CHENNAI: The Economic Survey for the year 2025-26, tabled by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Parliament on Thursday, linked the higher suicide rates prevailing in Kerala and Tamil Nadu to weaker local social bonding, quoting various reports. The survey said Suicide Death Rates (SDR) for Kerala and Tamil Nadu stand at 30.6 and 25.3, respectively, whereas this rate is very low, 0.7 and 3.9, respectively, for Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
The survey, in one of its chapters dealing with ‘Digital addiction: Cognitive and Psychological impacts’, pointed out that social connections play a crucial role in the mental well-being of an individual and shows that frequent face-to-face socialising correlates with higher mental well-being.
To access a larger and more comprehensive dataset and to gain deeper insights, data from the Facebook Social Connectedness Index (SCI) was examined and used as a measure of connectedness in a district-level geographical unit. SCI measures the relative probability of a Facebook friendship link between two Facebook users in different locations.
A plot of the suicide death rate (SDR) against the within-district SCI scores for a panel of eight selected states shows a broad reverse correlation of within-district connectedness with the SDR, as in, states having districts with higher connectedness, and thus better in-person social networks, are generally seen as having lower SDRs.
The survey said the information relating to Bihar and Uttar Pradesh suggests that their digital social universe is primarily rooted and bounded within district-level communities. These cross-district ties suggest that communities remain relatively geographically anchored, relying more heavily on local in-person social bonds and being less dependent on distant, online-mediated relations.
“The SDR for these states is very low, being 0.7 for Bihar and 3.9 for UP. Conversely, Kerala and Tamil Nadu exhibit densely woven networks radiating across districts, indicating that their online social fabric is highly dispersed and geographically diffuse, and hence lower in person-to-person social connection. This is reflected in the relatively higher SDRs of 30.6 in Kerala and 25.3 in Tamil Nadu,” the ESI added.