The suicide rate for individuals under 15 in Hong Kong reached its highest level in ten years in 2025, countering an overall trend of decline. Research from a local university indicates a strong connection between social media usage and incidents among youth.
The Hong Kong Jockey Club Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention at the University of Hong Kong also took advantage of World Suicide Prevention Day on Thursday to urge educational institutions to enhance their support for students, especially in light of a recent increase in suicide attempts at the beginning of the school year.
“As we pursue academic excellence, we should also look after the mental health of young people,” Professor Paul Yip Siu-fai, the centre’s founding director, said.
“It’s been just a while since the school year started, and we have already seen a few student suicides. Here I would like to call on schools to give pupils more time and space to build rapport with their teachers and schoolmates, strengthening their support system.”
Using data provided by the Coroner’s Court, the centre estimated that there were 976 suicide cases, or 13 per 100,000 residents, last year – a slight decline from 2024.
While rates declined across nearly all age groups, the figure rose among under-15s to 2.9 per 100,000, the highest since 2016.
A further breakdown of data for that age group showed the suicide rate for boys was four per 100,000 and 0.4 for girls.
The centre noted that among the boys under 15 who died by suicide last year, most had experienced academic and interpersonal stress. All of the cases occurred at home, and all suicide notes or expressions of suicidal ideation were in digital form, Yip added.
Yip said the rise in the number of young people taking their lives was not unique to Hong Kong, and the priority of prevention work was to identify those at risk more precisely, consistently, and effectively, rather than only concentrating on those with a diagnosis.
There is limited data on suicide rates of the under-15 demographic around the world.
An April study found that the suicide rate for children aged 10 to 14 is generally between 0.2 and 0.8 per 100,000 across most members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
The rates were 0.3 in the United Kingdom, 0.9 in the United States and 1.2 in South Korea.
Yip stressed that while authorities had put in place a three-tier emergency mechanism covering prevention and intervention for students, it was important their academic lives were fulfilling in the first place.
“I do not think students will take their own lives just because they struggled to adapt to school life,” he said. “It’s part of a bigger problem such as awareness of and attitude towards mental health, willingness to seek help and the accessibility of those supports.”
He suggested that at the start of the academic year, schools could hold only morning classes in the first week, spend the afternoon on bonding among students and arrange fun activities and events such as having an ice-cream truck visit the campus.
Yip said the figures would be subject to further adjustment next year due to time lags in Coroner’s Court reports.
The centre used artificial intelligence (AI) to help analyse suicide cases among under-15s between 2022 and 2025, finding that more than 30 per cent of the students were studying at Band 1A schools.
The term refers to top-tier institutions under the three-band, nine-subgroup ranking system.
The analysis found that 24 per cent of cases were enrolled at Band 1B schools, another 12 per cent at Band 1C and the rest at Band 2 and 3 institutions.
Researchers at the centre also collaborated with the Hong Kong Press Council to investigate the relationship between suicides, traditional media and social media.
As part of the collaboration, the centre and council tested how traditional media reports and social media content about suicide related to the number of cases.
The results showed that while traditional media reporting does not directly predict the suicide rates of people aged below 35, social media platform activity was strongly linked to cases.
Social media could act as a conduit, turning traditional media coverage into higher rates of youth suicide and attempted suicide, researchers found.
“Social media and traditional media are not independent of each other, as the information often comes from the latter. If traditional media could do better, they could influence social media activities too,” Yip said.
“When news about suicide pops up, we strongly encourage people not to like, comment on or share it. Just taking a quick pause before reacting can go a long way in stopping the story from spreading so widely.”
The centre also conducted an AI-assisted review of news reports on suicide cases by six local Chinese-language media outlets and found that most of the stories failed to comply with coverage guidelines issued by the World Health Organization.
The ignored guidelines included sharing information on suicide warning signs or risk factors and avoiding detailed descriptions of the incident locations.
If you have suicidal thoughts or know someone who is experiencing them, help is available. In Hong Kong, you can dial or message via WhatsApp 18111 for the government-run Mental Health Support Hotline.
You can also call +852 2896 0000 for The Samaritans or +852 2382 0000 for Suicide Prevention Services. In the US, call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org for the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. For a list of other nations’ helplines, see this page.
