We were hunters and gatherers for 90% of human existence. That means our brains are still wired to prioritize the things that kept us alive when we were living on the land, before the domestication of animals and the construction of cities. One thing that kept us alive was living in a tribe and cooperating. Attracting a tribe and fitting in was a requirement of life. That is why kids and teens are hyper-focused on doing what their friends do and working to be cool and accepted. Online influencers count on this drive to maintain their income streams. One way to attract kids online is to be a kid doing what kids love to do, playing with toys and video games, opening new packages, and hanging out with friends acting goofy. Netflix’s Bad Influencer offers a glimpse of the kid influencer “scene,” and the lengths that some parents will go to attract and keep a following.
What is Bad Influence about?
The limited documentary series has gone viral for good reason. It’s definitely entertaining, but also deeply unsettling. It is a perfect way to raise awareness about how scary a life all about social media can be. Bad Influencer is a documentary that focuses on a tween who becomes an overnight social media star and brings her friends to stardom with her. What started out as a fun hobby quickly turned into a living nightmare. It may seem glamorous to be famous online, until you learn that the child influencers spent the majority of their childhoods working long hours acting out video ideas, risky stunts, and performing pranks that sometimes went too far—all under the pressure of adult producers/parents hungry for views. Check out Intimacy With Minors Encouraged at the Hype House for a similar story of underage exploitation.
SPOILER ALERT: The show takes a chilling turn when the mother of the main character is accused of, and videotaped, sexually exploiting these kids on set by positioning herself as one of the only adults supervising them to control them. Some survived the battle with only a few scars, while the main character is stuck living this nightmare over and over again. It may be funny, exaggerated, and attention-grabbing, but it also paints a dark picture of a digital world where clout matters more than character and children are left to pay the price.
Psychology Behind the Fame Obsession
From a psychological point of view, being an influencer is cool to children because they have a natural need for validation, attention, and social connection.[1] Although the minimum age on most social media platforms is 13, it is reported that children ranging from 8-17 are found scrolling through online platforms soaking up content too mature for their ages.[2] Sadly, unlike real-world relationships, social media platforms offer fast, unfiltered dopamine hits through likes, shares, and views. Without proper guidance, this can make kids tie their self-worth to online numbers, which can result in low self-esteem, fear of missing out (FOMO), performance anxiety, and digital addiction.[3] As a result of social unlimited social media usage, kids can also experience anxiety, depression, and even poor quality of sleep.[4] Counteract this monster and help your child build emotional resilience, red flag awareness, and digital literacy by taking our GKIS Social Media Readiness Training Course. Geared for teens or tweens, it’s the perfect giftbefore that new device or video game.
What You Can Do to Help
Bad Influencer is not just a show; it’s a cautionary tale that shares the pressures kids face online every day. It is easy to get off topic and want to pull the plug on all electronics just to protect your child from their dangers, but that is not always possible. Technology and online platforms are all around us, and it is better to set your child up for success than to try to keep them out of the loop. Connecting with your child over what they find interesting can help create a trusting relationship where you can notice if things start to become a little off. Our free Connected Family Screen Agreement can help you and your child co-create rules around how to safely navigate online platforms. This way your child can thrive in the digital age without losing themselves in it.
Thanks to CSUCI intern, Elaha Qudratulla for researching and co-writing this article.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe. Onward to More Awesome Parenting,
For Xgens and millennials, the internet has been a place for people to overshare through Facebook location “check-ins” and Instagram posts chronicling every detail of their latest vacations. Some Gen Z’s, in contrast, have turned casual oversharing into something much darker – publicly sharing stories of trauma for internet clout. To monitor and ensure your child is not sharing their deepest, darkest secrets on TikTok, check out our GKIS Screen Safety Essentials Course. This course provides you access to all GKIS parenting courses, agreements, and supplements to teach your kids independent resilience and good coping skills, all of which work to build a positive parent-child partnership and avoid a digital injury.
What is “trauma dumping”?
Trauma dumping is when a person overshares difficult information with another person without their consent.[1] Trauma dumping for content is done when a person constantly talks about a traumatic experience, even sometimes going so far as to recreate or reenact the traumatic incident online.[2]
Tramadumpers typically do not consider their impact on viewers and are not seeking advice.[1] The sharing often occurs in inappropriate places and times to someone who cannot understand and process someone else’s trauma.[3]
How does trauma dumping differ from venting?
Trauma dumping differs from venting because venting is the release of pent-up emotions rather than details of traumatic experiences.[2] When venting, a person is more mindful of the other person’s boundaries and how much they should share. Venting is an ordinary action people take to blow off steam, while trauma dumping is a potentially harmful action.
