How Children get into Self-harm Communities
There are many dark places on the web, like self-harm communities, which children find and get sucked into. Pro-ana, cutting, pro-mia, ed, and so on. These are dangerous influences on young minds.
Self harm communities are thriving on the web. Despite the attempts of social media websites to shut them down, ever emerging codes are frequently created to keep the communities together and running. Children get into these communities by knowing and even inventing the codes themselves. Social media websites can’t move fast enough to shut them down.
What are self-harm communities?
Self-harm communities are communities in which adults and children unite together over self-harming behaviors. There are multiple different subtypes in a pick-your-poison buffet type environment. There are anorexia, bulimia, and general eating disorder communities, “pro-ana,” “pro-mia,” “thinspo” and “ed.” There are cutting and burning communities, “cutting,” “burning,” “sh” ad “self harn” for self harm, and “tw” for trigger warning. Then, there are suicide communities, the darkest of all. Words are used like “kermit sewer slide” to avoid being picked up by the algorithm.
Within these communities, people encourage each other’s delusions and egg each other on down the path of self-destruction.
In the pro-ana community, of which I was a part, young girls bully or encourage each other not to eat for as long as possible. They post pictures of their starving bodies, “thinspo” or “thinspiration",” usually nude, for other people to judge and tell them not to eat. I posted photos of myself in the anorexia community when I was a minor and I did not understand or grasp the fast that adults were viewing my nudes.
This image comes up if you look up the word “thinspo” and is the type of content I used to post of myself.
Other communities function in a similar way. Cutters post pictures of gore and are encouraged to go deeper. Alcoholics and drug addicts in the addiction communities post and brag about their use and how much they want to die.
Despite the attempts of social media websites to shut the communities down, the numbers are growing.
“Researchers found that posts with hashtags related to self-injury rose from between 58,000 to 68,000 at the start of 2018 to more than 110,000 in December.” “It’s become such a problem that some social media platforms have policies and will take down content glorifying self-injury. But, in many cases, those posts have to be reported first.”
People within these communities don’t report each other. There is a lot of solidarity, and people within the communities won’t report each other’s behaviors. Instead, they encourage it.
How do children get into self-harm communities?
Children often are looking for validation. As a side note, this is why the “affirmation only” model used as the standard for gender affirming care is so attractive to young people and developmentally arrested adults.
When children are not able to get the validation they are looking for from adults, who they believe do not understand, they look for it online in their peers. They start posting on secret social media pages and blogs about their suffering, and they are validated by others who are suffering the same way. Then, by posting about emotional suffering and mental illness, they are found by others in a similar place. They are taught the hashtags and gain access to the community.
People with mental illness tend to believe that only other mentally ill people understand them. The Body Keeps Score, a book about trauma and the brain and body relationship, describes the way victims of PTSD only trust each other. War veterans get along with each other most of the time and have a deep and innate sense of trust for one another because they know they have all seen the same hell. They also know that the average civilian has not, and cannot know their pain or suffering or the horrors their eyes have seen. This leads to mistrust of the civilian, who does not understand the veteran.
Teenagers seem to be afflicted with the same type of thinking. They think they their parents have never experienced true love their they have, or pain, or agony. Only other suffering teenagers get it, and only they can be trusted. Therefore, the teenager isolates in their room and confides in only the trusted ones, severing the relationship with the parents and other helpful adults.
Then, the isolated, suffering teenager is in an unhealthy community with unstable adults and other children who all encourage the teen in their unhealthy thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. They are told that they are not alone and that their feelings are valid, it’s what all teenagers crave.
Self-harm communities and transgenderism
When I was in the pro-ana community, posting online about starving myself and the symptoms of dying, transgender adults found my blog and other social media pages and told me that I could cure my anorexia by transitioning because I had actually been “born in the wrong body.”
One example of this I clearly remember is that one day I was posting on my blog about the fact that I had begun growing new hair all over my body. This was before starting testosterone, or even thinking that I was trans. I was distressed about it. I was growing extra hair because I was so underweight that I could not regulate my own body temperature. I remember always being cold.
Trans-identifying adults, whom I did not know, messaged me and commented that this was my body “fighting to be a boy” and was proof that I was trans.
Children with anorexia are comparing themselves to Dylan Mulvaney and starving themselves to look like him.
It is sad and sick to consider that teenager girls with growing bodies, which need food to grow, are comparing themselves to an underweight, unhealthy adult man. Dylan’s photos are videos are being used as “thinspo” content to inspire and encourage girls not to eat and to throw up their food.
The trans-movement has had a negative impact on the mental health of young people by allowing adults to find them within the self-harm communities. Trans-identifying adults are invading self harm communities by knowing the hashtags and codes, and are telling mentally suffering young people that they have the cure. They are telling them that they were born in the wrong bodies, and that all of their mental suffer will stop if they transition.
It happened to me and I am seeing it happen to others.
Confusion and lies from the trans-community
Transition is being touted as a cure all for any mental illness or suffering. “Dysphoria” or being confused both for “dysmorphia” and “general, normal suffering that happens during puberty.”
Dysmorphia is a mismatch between the mind-eyes and the body, not to be confused with gender-dysphoria, which is a mismatch between the physical and mental sex and the suffering caused by that perception. Anorexics suffer with dysmorphia in that they think that they are fat when they are thin, a mismatch between what is real and what is perceived.
General and normal suffering during puberty is being pathologized. Trans-identifying people are saying that feeling uncomfortable or upset during puberty is a sig of dysphoria, gender dysphoria in specific, when it is not, and this creates more confusion for the suffering child.
The internet is filled with random and benign “signs that you are trans,” and these are so powerful that children are diagnosing themselves with gender dysphoria, and these same vague signs are repeated by doctors, and the false gender dysphoria is validated.
These signs include things like: disliking of periods, enjoyment of the company of the opposite sex, getting bullied, being hairy, being too masculine or feminine, being a tomboy, being homosexual, and more. The trans-community, and now even doctors, are calling these normal experiences signs of gender dysphoria.
When children post about their experiences online, they are bombarded by people telling them that they are trans.
Sources:
Self “harn” on Instagram:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32426154/
The numbers:
https://news.uga.edu/adolescents-are-posting-about-self-injury-on-social-media/
Thank you Prisha for your article on Self Harm Communities. I had some idea this was happening, but not to this extent. I am a woman in my late 50s and for 18 years I suffered greatly from Anorexia and Bulimia. At first I dieted and exercised. Then I starved myself; then I was hospitalized.At that time the general treatment was behavior modification and therapy, not drugs. After hospitalization I was still struggling with dysmorphia (and gender dysphoria because as an anorexic I hated my developing female body and wished for a body free of curves.) I became bulimic and this disease had me in its grip for nearly 16 years. It is very hard to say that. I tried therapy and even anti-anxiety meds (I was also suicidal and used drugs and alcohol.) Finally, I discovered OA (12 steps for anyone with an unhealthy relationship with food) and after 30 meetings in 30 days and then the birth of my son a few years later, I was free of the compulsion to binge and purge. Reading your piece has left me in shock. That could have been me, if I was born 30 years later. My life has not been easy, but I am so grateful for this life I have; for the body I have (even at nearly 60,) the people I love, the things I have accomplished. What can we do to help these kids? Thanks again for your witness and courage!
Damn. This is a hard-hitting read.
I really liked your comparison between veterans and civilians to parents and children.
I knew about these online self-harm communities but had no idea what it's like on the inside.
Keep writing! Your voice matters.