Digital self-harm means to anonymously put “hurtful content” about yourself on social media. Because it is anonymous, readers don’t know that the bad things said about you are what you think about yourself.
About 9% of teens do this. This likely represents an attempt to self-harm by trashing your reputation. Doing it anonymously makes it appear that someone else thinks badly of you.
A “survey of 4,972 American middle and high school students” showed that kids who anonymously publish bad things about themselves are up to 7 times more likely to have suicidal thoughts and up to 15 times the rate of suicide attempts compared to kids who don’t engage in digital self-harm.
Yesterday, I published a blog about shame. One response to shame is called “attack self.” I think that digital self-harm is an example of that. When you feel shame, you believe that you are a bad person.
Kids who engage in digital self-harm because of shame demonstrate the problem with the 4 responses to shame discussed in my blog. Anyone who engages in digital self-harm should talk about it with a trusted adult.
The survey results were published in the psychiatry journal, Child and Adolescent Mental Health on July 10, 2022.