Why is sharing trauma for views and likes problematic?
Sharing or posting about a personal experience is not inherently wrong. But when you are sharing about it on social media often, it can become a maladaptive coping mechanism, meaning that instead of reducing the effect of a traumatic event on one’s mental health, you instead cause more harm and increase long-term stress.[4]
How Viewing Trauma Dumping Affects Viewers
The TikTok hashtags #trauma and #traumatok have a combined total of more than 22.5 billion views. As of 2023, Tiktok has 1.53 billion users, meaning that videos with the aforementioned hashtags have been viewed more times than there are users on the app.[5]
I asked a frequent TikTok user to recount her experience viewing a #traumatok video. She shared, “I was scrolling through my TikTok For You Page and saw a video a girl shared of her last conversation with her mother before her mother passed away from Covid-19. It made me feel sad, and I thought about it pretty often throughout the day. I told my friend about it later, and she said she had seen it too and it made her cry. Her dad passed away from Covid-19, and it hit home for her and reminded her of her dad’s passing. I can’t imagine seeing that kind of content as an 11-year-old or something.”
Viewers of trauma content can also inadvertently desensitize themselves. By viewing a trauma dump video and then scrolling to a happy or neutral video, they can prevent themselves from feeling the full impact of the content and thus are conditioning themselves to not adequately process traumatic content.[6] Through viewing traumatic content, viewers may inadvertently open themselves up to their own traumas. To learn more about doom-scrolling, see our GKIS article, “Doom-Scrolling: How Much Bad News Can We Take?”
What Parents Can Do
Preventing children from viewing #traumatok content is critical to ensure your child does not suffer from a digital injury.
Keep your child safe by:
Limiting and monitoring your child’s only content using our GKIS Screen Safety Toolkit. This resource helps you set parental controls and smart tools created to filter content and manage online behavior.
Keep the conversation going using our free GKIS Connected Family Agreement. By having regular discussions and co-viewing your child’s content, the learning continues both ways.
Preparing your children for social media usage through our GKIS Social Media Readiness Course. This course will help your child stay safe from digital injury and prepare them to “get social.”
In our GKIS blog articles, we’ve talked before about how social media and smartphone use can be addicting for kids, and how phone addiction can have negative impacts on kids’ and teens’ mental health and social skills. But what GetKidsInternetSafe is passionate about is prevention. That is why Dr. Bennett created the Social Media Readiness Course for tweens and teens. In this best-selling course, she incorporated education about the red flags of risk for digital injury as well as the psychological wellness practices she’s developed in her psychology practice over 30 years. Many of these practices involve mindfulness, a mental health practice that has demonstrated great outcomes. In today’s GKIS article, we will discuss what mindfulness is exactly and whether it is something your family can use to help prevent the damage caused by smartphone addiction.
Defining Smartphone Addiction
As smartphones have become more popular, it can be difficult to determine whether one is using their phone “too much” or if they are addicted. Studies are finding that we are dependent on our phones and many people are developing separation anxiety from them.[1][2] Psychologists have been looking for ways to prevent smartphone addiction. One of the more promising findings has been mindfulness practice.
What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is a type of mental practice that’s been gaining popularity. It has its roots in Buddhist philosophy, but it’s a non-religious form of meditation and mental awareness of the current moment.[3]
Mindfulness can be improved with exercises that focus on breathing and focusing on your thoughts, feelings, and body sensations.[4] The goal is to bring your attention to what’s happening in the present moment, instead of stressful thoughts about the past or future.[3]
Health benefits include improving cognitive ability and reducing stress, anxiety, and depression.[3]
How can mindfulness help with smartphone addiction?
A 2019 study found that mindfulness can lessen the impact of separation anxiety related to having a smartphone addiction. Students in the study who scored higher on a mindfulness rating were less likely to have depression and anxiety symptoms.[5]
It was also found in a 2017 study that low ratings of mindfulness were predictive of young adults having internet and screen addictions.[6]
Another study found that mindfulness was also able to lessen the impact of bullying and cyberbullying on student depression.[7] This suggests that mindfulness can help with the symptoms of common digital injuries, not just the internet and phone addiction itself.
What can I do if someone in my family has a phone addiction?
There are many easy mindfulness exercises available online. Most only take between five to ten minutes. A quick Google or YouTube search for “mindfulness exercises” can help you find one that works for you.
It’s also important to help make sure that your family doesn’t become addicted to their smartphones in the first place. Our GKIS Screen Safety Essentials Course is a set of four modules that will help walk your kids through the most important things they can do to keep themselves safe online.
