There is a growing trend to film incidents and upload clips to social media. We are passive consumers of tragedy, absolved of responsibility to take action, to intervene. Photograph: Michael Bowles /Rex Features

In an incident so sickening it is hard to find words to describe it, a man in Telford is reported to have fallen to his death after being goaded into jumping by a crowd of onlookers. In a case reminiscent of that of Shaun Dykes, the 17-year-old who died in 2008 after jumping from a Derby city centre car park following taunts from the crowd below, Ian Lam, 42, apparently fell as police were trying to talk him down, to shouts of jump from the crowd below, some of whom were reportedly filming the incident on their phones.

An inquest will be held into Lams death and we must wait for the coroners report to establish exactly what happened. In Dykess case, the coroner ruled that those who were taunting him were responsible, at least in part, for his death. But no one has ever been arrested or charged for their role in the incident. Indeed, one of the police officers involved is reported as saying that there was no specific offence that people could be charged with if they were merely passing comments.

In the latest incident police have said that they will take action, though this may focus more on those who filmed and uploaded clips of the mans death on to social media.

Appalling as such behaviour is, causing unimaginable distress to those who knew and loved the deceased, as well as encouraging copycat deaths, those who goaded Dykes into jumping with shouts of Go on jump, Get on with it and How far can you bounce? are to my mind almost as guilty as if they had physically pushed him off the car park. A review of the law is urgently needed if such behaviour does not currently constitute a serious criminal offence.

Of course, the fact that we need a law at all to stop people goading vulnerable and highly distressed individuals into jumping off car parks says something pretty alarming about the state of our society. There is nothing new about crowds gathering to witness and even to celebrate the misfortunes of others take the tricoteuses for example, or the crowd who clapped and whistled after the public flogging of Saudi Arabian blogger Raif Badawi. But in the case of Dykes, the crowd were not merely witnesses but active participants in the event, goading a boy into killing himself apparently, at least in part, to provide them with smartphone footage to upload to social media.

There is something truly terrifying about this level of detachment and what it suggests about our capacity to recognise and process reality.

It seems to me that the popularity of reality TV shows, along with widespread use of smartphones and social media, may be starting to interfere with our ability to distinguish real life from entertainment, and hence our capacity to empathise with other people. Watching a clip, we are at once present at and absent from the events taking place on our screens. We are passive consumers of tragedy, absolved of responsibility to take action, to intervene.

Of course, smartphones and social media can be put to good use too. Both have been used to expose atrocities and criminal behaviour. But this depends upon viewers stepping out of the passive role and engaging with reality.

With Dykes, a grotesque reversal saw smartphone users engaging in the tragedy itself, goading a boy into jumping to his death, before uploading a clip for passive online consumption.

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Goading a vulnerable person to jump to their death is sickening