Why Are Teens Cyberbullying Themselves?

A new study indicates that some teens bully themselves online, posting hateful messages from fake or anonymous accounts. Researchers are looking into why, and how to help.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
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

(00:22):
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,

(00:44):
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

(01:07):
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,

(01:30):
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

(01:53):
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

(02:14):
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

(02:37):
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

(02:57):
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

(03:19):
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

(03:40):
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,

(04:03):
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.

(04:25):
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.

(04:45):
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