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Live Streaming Can Cause PTSD in Adults and Children

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We are vulnerable to dangers previous generations couldn’t even imagine. We are on-demand, world connected – available to watch any horror from any place. Graphic (meaning vivid or realistic) live stream videos can be found on social media platforms such as Facebook Live, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube. Children are especially vulnerable to getting upset when viewing violence. Today’s GKIS article covers if the mental illness Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can result from viewing violence on screen.

How Graphic Live Streams Affect Children

Accidentally clicking on a violent video would frighten anybody. Children are particularly vulnerable to trauma, including the development of serious mental illness. PTSD is a mental health disorder in which a person struggles to recover from experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event such as an assault, war, natural disaster, or serious accident. People with PTSD often have severe anxiety and panic attacks when reminded of the traumatic event. They feel stressed and frightened even when there is no danger present.

PTSD symptoms include intense nightmares, difficulty sleeping, and flashbacks of the traumatic event (intrusive images like you’re re-experiencing it). Children younger than six years old show signs of PTSD differently than adults. Their symptoms include behaviors like wetting the bed, being unable to speak, acting out the traumatic event in playtime, and clinging to their caregiver. PTSD is a very serious, debilitating disorder that can leave the individual in a nearly constant state of fear and stress.

Being able to discuss the witnessed traumatic event is a necessary step in treatment. In a study with Danish high school students, subjects who had witnessed a school shooting were assessed for PTSD. It was found that the prevalence of PTSD seven months after the incident was 9.5%. Being unable to talk about the incident was found a predictor of those who developed PTSD.[1]

Studies on Videos and the Onset of PTSD

Because violent videos are relatively new, there is little research on how they affect us. One of the earliest studies was conducted after Americans viewed the television coverage of the 9/11 tragedy.

The researchers interviewed 560 adults three to five days after 9/11. Approximately 90% reported one or more stress symptoms. In contrast, 35% of children had one or more stress symptoms, and 47% were worried about their safety or the safety of loved ones. Ten percent of the children had trouble falling asleep or staying asleep.

In another study, researchers surveyed 4,675 adults who viewed the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings on video. They found that people who had repeatedly watched the tragic footage sustained more trauma and stress than people who had witnessed the events in real life!

Those who watched six or more hours per day of media coverage were nine times more likely to report high acute stress than those who viewed less than one hour a day. Symptoms of acute stress included intrusive or troubling thoughts, feeling hyperaware, avoiding anything that reminds one of the traumatic events, and feelings of detachment.

If your children witnessed a traumatic live stream or Internet video, how would you know if they had PTSD? 

Elementary School-Aged Children

“PTSD in children and adolescents requires the presence of re-experiencing and avoidance, numbing, and arousal symptoms. However, PTSD may not present itself in children the same way it does in adults.”[2] For example, young children may not experience flashbacks like adults with PTSD. They are more likely to experience “time skew” and “omen formation,” which are symptoms usually not seen in adults.

Time skew is the mis-sequencing of trauma-related events when remembering the experience.

Omen formation is a belief that there were warning signs that foreshadowed the traumatic event.

Children often believe that if they remain alert, they will recognize the warning signs and avoid another trauma resulting in chronic hypervigilance, anxiety, and sleep disorders.

School-aged children with PTSD often engage in posttraumatic play or reenactment of the trauma in play, drawings, or verbalizations. Post-traumatic play is a literal representation of the traumatic event in which the child repetitively acts out some aspect of the trauma. This often does not relieve anxiety.

An example of post-traumatic play would be a child shaking a playhouse after they’ve experienced an earthquake.

Post-traumatic reenactment, on the other hand, is more flexible and involves behaviorally mimicking some aspects of the trauma. An example would be carrying a toy gun after being exposed to violence.

Adolescents and Teens

PTSD in adolescents more closely resembles symptoms seen in adults. However, some features are unique to teenagers.

As discussed above, children may engage in traumatic play after the onset of trauma. Adolescents are more likely to engage in traumatic reenactment, in which they merge some aspects of the trauma into their lives. Reenactments occur due to psychological vulnerabilities and defensive mechanisms which are characteristic of PTSD survivors.  Adolescents tend to engage in impulsive and aggressive behaviors more than younger children and adults do.

What can parents do?

