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Self Harm Awareness Day
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Hey Everyone,
So today I wanted to speak to you about Self-harm, but a different part of self-harming, Did you know that that four charities have come together and built a survey about how much self-harm imagery young people are seeing? The four charities which are
• Youthnet (Charity Behind Thesite)
• YoungMinds
• NSPCC
• SelfHarmUk
Have looked at all the information that has come back from the survey, The results are pretty shocking. They say that one in every four 11-14 year olds and seven out of ten of 18-21 year olds said they had seen images online showing someone self-harming and Of those who had seen an image of someone self-harming, over half of all 11-14 year olds and one in every four 18-21 year olds said they had ‘felt like hurting themselves’ after seeing these images.
When I was in the middle of my self-harming and nobody was listening to me, Helping me, I turned to the internet looking for Support around self-harm I googled “Self Harm” Instead of receiving support and help, I found myself looking through thousands of pictures of self-harm, Tools and people telling me how to self-harm, It was deeply upsetting and I was often feeling so low I thought about suicide, Just due to these pictures.
Speaking to my friend Louise today, She said “Self harm imagery is glorified, I was 11 when I stumbled onto websites like tumblr and I was told how to self harm, what the best tool to use was and games of how many times I can cut myself”
I want to know you’re experiences and how do you think this could be tackled, Its easy to say “well just don’t look” because nowadays you don’t even have to try and find it, you’re mutual friend can see it and that can be just as bad as you actively looking for it.
Personally I’d like more filter settings to come on this, I know a website can’t block out every single aspect of self-harm, but I don’t think being able to search ‘Suicide’ ‘Self-harm’ into tumblr is good, Tumblr will pop up a message asking how you’re feeling, but doesn’t in anyway do anything to try and stop this, Maybe they shouldn’t let you see the pictures? Maybe schools should do more training, Maybe we should all look out more for the signs on a friend who’s struggling..
So today I wanted to speak to you about Self-harm, but a different part of self-harming, Did you know that that four charities have come together and built a survey about how much self-harm imagery young people are seeing? The four charities which are
• Youthnet (Charity Behind Thesite)
• YoungMinds
• NSPCC
• SelfHarmUk
Have looked at all the information that has come back from the survey, The results are pretty shocking. They say that one in every four 11-14 year olds and seven out of ten of 18-21 year olds said they had seen images online showing someone self-harming and Of those who had seen an image of someone self-harming, over half of all 11-14 year olds and one in every four 18-21 year olds said they had ‘felt like hurting themselves’ after seeing these images.
When I was in the middle of my self-harming and nobody was listening to me, Helping me, I turned to the internet looking for Support around self-harm I googled “Self Harm” Instead of receiving support and help, I found myself looking through thousands of pictures of self-harm, Tools and people telling me how to self-harm, It was deeply upsetting and I was often feeling so low I thought about suicide, Just due to these pictures.
Speaking to my friend Louise today, She said “Self harm imagery is glorified, I was 11 when I stumbled onto websites like tumblr and I was told how to self harm, what the best tool to use was and games of how many times I can cut myself”
I want to know you’re experiences and how do you think this could be tackled, Its easy to say “well just don’t look” because nowadays you don’t even have to try and find it, you’re mutual friend can see it and that can be just as bad as you actively looking for it.
Personally I’d like more filter settings to come on this, I know a website can’t block out every single aspect of self-harm, but I don’t think being able to search ‘Suicide’ ‘Self-harm’ into tumblr is good, Tumblr will pop up a message asking how you’re feeling, but doesn’t in anyway do anything to try and stop this, Maybe they shouldn’t let you see the pictures? Maybe schools should do more training, Maybe we should all look out more for the signs on a friend who’s struggling..
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Comments
Because I was a member of TS when I first started self harming, I used the links on here instead and don't ever remember Googling anything about self harming. It now seems like (we're going back to 2006; so things may have changed since then) I did the good thing and just followed the links on the various articles.
Tumblr actually has the option to blacklist tags now, it comes in really handy with things such as self harm or potentially triggering things, meaning that they won't come up on your dashboard. As long as said post is tagged with 'self harm' and you've blacklisted the tag 'self harm' you shouldn't be able to see it. I know it's not the same as it just not being there, but if it's going to trigger you seeing those images is really recommend blacklisting it. Most blogs on Tumblr are really good at tagging potentially triggering posts and they tag them if you ask them too.
It's all well and good looking out for the signs of a friend struggling, but at times it's hard to find as it isn't always obvious that they're struggling because people struggle in different ways, then even if you do suspect something and then you go on to ask them about it, a lot of the time they'll deny it because it's considered such a taboo subject.
There's another website which thankfully I don't think is that well known any more, but describes itself as SI information and support, but is literally a collection of graphic stories and photographs. It's really misleading because it used to pop up right near the top of any search results for self harm help. I think some of the top ones now are the charities that you mentioned, which is good.
What can schools do? Do you mean like blocking the terms self harm/suicide etc on their servers?