Whenever I hear of some teen suiciding over cyber-bullying it's rare to find cyber-bullying the ONLY cause of their suicide, there is always some other aspect that makes the bullying a final tipping point.
Unless they are so incredibly weak-willed that despite living a perfectly normal life, mere words online are enough to cause them to kill themselves...in which case I would (cruelly) state that they were simply eaten by Darwin. With that kind of mental instability they're going to eventually find a way to kill themselves sooner or later.
These kids literally don't know the value of life, they don't value their OWN life and consider themselves completely worthless just because some people online told them so. These are NOT people who have gone bankrupt with millions or dollars in debt, or facing life in prison, or born into terrible poverty where the daily stress + pressure have just become too much. They are perfectly healthy & privileged teenagers living in first-world counties, with their whole lives ahead of them - so what the fuck do they have to justify committing suicide over?
I think part of the cause is a lack of kids involved in extra-curricular activities. It's extremely important for parents to make sure their children find something they're GOOD at and make it part of a regular activity. Knowing you're good at something (or many things) can greatly help keep you motivated and raise your self-esteem, this is a fact. The impact of bullying can be greatly lessened if the kid has something else to focus their mind/attention on, something they enjoy doing. Even better if that activity allows them to make friends who also share in that activity, e.g. joining a sports team or club or something.
It's extremely important to keep children and teenagers BUSY, because everyone knows what most teenagers do when they have absolutely nothing to do - either shut themselves at home on their computer, or loiter in the streets potentially getting into shady shit.
It also seems the majority of cyber-bullying suicides are happening with teenage girls, with the minority consisting of boys who were victims of homophobic bullying. It's just some sort of weird trend I noticed when I tried to look up all the reported suicides over cyber-bullying.
Perhaps it's more common with females because bullying based on gossip/rumors happens a lot more amongst them, they take words a lot more literally. With males bullying tends to be far more direct. I dunno, just trying to analyze it.
In any case, parents play a big role in all this and they need to make sure that their children have a healthy mix of activities and just aren't left to themselves. Bullying is an unavoidable part of life and instead of PURELY blaming the bullies (which is just fucking stupid, bullying amongst children has existed since the beginning of civilization), find a way to help the kid deal with it and get over it. If the bullies are physically assaulting the victim then I can understand that adults need to quickly step in, but getting depressed and committing suicide over social networking? Is this the state of teenagers today, where their entire concept of self-worth/value revolves around facebook/text messages?
Parents, how can they just sit there and let their child reach such a stage? Looking you America.