For a more direct approach to your kids’ internet safety, The GKIS Screen Safety Toolkit will provide you with apps and guides on how to implement parental controls and keep an eye on what your kids are doing online, in a way that you and your family can both be happy with.
Thanks to CSUCI intern Brandon Bishop for doing research on smartphone addiction and mindfulness and authoring this article.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
In 2013, a 14-year-old girl in England named Hannah Smith committed suicide after being bullied and receiving hurtful comments on a social media website. When her father called for there to be accountability for the people who had left messages about his daughter before her death, it was revealed by the police that Hannah had most likely written the messages herself.[1] This was one of the first recognized incidents of digital self-harm, where a person leaves harmful messages, comments, or posts about themselves on the internet. We have written about physical self-harm in the GKIS article, “What Parents Need to Know About America’s Cutting Epidemic,” but today we’re going to examine the possible causes of digital self-harm, and how you can take steps to help your children if they’re experiencing this. To prevent digital self-harm, keeping open communication between you and your kids about their screen usage is essential. The GKIS Connected Family Screen Agreement is our free digital contract that helps create an open forum of communication between you and your kids and offers tips about the basics of internet safety.
What makes digital self-harm different?
Physical self-harm is when a person injures or puts themselves at risk without intent for committing suicide. Often this is done to numb emotional pain or cry for help. The most known forms of self-harm are cutting or burning yourself or skin-picking, but other risky behaviors like excessive drinking and drug use can become self-harm depending on the person’s motivation.[2] Physical self-harm can accompany or lead to suicidality.
Digital self-harm is similar to the physical forms of self-harm, but it takes place over the Internet. A teenager who’s self-harming this way may leave hateful comments and messages for themselves on social media, often in a publicly visible place. This is done anonymously on a fake account they’ve created.[3] By doing this to themselves, it can make it look like they’re being cyberbullied or harassed by others. Like physical self-harm, teenagers who digitally self-harm are at a much higher risk of suicidal thoughts or making a suicide attempt.[4]
Why do people engage in digital self-harm?
There are many reasons a teen may engage in digital self-harm, including:
to express overwhelming negative feelings about themselves.
to take control of peer relations where they’d otherwise feel out of control.
to look artsy, tough, or cool or better belong among others victimized by bullying or cyberbullying.
to numb out or punish themselves.[2][6]
to attract much-needed help and support.[5]
to elicit compliments and praise from others.
in hopes that friends will come to their defense and say positive things about them.[5]
to create a forum where they can engage in a public discourse and track responses.[5]
to phish to find out if other people see them in a similarly negative way.[6]
How common is this behavior?
A study in 2012 surveyed 617 college students and found that 9% of those students admitted to committing digital self-harm behavior while they were in high school.[7]
Another more recent 2017 study surveyed 5,593 middle-school and high-school students and found that about 5% admitted to digital self-harm, and 6% admitted to cyberbullying themselves.[3] They also found that teenagers who had digitally self-harmed were also more likely to have been bullied in the past than the students who hadn’t self-harmed.
The Role of Social Media in Self-Harm
As social media has gotten more popular, teenage mental health has been getting worse. One study found that adolescent suicide rates and depressive symptoms increased from 2010 to 2015, particularly among young girls.[8] Another found that students who checked social media 50-100 times a day were more likely to be distressed than their peers who checked less frequently, and that checking more than 100 times a day led to even higher distress.[9]
While self-harming behavior is usually done in private, social media opens the possibility of exposure to the negative emotions that cause self-harm. Social media allows kids and teens to communicate with others who self-harm and more easily find information about how to do different types of self-harm.[2]
What should I do if someone I know is digitally self-harming?
While digital self-harm is a new phenomenon in the worlds of social media and psychology, there are preventative measures that could help you monitor for digital self-harm in your family:
Take active steps to manage your children’s time online and monitor what kinds of websites your children are accessing. The GKIS Screen Safety Toolkit provides you with advice and app recommendations to set up parental controls, screen time management, and website filtering and blocking.
Recognize that self-harm is usually a symptom of other problems in your child’s life, and that they may be keeping it to themselves to avoid embarrassment or punishment. Respond with empathy in mind. This is a poorly thought-through coping mechanism that is fairly common among kids, tweens, and teens. Don’t respond harshly because you are disappointed or embarrassed. Instead, make this a teaching opportunity and gently validate their feelings and coach them through to better solutions. Kids make mistakes online just as they do offline. They’re still learning.
