Adolescents With Self-Harming Behavior Found to React More Strongly to Images of Self-Harm on Social Media

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by MedicalXpress.

A recent study by the Medical University of Vienna shows that adolescents with a history of non-suicidal self-injurious behavior (NSSI) show increased attention to images of self-harm on social media. This attention bias—the increased and faster fixation on such content—increases the urge to self-harm.

The findings underline the urgency of strengthening prevention and intervention measures to minimize the potential risks of social media for vulnerable young people. The study was published in the journal JAMA Network Open.

In a study conducted by a research group at MedUni Vienna’s Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, adolescents aged 14 to 18 with and without experience of NSSI were analyzed. The researchers used eye-tracking technology to measure the direction of gaze and duration of fixations on different visual stimuli. In addition, a dot-probe task was used to record reaction times to NSSI images compared to neutral images.

The results clearly show that adolescents with NSSI experiences react significantly more strongly to images of self-harm than to neutral content and have difficulty turning their attention away from them.

A remarkable aspect of the results is that the increased attention and the increased urge to self-harm occur with images, but not with texts that deal with self-harm. In contrast, the control group with no history of NSSI did not show a comparable response to the NSSI images, suggesting that this content is less problematic for adolescents with no previous experience.

“These findings emphasize the need to better prepare young people for dealing with such images and to provide them with tools to improve their emotional regulation and distance themselves from distressing stimuli,” adds study leader Oswald Kothgassner.

Source: MedicalXpress
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-11-adolescents-behavior-react-strongly-images.html