Why Luhmann? Social systems theory for a sociology of suicide in the platform age

Suicide becomes a sociological object through the communications that make it observable, recordable, reportable, and governable. This Perspective draws on Luhmann’s social systems theory to analyse how suicide-related meanings are selected and stabilised across functionally differentiated subsystems. The argument treats suicide as a limit-case perturbation that is processed differently by health care, law, education, media, and platform governance. Clinical research remains indispensable for understanding vulnerability and intervention; the sociological question concerns how those realities are described, circulated, and institutionally acted upon. The paper foregrounds structural coupling as a central problem for prevention. Protective communication gains force when it is converted into interaction, institutional response, and continuity of care under capacity constraints. It concludes by outlining a research agenda focused on semantic distinctions, observability conditions, temporal windows, institutional bottlenecks, cross-system couplings, and governance as a modification of selection conditions.