good. This year saw a pair of widely publicized studies that claimed to link the show to an increase in teen suicides. One of these, in fact, did no such thing. If 13 Reasons Why really caused suicide in viewers, we’d expect to see suicide increase particularly among teen girls and young adult women most similar to the show’s protagonist. But no effects were found for young adults, and suicides among teen girls actually decreased for one month after the show’s release. Only suicides among teen boys increased and only some months, after the show, not others. In fact, suicides among teen boys were increasing before the show was released, suggesting the show was unfortunately timed to catch a trend, not a causal agent. The suicide death of several male celebrities around the same time including Aaron Hernandez, Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington of Linkin Park are a more likely explanation for male suicides than the female-focused 13 Reasons Why. Indeed, many people who actually read this study were unimpressed with its evidence.

A second study appeared to show clearer correlations, but didn’t control for seasonal patterns in suicide very well. April (when the first season was released in 2017) tends to be a high suicide month, and suicides have been increasing across age groups for several years. Thus, a peak in April 2017 was to be expected. Finding it, even if reliable, doesn’t mean 13 Reasons Why caused it.

Curiously these two studies actually use the same Centers for Disease Control dataset. By running the data different ways, they actually get rather different results. This is concerning. More so, I asked both groups for the data files used to calculate their results. Neither has complied. This means we largely have to take their word for it that their analyses are sound. Such major decisions that Netflix has made about artistic integrity should not be based on non-transparent science.

Concerns about smoking follow a similar pattern. This year, with colleagues Patrick Markey at Villanova University and Rune Nielsen at IT University Copenhagen, we ran a meta-analysis of all studies examining the effects of film smoking on teen smoking. Overall the evidence was underwhelming. Watching film smoking is associated with about half a percent of the variance in teen smoking. Putting this another way, if all we knew about a group of teens was the movies they watched and we wanted to predict who would become a smoker, our guesses would be little better than a coin toss. But this hasn’t stopped advocates from making absurd claims. Even groups that should know better like the Centers for Disease Control claim that giving an R-rating to any movies depicting smoking would save 1 million lives. Such an extreme and data-starved claim is an embarrassment to our nation’s primary health organization. There’s no evidence, whatsoever, that this number comes from anything other than creative extrapolation and imagination.

In both cases, the case for a causal connection is dubious at best. Even some critics of 13 Reasons Why admit those recent two suicide studies are inconclusive. But poor-quality social science has remarkable power to shape advocacy narratives. Part of this is through something I call death by press release when a university press release misrepresents the strength of data in a study in support of a hypothesis. That’s clearly the case for the first correlational study on 13 Reasons Why. But news media have their own biases, often breathlessly reporting clickbaity claims. News media often fail to adequately check facts, get divergent expert opinions, report on contrary evidence or acknowledge when alarming studies are later debunked as they oftentimes are.

People, including scholars and mental health advocates, also continue to mistake correlation for causation. It is remarkable how, in psychology, we counsel our students that correlation does not equal causation right from introductory psychology. Yet we drop this maxim whenever convenient for our own moral advocacy agendas.

My guess is this whole brouhaha over 13 Reasons Why will look as dumb as similar concerns about Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest in the 1980s do today. But, unlike some industries, Netflix caved to the pressure and, in doing so, adds to the mythology that humans, teens included, are easily programmable robots that unconsciously mimic what they see in the media.

The foolish reediting of 13 Reasons Why has, predictably, done little to assuage Netflix’s critics. Some have argued that the editing of the scene is too little too late claiming that suicide contagion through fictional media is well-documented which, of course, it is not. This is because moral entrepreneurs are rarely pleased with success. Some have now shifted to implying the whole series should be banned. Moral outrage is never fed to the point of feeling full. There was nothing Netflix ever could have done to stop the extreme claims, ignorance of data, and righteous indignation once it got started. All Netflix managed to do was appear weak, little more than a whimpering doe for the wolves of moral absolutism.

Reedits of edgy material in the face of moral pressure seldom look like wise ideas in hindsight. I was reminded of the infamous Han Shot First episode from Star Wars: A New Hope. In the original, Han Solo shoots the bounty hunter Greedo before Greedo is able to haul him in for a bounty. But, in a reedit, Star Wars creator George Lucas seemed to get cold feet over this scene, reediting it (clumsily) to make it appear as if Greedo shoots first (missing Solo from about 3 feet away). Lucas was quoted as saying “…when you're John Wayne, you don't shoot people [first]--you let them have the first shot. It's a mythological reality that we hope our society pays attention to.” Aside from wondering what a “mythological reality” is, this quote appears to endorse the view that media impacts society in predictable ways, despite that evidence never really emerged to support this narrative.

The reediting of the 13 Reasons Why scene admittedly doesn’t change a character’s entire moral arc the way Han Shoots First did. But it similarly sets a precedent for industry weakness in the face of moral pressure that can do damage to free speech values.

Netflix decision brings with it real harm. Most notably, Netflix has lost the opportunity to stand up for artistic expression, even in the face of evidence 13 Reasons Why may actually have helped at least some kids. But art is never meant to be sanitized, morally unambiguous and cleansed. It should always push boundaries, cause us to confront our demons, and open difficult conversations, even if those aren’t the conversations moral entrepreneurs want us to have. Moral entrepreneurs are like bullies…giving them what they want only emboldens them to demand more. In caving, a behemoth like Netflix has weakened the ability of artists everywhere to tackle difficult topics of which society may disapprove.

Even, worse, Netflix has contributed to continued misunderstandings of the phenomenon of suicide and smoking, feeding rather than confronting urban legends about the tabula rasa nature of human mimicry of media. It’s interesting that the debate about 13 Reasons Why neglects that, according to the same CDC data used in the studies condemning the show, both the overall rates of suicide and yearly increases in suicide are much higher among middle-aged adults than among teens. Among the enduring myths of suicide are that teens are particularly susceptible to suicide and, when they are, that such distal factors as fictional media or music, are a causal factor in such tragic events. Similarly, misinformation about smoking causality, much of which comes from family smoking, distracts society from real causes of teen smoking initiation.

This is the real cost of blind moral entrepreneurship. By hammering away at low-hanging fruit despite an absence of evidence, moral advocacy agendas actually impede progress on important but less clickbaity topics such as poverty, joblessness, overprescription of opioids, dysfunction in families and lack of mental health treatments. Netflix’s decision is a loss for artistic integrity and free speech, but it is a loss also for reasoned, nuanced prevention of negative life outcomes. It is a loss also for teens. It is a win only for those who loudly proclaim their moral agendas and force the rest of us to live by them.