If the free Connected Family Agreement catches your interest and you want something more comprehensive, our megacourse for Screen Safety Essentials offers GKIS content for the whole family to form healthier screen use habits and encourage cooperation between you and your kids.
If you’re worried that your teen is self-harming or suicidal, contact a mental health professional as soon as possible. Typically, the earlier the intervention, the more effective it is.
Thanks to CSUCI intern Brandon Bishop for researching digital self-harm and its causes and authoring this article.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
Sexual content on a social media platform with millions of young children should never be allowed, but lines become blurred when TikTok users find subversive ways to share fetish content with others. Behind seemingly innocent videos lay adults seeking to arouse one another, uncaring that it may be occurring right in front of your child. Protect your child from inappropriate online content and prevent digital injury with our GKISScreen Safety Toolkit.
What is a “Fetish” or “Kink”?
A fetish refers to sexual arousal resulting from objects or a specific body part that is not typically seen as sexual.[1] Fetish objects or body parts could include feet, hair, food, or even balloons. For those with a fetish, sex may be less pleasurable or even impossible without the presence of the fetish object.
In contrast, kink refers to unconventional or bizarre sexual activity with self or others.[2] While fetishes can become sexual disorders, kinks typically do not progress to that level. More specifically, Fetishistic Disorder occurs when a person’s fetish escalates to the point of being persistent and distressing.[3] To meet the conditions for this disorder, an individual must experience sexual urges that meet the definition of a fetish, these fetishes must cause distress or impairment in functioning, and the object they fetishize must not be used in cross-dressing or sexual stimulation.[4]
Fetishistic Disorders are typically seen in males and emerge during puberty.[4] Fetishistic Disorder can make it hard for individuals to develop intimate relationships and can cause sexual dysfunction.[4] Studies have also found that fetishism is often correlated with other mental health issues, substance abuse, criminal justice involvement, and an increased risk of sexually transmitted infections.[4]
How are TikTok Users Posting This Content?
Most social media websites have content filters and bots that flag any content that can be considered inappropriate or of a sexual nature. However, most of the fetish content on TikTok does not contain nudity, instead appealing to fetishes that utilize implied sexual behavior.
Popular TikTok user Lena Rae (@lenarae.lh), who has over 230k followers, has created a collection of videos titled, “Is This Fetish Content?” that identifies this type of content and calls out the users to post it.
In a video with almost 18 million views, Lena Rae reacts to a seemingly innocent video from user “putinnu” (a not-so-thinly veiled attempt at sexual innuendo “put it in you”). The video shows a woman in a wedding dress shoving a glass vase into a multi-tiered cake and then proceeding to pour multi-colored, runny frosting inside the vase. Lena Rae points out the vase is a phallic shape. She also comments on the consistency of the frosting and how the person is spilling it as they pour. The woman in the video explains that the frosting is going to run all over the cake, a reference that Lena Rae says is to appeal to those with a “sploshing” fetish. Lena Rae points out that the actions in the video are purposely repetitive and aim to appeal to a fetishistic audience.[5]
While these videos may not be expressly sexual like other content on TikTok, the hidden fetish content videos are flooded with comments from adults who are taking pleasure in the content being suggested to them. This creates a dangerous combination of adults with sexual fetishes consuming content that is “safe” enough to also show up on the For You Page of young kids.
How Viewing This Content Can Affect Kids
Viewing sexual content at any age can be harmful to one’s mental health, but when viewed during a time of development, it can have lasting effects into adulthood.
Experts have found that young children who view pornographic content frequently become isolated, withdrawn, anxious, or depressed.[6] Consumption of online sexual content at a young age can lead to premature sexual experimentation as well as other high-risk behaviors, dating violence, cannabis abuse, or the development of harmful fetishes.[7]
What Parents Can Do
Open communication about sexual content can save your child from digital injury and stunted development. Some experts even recommend talking to your child as young as 9 years old about the difference between “good” and “bad” pictures.[8] Experts believe that in doing so, children will be better able to identify groomers or online predators and be less susceptible to them.
There are also various protective factors that one can turn to to prevent early exposure to sex. Creating an environment where a child feels connected to their parents and family can help them feel more comfortable communicating about the content they consume. To help facilitate difficult conversations about online content, try out our free GKISConnected Family Screen Agreement. Fostering healthy conversations and helping your child create positive self-perception can help kids to seek validation from family and peers rather than online strangers.
