There's been a lot of noise lately in the news that I've been seeing and hearing regarding self harm content online.
I feel like it's important to say something.
I started self harming when I was a teenager. Of course, when I started Instagram, Pinterest and so on weren't around. My starting self harming then was due to nothing on the internet.
I won't lie, I've taken pictures of cuts/burns I've done and in some cases uploaded them to places like Reddit. I'm not sure why I did this. Firstly, I can say looking at an image of myself doing it can prevent me from doing it again; sometimes the picture/video alone is enough to feed the urge.
I can say therefore I'm part of the "problem" - showing real self injury for public consumption. I don't know who's looking at those pictures. I hope it's someone in the same situation as I am, someone that can see them and relate but not be "triggered". I also hope for people who have never self harmed to view the content and understand even the smallest amount more about how someone can do that to themselves.
The tricky part is, indeed, children. I can't help who sees or reads what content of mine: I can only add warnings and context. Anyone who was a child growing up online, though, knows how easy warnings are to get through and pretty much ignore. Thus, we end up with a 13 year old looking at an inch wide gash I created in my arm and a paragraph beside it about how it makes me "feel better". What will that 13 year old think? "Well, I'm feeling a bit down too, maybe if I do that, I'll feel better!"
I can't believe I have to type this sentence out but... I would never recommend starting to self harm to anyone. It will ruin your life. I don't want to be responsible for a child's life being made worse as they end up hospitalising themselves, they end up facing more abuse/bullying because they self harm or even if they think they can cut as deep as they can and end up hitting something and bleeding to death.
I feel like it's a difficult situation. I want the freedom to write about self harm, drug abuse and my life with depression. I don't want to be told I can't do that because it's giving people "ideas". To erase my output is to erase one of my few outlets (writing) and in doing so, it makes me feel like I'm unimportant. It pushes me further towards more dangerous activities like actually self harming. Short of censoring myself and writing in a private journal, only for myself, what is suggested be done?
This whole subject became prevalent recently due to a man who's teenage daughter killed herself. She was looking at "distressing images and content" online. The father is suggesting this content pushed her over the edge into killing herself. He wants access to her online accounts for "answers" as to why she did it. He also wants different websites (Instagram, Facebook etc) to further police content: no images of self harm or images celebrating/glorifying it or depression.
People have mental illnesses. Teenagers and children also have mental illnesses. For many children in 2019, the best output for how they're feeling is online through social media. They want to share that today they cut themselves using this and it felt great. They want everyone to know that they feel so depressed that a bullet in the head is the only way to make it all stop. This is their output. This sharing is what helps them to stay alive. It's not their intention to incite cutting or suicidal behaviour on anyone. They just want people to know how they feel and they just want people who feel the same way to come together.
The dangerous conclusions to draw from the case of the father and daughter are that:
- There's a belief that all content to do with connecting with others (who relate to the images/poster) is actually there to incite someone to self harm. Have you ever heard of someone starting to self harm because of a picture they've seen? Neither have I. Yet, this is the story currently being touted in the media.Unfortunately there are trolls who live to make this happen: tell people to harm themselves for whatever reason, just for the troll's amusement. This is not the larger picture though.
- "There must be something in here to explain why she would kill herself" RE: the daughter's social media accounts.This irks me. Do you not know your own child? I know we depressives are very good at hiding how we feel but there must have been some sign somewhere for this man that his daughter was unwell. To blame tech is to take the blame off yourself for not paying enough attention.
The death of someone so young is definitely a tragedy. However, I fear her death is being used as a pawn to further censor people online. Just another thing you can't speak about (when maybe it's something you really need to) and another thing you can't take pictures of (for fear of triggering.) Who knows, maybe it'll reach a point where I can't take a selfie without long sleeves as any scars/scabs/open wounds may be triggering to someone out there!