With thanks to USA Today‘s N’dea Yancey-Bragg:
As if news about kids’ online activities couldn’t get any worse, it just has…
Indeed, according to the Cyberbullying Research Center, about 6% of our kids, 6 through 17, have actually bullied themselves digitally. Says the organization’s co-director, Sameer Hinduja, “It’s a new phenomenon, and this is definitely happening… We have a tendency to demonize the aggressor, but in some cases, maybe one out of 20, the aggressor and the target are the same.”
And sometimes with lethal effect. In the piece, Yancey-Bragg cites the case of 14-year-old Hannah Smith who ultimately hanged herself. 98% of the messages she received she’d sent herself.
Reportedly, “digital self-harm” is seen three times more often in non-heterosexual teens, with cyberbullying victims 12 times more likely to target themselves.
All this at a time when the CDC says that, in 2015, 36% of all teens felt “desperately sad or hopeless, or thinking about, planning, or attempting suicide, up from 32% in 2009.”
A major reason: the rise of social media.