Social media impacts the lives of teenagers, even in the promotion of dangerous habits. Unfortunately, parents cannot easily monitor these behaviors as teens devised a way to avoid being caught.
In a study published at the Journal of Adolescent Health, it was found that several teenagers today are using social media, specifically Instagram, to share their non-suicidal but harmful behaviors to their followers with the use of secret hashtags.
The study, which is led by Dr. Megan Moreno who is a specialist in adolescent medicine at the University of Washington and Seattle Children's Research Institute, aimed to determine the meaning of popular hashtags on Instagram that is vaguely related to the so-called "Non-Suicidal Self-Injury" (NSSI) content.
Hence, in order to do this, the researchers used the search term #selfharmmm to identify public posts in the trendy photo-sharing service that were related to harmful behaviors such as cutting, scratching and burning.
The search results led to the identification of "ambiguous NSSI hashtags" which included #blithe, #cat #MySecretFamily and #SecretSociety123.
Additionally, the researchers identified hashtags which were related to mental health issues. These include #Deb for depression, #Annie for Anxiety and #Olive for obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Meanwhile, as cited in the report by Yahoo!, the number of search results from the aforementioned hashtags has also garnered substantial increase over time.
Over the 2014 to 2015 period, the use of #selfharmmm grew from 1.7 million to more than 2.4 million. The hashtag #SecretSociety also grew by at least 500,000 over the same span.
The use of #MySecretFamily, meanwhile, grew from 900,000 to nearly 1.5 million. The generally broad hashtag #cat, which refers to the cutting, has more than 44 million search results in 2014 and more than 56 million by 2015.
The team also noted that on the NSSI-related hashtags, only one-third generated Content Advisory warnings.
"The online communities that develop around these hashtags can draw in adolescents and provide them a strong sense of belonging and support that is centered on these unhealthy behaviors. This can make recovery from these behaviors more challenging," lead study author Dr. Moreno said via Yahoo!
On the other hand, the researchers admitted that their study has also its limitations, most especially on the fact that they relied on data which was obtained through the use of the single term #selfharmmm that was chosen because of its popularity. Hence, the researchers pointed that the study only covered self-harm and other alarming behaviors such as drug abuse and eating disorders were not considered.
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