February 21, 2011
Behavior: Videos of Self-Injury Find an Audience
By RONI CARYN RABIN

YouTube videos are spreading word of a self-destructive behavior already disturbingly common among many teenagers and young adults — ‘cutting’ and other forms of self-injury that stop short of suicide, a new study reports.

As many as one in five young men and women are believed to have engaged at least once in what psychologists call nonsuicidal self-injury. Now the behavior is being depicted in hundreds of YouTube clips — most of which don’t carry any warnings about the content — that show explicit videos and photographs of people injuring themselves, usually by cutting. They also depict burning, hitting and biting oneself, picking at one’s skin, disturbing wounds and embedding objects under the skin. Most of the injuries are inflicted on the wrists and arms and, less commonly, on the legs, torso or other parts of the body.

Some of the videos weave text, music and photography together, which may glamorize self-harming behaviors even more, the paper’s authors warn.

And the videos are popular. Many viewers rated the videos positively, selecting them as favorites more than 12,000 times, according to the new study, in the March issue of the journal Pediatrics, whose authors reviewed the 100 most-viewed videos on self-harm.

Stephen P. Lewis, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Guelph in Ontario and the paper’s lead author, calls the YouTube depictions of self-harm “an alarming new trend,” especially considering how popular Internet use is among the population that engages most in self-injury already: teenagers and young adults.

“The risk is that these videos normalize self-injury, and foster a virtual community for some people in which self-injury is accepted, and the message of getting help is not necessarily conveyed,” Dr. Lewis said. “There’s another risk, which is the phenomenon of ‘triggering,’ when someone who has a history of self-injury then watches a video or sees a picture, his or her urge to self-injure might actually increase in the moment.”

Only about one in four of the 100 most-viewed videos sent a clear message against self-injury, the paper’s analysis showed, and about the same proportion had an encouraging message that suggested the behavior could be overcome. About half the videos had a sad, melancholic tone, while about half described the behavior in a straightforward and factual manner.

About a quarter of the videos conveyed a mixed message about self-injury, while 42 percent were deemed neutral and 7 percent were clearly favorable toward self-injury.

Only 42 percent of the videos warned viewers about the content.

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