CONTENT WARNING: This page will discuss topics that some may find disturbing such as self harm, gore, and eating disorders. If you are sensitive to this, please leave
The Problem With Modern Social Media and Teenage Suicide
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Chances are that you’re reading this on a device right now. Some sort of computer. And chances are that you use social media, like almost all of society these days. We all know what Twitter (X), Instagram, Threads, Facebook, etc are, and we’ve all probably used them at some point in our lives. There’s a huge problem that arises when those who use social media fall into a group of people who happen to accept them and encourage them to do disgusting things. I’ll expand on this idea a lot throughout this paper and discuss many cases in particular that I’ve found throughout my research on this subject.
Teens to begin with are already impressionable as is, so when they’re introduced to a certain thing that they may see as “hip” or “cool,” they may see it and try to replicate it.
Related to this is the idea of desensitization and normalization. To remove the stigma surrounding it. The specific subject that relates to this and shows as a perfect example is eating disorders.
From the very start, roughly 70% of girls who experience eating disorders say that they take inspiration from models and celebrities to form their body around. The problem here is obvious and people only continue to push the idea that things like this are okay.
I’ve been looking through “shtwt” (self harm twitter) recently to see how people act and how they encourage each other and I’ve found just countless examples of individuals spreading the idea that cut wrists are “cute” and “pretty” while actively encouraging others to cut their wrists.
Sometimes encouragement isn’t active. Rather, it’s passive in ways like someone saying how cute they feel with scars across their wrists. Over time, people begin to see this too, and they realize that they want to cut their own wrists because they’ve also come to the conclusion that it looks cute.
This is the exact same thing as eating disorders in the sense that people passively encourage this type of behavior by spreading and talking positively about things that are obviously harmful, especially to teens who are still growing and developing into mature adults. A lack of nutrition can cause very serious complications in one’s life and even cause them to die early. Obviously, you can die just from not eating enough, but these kinds of people tend to just teeter on the edge of straight up life and death.
Looking through gore twitter accounts has brought me to the realization that videos of people committing their own suicide only encourages people to do the same… again… passively. These sorts of things can all be lumped into one big self harm category seeing as you quite literally brainwash yourself by being around people who are constantly talking about how cute it is to be emaciated, have cuts across your skin, and want to kill themselves in suicide pacts.
What Does Twitter do About it?
Twitter does… drumroll please…
Absolutely nothing about it.
That’s right,
absolutely nothing.
You can’t report these things pretty much at all. Things as in posts containing videos of people slitting their wrists, jumping off buildings, jumping in front of trains, hanging themselves, etc. And the reason why they don’t care about it is because it’s:
A surprisingly large percentage of the users on their platform.
It doesn’t “violate” their terms of service, as these types of videos don’t show “GRATUITOUS GORE”
That’s fucking right! Videos of people smashing into pavement from 100 foot tall buildings don’t show closeups of their mutilated bodies, so it’s fine, obviously.
People who constantly post these kinds of videos and images are practically protected by Elon Musk himself.
Example? (this will be upsetting to some readers)
I watched a video a couple nights ago, or two girls, holding hands, on the side of a building. They count down together, and proceed to fall off the building. A couple seconds later, there’s a loud thud as you can hear their bodies hit the ground.
Many of the videos I’ve seen follow this similar pattern of people just falling off buildings, either screaming or completely silent. I can’t imagine how it may feel for the person as they fall to their deaths. I don’t even know where to begin on that.
Let’s talk about where these kinds of things even begin. How do these impressionable teens find themselves?
I actually talked to someone who is very deep in these kinds of community and here’s what I got:
Q: When was the first time you saw gore on the internet?
A: I first saw gore/self harm photos/videos a few months ago.
Q: How old were you when you first started to consider yourself part of the gore and self harm communities?
A: I don't really find it interesting. I just like watching those types of videos, I don't know why though.
Q: What do you find interesting about gore?
A: I started this account as a private one to repost gore for myself to watch but then people started to notice it so I made it public
Q: Do you think posting and retweeting these kinds of things is harmful to others? Does it have an impact on those who view them? If not, why?
A: Yes I do think it can impact people, because some people can get triggered or relapse from this type of content, this is why I tell them to not view it if they are in recovery and if they think it will make them relapse.
Q: Why do you post or retweet photos and videos that contain people either ending their lives or injuring themselves?
A: And I'm not too sure, I don't have a goal.
I’m sure it’s pretty obvious that people on the internet need help, and they’re also socially an outcast, feeling lonely, and then finding places where they feel as if they fit in. These places of course aren’t always great, and most of the time, people will end up being abused and essentially turned into followers of these concepts. In this case, the whole “concept” is something that no one should ever have to go through in their lives. There’s a reason why certain things have stigmas around them, and in this case, it really should stay that way.
Things aren’t changing soon. No one is really fighting to fix this problem and we’ve only watched it grow. It’s always been this “niche” part of the internet.