Cyber self-harm?

A report on the BBC news website yesterday (see it here) introduced me to the concept of ‘cyber self-harm’ – where people ‘troll’ themselves on sites like ask.com.

A study carried out in the US found that 10% of students in a survey reported having ‘bullied themselves’ online. It is worth looking at the paper the BBC were reporting on (not least because they seem to have got some of the stats wrong!)

It will be interesting to see what young people think of this. What the BBC report doesn’t mention, but the paper by Englander does, is that many of the young people found that cyber self-harm was ‘successful’. The survey also found that young people reporting cyber self-harm were also more likely to report using drugs and alcohol.

I wonder whether anything like cyber self-harm could have existed before the internet?

Tumblr!

Starting to play with Tumblr …

http://www.tumblr.com/blog/eduniamyc

Went along to an event at the Scottish Parliament last week about alcohol and the adolescent brain (hosted by SHAAP). Reminded me of this book by Nicola Morgan which said that a lot of problems faced by young people could be ‘blamed’ on their brain. I wonder whether this will come up when people talk to me about self-harm, drug or alcohol use?