As my work colleagues all know, prior to my introduction to social media, I used my 23-inch monitor as my primary desktop and my laptop monitor for television. Bad television. For close to three years, I subsisted on a steady diet of reality shows and serial dramas—anything I could watch for free on network sites, Hulu, or Netflix Instant. At one point I realized my consumption was actually outpacing the content available online, or at least the content I was willing to engage with while at work. I had standards, after all. Quality was a serious anathema—anything actually warranting my full attention was deliberately avoided. I never developed a taste for sitcoms (unfunny relative to reality TV, in my opinion). And because watching really meant listening with the occasional sideways glance, I preferred programming that was serial in nature with a finite cast of characters, as I had to learn to identify each through his or her voice.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve required audio inputs in order to concentrate. In a soundless vacuum, left to my own devices, my mind wanders in unproductive ways. In high school, I preferred to complete my homework while watching television and talking on the phone. But when my social media experiment began, I discovered that there were limits to my multitasking abilities—I couldn’t watch television, keep an eye on my Twitter feed, answer emails, interact with my co-workers, and design simultaneously. So in my commitment to see the Nana Project through, I launched Twitterrific and switched out television for music. But on June 11th, when the World Cup began, I was, once again, faced with a decision: blogging, Tweeting, and Facebooking or unleashing my latent hooligan.

As if it were ever really a choice.

I’ve come a long way since distractedly watching my oversized sweatpants flap in the wind during intramural soccer in the 3rd grade. I can still hear Coach Monatesti yelling at me to wake up, mid-game, as my opponents rushed past me toward the goal. And while I may have failed as a eight-year-old fullback, as an adult, I look forward to a long career ahead as a spectator and enthusiast. So when I discovered Soccernomics during a recent trip to the bookstore, I realized that I had found the perfect tonic to keep me sated between games, long after the South African sun had dipped below the horizon.

Authors Stefan Szymanksi and Simon Kuper apply their respective backgrounds in sports economics and journalism to analyze various dimensions of the sport—from the mismanagement of soccer clubs to the statistical significance of penalty kicks to how a country’s population, income per capita, and cultural factors can determine the strength of its team. But the most fascinating chapter—and one that seemed especially relevant to my investigation of social networks—was the one that explored the connection between fandom and suicide.

We’ve all heard the stories. A fan jumps from a building after a devastating match, or in rarer instances, in rapture when his or her team wins.

“By now the notion that soccer prompts suicide has become a truism. It is often cited to show the grip of the game over its devotees, and as one reason (along with heart attacks on sofas during televised matches) the average World Cup causes more deaths than goals.

[But] if sports give meaning to fans’ lives, if sports make them feel part of a larger family of fans of their team, if fans really do eat and sleep soccer […], then perhaps sports might stop some of these fans from killing themselves. We wanted to find out if there were […] people who didn’t commit suicide because sports kept them going.”

And indeed, what the authors and a team of epidemiologists discovered is that the correlation between suicide and soccer is actually the inverse of what is commonly believed to be true. Barring a few exceptions, soccer actually prevents suicide.

But first, two critical facts:
- Every year, a million people commit suicide worldwide
- Suicide rates peak when daylight hours are longest (May and June in the Northern Hemisphere)

In 1897, French sociologist Émile Durkeim published an extensive study on suicide, demonstrating that people were more likely to kill themselves when a sudden change—such as the loss of a partner or financial ruin—disrupted their connection to society. Across Europe today, the World Cup (with the exception of war or catastrophe) is perhaps the most significant unifying event of any kind. Almost every person in the country, man and woman alike, is guaranteed to be watching the game at the same time. Isolated individuals who are most at risk for suicide are embraced and invited to participate in a conversation on a national scale.

Upon an investigation of data measuring suicides per month over several years among European countries, the authors discovered that the suicide rate declined in the month of June among countries that qualified for the World Cup. Furthermore, they discovered that even after a team was knocked out, there was no pendulum swing, no subsequent rise in suicide. “To the contrary: it seems that the uniting effect of the tournament lasted for a while afterward, continuing to depress the suicide rate.” The authors concluded that it’s not winning that prevents fan suicide. Rather, it’s the social cohesion, the mass coalescing that these events engender—be it at a viewing party or around the water cooler—that is ultimately responsible for saving lives.

So for the remainder of the World Cup, should you find yourself in a crowded bar suddenly receiving a lapful of overturned beer, offer your neighbor a smile and a pass. You may be throwing him a lifeline.