New Delhi: An 18-year-old youth allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself from the ceiling fan of his room in his residence in Noida as he was “depressed for not getting enough likes for his TikTok videos”.
The youth hung himself Thursday, a day after he uploaded two videos on the hugely popular Chinese video-making app.
Police rushed to Noida after receiving a call from the youth’s father as he was not opening the door.
The father told ThePrint: “I had gone to bring some vegetables since both me and my son had barely stepped out these days due to the lockdown.”
When he returned a little before 7 pm and knocked on the door of their rented accommodation, his son didn’t open for a long time, following which he informed police.
The police broke open the door and found the body hanging from the ceiling.
The youth did not leave any suicide note.
Additional DCP, Zone 1, Noida, Ranvijay Singh, said the youth told his father, the neighbours and his friends that he was “depressed for not getting enough likes for his videos on the app”.
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Created TikTok account just 3 days ago
When ThePrint checked the youth’s profile on TikTok, it was found that he had created his account just three days ago, Wednesday.
His account, with 52 followers, has two videos, featuring himself — both uploaded Wednesday. While the first video has 246 views, the second 111 views until the time of publishing this report.
Police said the youth lived with his father, who is a carpenter by profession. His mother stayed separately. The youth’s elder sister recently got married. The family is a native of Malda district in West Bengal.
He studied until Class X and completed most of his schooling in Malda. He shifted to Noida with his father three years ago, according to police.
‘Peer pressure’
Police suspect the youth may have been under peer pressure for making videos.
“Kids these days know what influence social media has and it appears he knew that people have many more followers (on TikTok),” said Additional DCP Singh.
“It is a family from a poor background. We are investigating the matter and the rest will depend on the report of the post-mortem, which is not out yet,” he added.
The youth’s father said he noticed that his son, who otherwise never complained, was sad Thursday.
“Lunch se pehle beta bahut udaas tha, phir do ghante soya bhi tha (He was very upset before lunch. But he slept after that for two hours),” he told ThePrint.
So far, no FIR has been registered, police said.
India has proved to be the best breeding ground for the app, which contributed 44 per cent towards the overall growth number of global downloads. TikTok downloads in India in 2019 stood at 323 million, almost double from its figure of 180 million in 2018.
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