Young People's Perspectives and Understanding of the Suicide Story in .

The Netflix drama focusing on the suicide of an adolescent girl became a global phenomenon. It was accompanied by intense public debate about the risks of exposing youth to fictional portrayals of adolescent suicide. To explore adolescents' subjective perspectives and understanding of 13RW focusing on the portrayal of adolescent suicide. We applied a thematic analysis to qualitative data from interviews with 25 New Zealand adolescents eliciting views on the show's portrayal of adolescent suicide. Four themes were developed from the analysis: entertaining but not realistic; the unexpected shock factor; jumbled messages; and superficial conversations. This study contributes a youth perspective which has been missing from the debate on 13RW. This research highlights the way that youth, when given the opportunity, articulated a nuanced understanding of the representation of adolescent suicide in , viewing it as entertainment rather than a realistic depiction that added little in terms of suicide awareness and generated minimal opportunities for in-depth discussion.