Digital self-harm is a real thing.

It’s defined as “the act of secretly sending yourself hurtful messages online”, and it’s just another example of how social media is changing the very definition of what it means to be a teen or young adult these days.

How’s this for a scary stat – a study in 2016 showed the number of children and young people seeking counselling for online bullying had increased by 88% in just five years.

We’re talking about self-cyberbullying or auto-trolling here, though, with the help of the BBC:

In what appears to be only the second study of its kind, US research from 2017 found that approximately 6% of students aged 12 to 17 had sent themselves anonymous hate, with boys more likely to engage in the behaviour than girls and LGBT students nearly three times more likely to self-cyberbully.

But it’s not just the stats that are concerning, but the messages themselves.  These can range from people calling themselves “ugly” and “useless”, to saying, “You should hang yourself. You’re pathetic and don’t deserve to be alive.”

Let’s talk specifically about a guy called Julian (not his real name), and the reasons behind why he would bully himself online:

“I started because I saw other people on Tumblr getting these anon hate messages,” explains Julian, who is now a 22-year-old university student in London. “They were quite popular so their followers would really support them through it and send them nice messages. I didn’t have many followers at the time so I thought sending myself a hate message might be a good way to get attention.”

Julian was 15 years old when he first cyber-bullied himself on Tumblr. He was feeling vulnerable after a fight with a friend, and wrote himself messages telling him to deactivate his account and that nobody liked his posts.

“It was kind of a way to gain sympathy from my friend so that they just wouldn’t hate me at the time,” he says.

Then there’s Sophie (also not her real name), who had different reasons:

…sending anonymous hate was a way to express the things about herself she felt otherwise unable to say.

“I always seemed like a confident and happy person,” explains Sophie, who is currently studying abroad. “But I also wanted people to know that I couldn’t always be OK because I was secretly dealing with really bad anxiety.”

She didn’t want to bring up her anxiety with her friends because she felt “nobody really cared what she had to say”. Instead, she went onto her Tumblr and sent herself an anonymous message saying: “Saw you crying in the toilets at school. Everyone knows you’re just attention seeking.”

Sophie then responded to the message herself, with a 1,000 word post talking about her anxiety. Immediately, she had friends from school telling her how “brave” and “cool” it was for her to be so open about her anxiety.

We’re not here to make fun of teens and their mental health and self-esteem issues, but it’s a pretty worrying trend.

Especially when you consider the link between digital self-harm and depression:

Justin Patchin, a criminal justice professor in the US and co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Centre, was behind the 2017 study into self-cyberbullying.

His survey of just over 5,500 American students found that those who reported being depressed were approximately five times more likely to be involved in digital self-harm, while those who said they had engaged in offline self-harm were nearly three times more likely to self-cyberbully.

“We wanted to link digital forms of self-harm with off-line self-harm, depression and suicidal ideation and, as expected, we found that they are all connected,” he says. But he doesn’t yet know what comes first. “So for example, does someone get depressed, say mean things about themselves online and then consider suicide? Or do they consider suicide, and then the physical and digital self-harm happen at the same time?”

The jury is still out on that one, and more research is required before Justin and other experts are going to make that call.

Just remember that you’re beautiful and we love you, and if you’re in a bad space there is always someone to talk to.

I tell you who I will judge, though – people who like their own Facebook and Instagram posts.

Do better.

[source:bbc]