Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hi brain Stuff, Lauren Fogelbaum. Here. Today's episode deals with the subject of self harm. Go on and skip it if you'd prefer, and take care of yourself. Okay. When fourteen year old Hannah Smith from Leicestershire, England tragically took her life in her family sided months of relentless cyber bullying via the web app ask dot fm. But when investigators dug deeper, they discovered something even more devastating. Of the abusive messages
were sent by Hannah herself. It's called self cyber bullying or digital self harm, the act of setting up fake social media accounts to post hurtful messages about yourself. And while it sounds bizarre, why would anyone, especially as struggling adolescent, want to bully themselves online? It's much more common than previously thought. According to a national survey of twelve to seventeen year olds, seven point one percent of boys and five point three percent of girls said that they had
anonymously posted mean messages about themselves. Samir Hindu is co director of the Cyber Bullying Research Center and a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Florida Atlantic University. He conducted the digital self harm study with Cyberbullying Research Center co director Justin Patchen, a professor of criminal justice at
the University of Wisconsin. All Claire Kinduja and Patchen chose the term digital self harm as opposed to self cyber bullying or self trolling to draw attention to possible connections between this destructive online behavior and traditional self harming acts
like cutting, burning, or hitting oneself. According to the latest figures, between thirteen and eighteen percent of adolescents worldwide report to committing at least one self harming act, and more alarmingly, among young adults with the history of self harming behaviors, sent attempts suicide at least once, and fifty percent make multiple suicide attempts. The researchers wanted to see whether there might be a link between online self harm and these
negative behaviors. Their study represents the first comprehensive look at digital self harm among adolescents, and their results were published in the Journal of Adolescents Health. On the surface, digital self harm looks like other instances of cyber bullying. The victim receives threatening or abuse of posts on social media or via text messages, saying unfortunately common internet insults along the lines of your ugly and nobody likes you, or
you should just kill yourself. But the truth is that the victim is also the perpetrator, directing the abuse at themselves through behavior that's at once a call for help and a cry for attention. As part of Hinduja and patch and study, which analyzed email responses from a nationally representative sample of five thousand, five nine adolescents, the researchers asked young teens to share reasons why they had sent
themselves bullying messages. Some of the kids, mostly boys, so that they were just bored and thought it was funny. But more than half of those who admitted to cyber bullying themselves indicated that other people were the real audience or expressed some message of self hate. A fourteen year old boyfriend Wisconsin wrote that he wanted other people's pity and wanted to be validated that someone did actually care about me. Another boy indicated that posting abuse of messages
about himself might rally a supporting online community around him. Quote, everyone is going to have moments in their lives hating themselves sometimes it helps posting about it online. The Internet might be a terrible place, but there are tons of people around the world who are willing to help you,
he wrote. In general, Hinduja says boys and the survey were more likely to have participated in digital self harm as a joke, while girls were more likely to do it as an expression of what the researchers called deep seated emotional turmoil. Teens who identified as lgbt Q were three times more likely to cyber bully themselves, and kids who are cyber bullied by others were twelve times more likely to later train the abuse on themselves. As one sixteen year old girl wrote on her survey, after this
happened at school and online, I became very depressed. I didn't like myself very much. I felt like I deserved to be treated this way, so I thought I would get in on the fun. The researchers say that this kind of self harming and self hating behavior seems completely irrational from a psychological standpoint, that it's actually a classic example of what are called maladaptive coping mechanisms when coping with depression or abuse. Hindu Just says adults do this
a sort of thing. Sometimes we indulge in alcohol or drugs, use smoking as a crutch, engage in reckless behavior and
reckless choices, sexual or otherwise. The researchers stressed that much more study needs to be done in order to understand the extent of digital self harming behaviors and their underlying causes, but that it's important for parents, teachers, and law enforcement to understand that it exists and to not assume that abusive and disturbing posts necessarily originated from outside cyber bullies.
Organizations like the cyber Smile Foundation and to Write Love on Her Arms not only offer support for people who struggle with depression, self harming behavior, and cyber bullying, but provide volunteer opportunities to spread messages of positivity and support online. Today's episode was written by Dave Ruse and produced by Tristan McNeil. If you are someone you know is struggling, check out the organizations we just mentioned, or Google for
other resources in your area. I probably haven't met you, but I think you're at And of course, for more on this and lots of other mental health topics at our home planet, how Stuff Works dot com. M