How do you like to use the internet? To watch videos of puppies and kittens? Or posting pictures of your family and friends? Maybe to satisfy your shopping addiction on Amazon? Maybe your internet use has not been so innocent. Many use the internet to get a thrill or get their anger out. Online harassment is not uncommon, so much so that there are websites built to support it. Kiwi Farms, for example, is a forum website where users are encouraged to harass online personalities and communities. Today’s GKIS article details the targeted harassment done by Kiwi Farms users and how the website facilitates this behavior. If you’re concerned your kids may be victimized by harassment or overstep and do the harassing themselves, check out our Screen Safety Toolkit. With this online course and resource guide, you can learn how to protect your family online.
The Start of Kiwi Farms
Joshua Conner Moon, a former administrator of the 8chan message board, started Kiwi Farms in 2013. It was first established as a forum website to troll and harass a webcomic creator. Before the term “Kiwi Farms” was coined in 2014, Kiwi Farms was known as “CWCki Forums.”
Organized Harassment
The Kiwi Farms website targets a wide range of victims, including Internet celebrities, minorities, women, neurodivergent individuals, LGBTQ people, members of the far right, and people who Kiwi Farms users believe to be “mentally ill” or “sexually deviant.” Both Moon and the Kiwi Farms user base have been labeled as anti-Semitic.[1]
swatting (reporting crimes at their addresses to have police dispatched to their homes)
real-life attacks
People Who Have Fallen Victim
U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed in an interview with NewsMax on August 24, 2022 that she had been swatted twice by someone posing as a Kiwi Farms moderator “AltisticRight.” She urged for the website to be taken down. In reaction, Cloudflare shut off a feature on the website that lets users modify error messages.
Clara Sorrenti, a transgender advocate and Twitch broadcaster who goes by the handle “Keffals,” was doxxed on Kiwi Farms as well. Users of the website shared both her personal information and those of her friends and relatives, including addresses and phone numbers. Users also threatened her life and leaked sexually explicit images of her. In August 2022, after someone hijacked her identity and sent false emails to local lawmakers threatening widespread violence, she was later swatted, imprisoned for more than ten hours, and arrested. She was ultimately exonerated of all charges, and authorities determined that the incident was a swatting effort.
Users also shared the address of a stranger who lives in the same city and has the same last name as Sorrenti. Police were subsequently dispatched to his home. Sorrenti claimed that she left her house and checked into a hotel for her protection following the swatting event. After she uploaded a picture of her cat lying on a hotel bed, Kiwi Farms members recognized the establishment from the bedsheets and sent several pizza orders to it using her dead name.
Later, Sorrenti left the country after her whereabouts were discovered, allegedly by someone who had hacked her Uber account. Sorrenti says that she intends to file a lawsuit and that the occurrences were being investigated as criminal harassment.
Suicide
A hate campaign against transgender game creator Chloe Sagal was started in 2013 by Kiwi Farm users. Sagal is well-known for creating the well-liked, independent horror game Homesick. After Sagal started raising funds for gender reassignment surgery, they began to attack her. Users hounded and harassed Sagal for years after they started a post specifically to target her. Sagal lit herself on fire in 2018 in a park in Portland and died at 31 years old.[3]
According to images of chat boards and videos published by DropKiwiFarms.net, an initiative was passed to shut down the website after Moon posted a live YouTube video celebrating Sagal’s passing while other Kiwi Farms users laughed and made fun of the game developer.
The Short End of Kiwi Farms
After the harassment effort by users of Kiwi Farms against Sorrenti, a movement to persuade Cloudflare to stop hosting the site was launched in August 2022. Cloudflare is a company that provides hosting and online security services. This, according to NBC News, was done to allow Kiwi Farms to be the target of “debilitating virtual attacks.”[2]
Although Cloudflare first defended its choice to continue working with Kiwi Farms, the company formally banned the website from utilizing its services on September 3, 2022. However, on September 6, VanwaTech supplied content delivery network services to the website, returning it online according to The Daily Dot.[4]
How to Protect Your Child
Unfortunately, many parts of the internet are unregulated. And when children have easy access to it, they can fall victim to being harassed online or fall down a dark path of harassing people themselves. Luckily, Dr. Bennett can help you protect yourself and your family from online harassment.
One helpful tip for parents is to make it a habit to hold GKIS Family Meetings with a teaching agenda that covers important online issues that your children will face. This provides opportunities for mutual education and skill building, and it also builds a close family alliance. Get ideas for your discussion with our GKIS Blog and learn parenting strategies with Dr. Bennett’s Screen Time in the Mean Time Parenting Guide.
Thanks to CSUCI intern, Liliana Esquivel, for detailing the targeted harassment done by Kiwi Farms users and how the website facilitates this behavior.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
Thanks to CSUCI intern, Katherine Carroll for Trauma Dumping and its harmful effects.