  • Advocate for better safety protocols including monitoring and filtering with platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Periscope, and YouTube.
  • Filter video access to children by using a child-safe browser, refusing requests to adopt livestream social media apps, and using appropriate child sites like YouTube Kids.
  • Maintain an ongoing dialogue about content viewed online to optimize the chance your child will go to you if they happen upon inappropriate content.
  • Let your child know they won’t be in trouble for accidental views.
  • Be alert for changes in behavior that may be reflective of PTSD like fears, anxiety, bathroom accidents, mutism, sleep problems, appetite problems, substance abuse, or school failure.
  • Seek the help of a child psychologist if you have concerns.

Thank you to CSUCI Intern, Mara Pober for writing this important series to inform parents and help them keep their kids Internet safe. For more parenting advice on-screen media and trauma in children, pick up your copy of Dr. Bennett’s book, Screen Time in the Mean Time: A Parent Guide to Get Kids and Teens Internet Safe.

I’m the mom psychologist who helps you GetKidsInternetSafe.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,

Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
GetKidsInternetSafe

Works Cited

A National Survey of Stress Reactions after the September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks (2001)

[2] National Center for PTSD

Prolonged viewing of Boston Marathon bombings media coverage tied to acute stress (2013)

[1] The psychological reactions after witnessing a killing in public in a Danish high school

Viewing violent news on social media can cause trauma (2015)

Photo Credits

Don´t let it happen again

classroom-laptops-computers-boy.jpg

Little Boy Bluescreen

Graphic Livestream Horrors

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Popular livestream video platforms, like Facebook Live, Twitter, Instagram, and Periscope, can put viewers at psychological risk with graphic content that’s impossible to moderate or filter. Last week we learned the history of news coverage, including livestream during the recent Las Vegas shooting. Today’s article covers how quickly and dramatically easily-accessed video content has changed with a constantly increasing viewing audience. Is violent livestream video detrimental to our psychological wellbeing? #Vegasstrong

How is livestreaming different from news coverage?

We are all disheartened by the unprovoked mass murder of country concert attendees in Las Vegas recently. Constant bombardment with graphic news coverage left many of us reeling. No longer do news outlets need a reporter on-scene to get dramatic live coverage. Private citizens stream photos and videos from their smartphones real time on the Internet, while outlets choose and air the most dramatic content available.

Graphic news coverage is a relatively new phenomenon. Prior to smartphones, network executives edited out content that would upset viewers. Community standard determined the selection process, with ethics and consumer preference in mind. Livestreaming does not undergo this filtration process. It’s raw, authentic, and very real. Viewers can hear, see, and observe the terror of victims real-time without actually being there.

Livestream Horrors

Imagine the horror of watching a mass murder unfold real-time, helpless to do anything about it. This is exactly what happened to hundreds of Internet and television viewers of recent Las Vegas livestreams. As people livestreamed themselves enjoying the concert, the scene quickly changed. Viewers watched on in horror as the chilling events unveiled. This is not the only case of a tragic event captured on livestream.

In April 2017, Steven Stephens livestreamed himself shooting a 74 year old man on Facebook Live in Cleveland. In the video, Steven is seen in his car saying, “Found me somebody I’m going to kill — this guy right here, this old dude.”  Steven then exits the car and kills Robert Godwin Sr. on the spot. The video was on Facebook live for three hours with hundreds of viewers before it was finally taken down.

In a similarly disturbing incident, a man in Thailand livestreamed himself murdering his daughter.  The recording showed Wuttisan Wongtalay hanging his 11 month-old daughter by the neck from the rooftop of a building. The footage was on Facebook Live for twenty-four hours before it was taken down. Wongtalay later committed suicide off camera. Facebook called this “an appalling incident.”

In another criminal event, Obdulia Sanchez, 18, livestreamed herself on Instagram driving under the influence with two 14 year-old girls in the back seat.  After losing control of the vehicle, she shakes her sister, dead in a pool of blood, pleading, “Jacqueline, please wake up.”

Another particularly noteworthy livestreaming event occurred in January 2017, when four people broadcasted a 28-minute livestream video as they tortured a mentally disabled man. They taped his mouth shut and threatened him with a knife as they beat him, made him drink from the toilet, and cut off a part of his scalp. The first perpetrator to be tried, nineteen year-old Brittany Covington, pleaded guilty to the hate crime and received four years probation where she was ordered not to use social media.

Tolerance of Violence?

Information reaching us faster alerts us to a more accurate reality. This can be beneficial when considering the authenticity of news. But at the same time, instant access to unfiltered media may be desensitizing us to violent imagery. According to the World Health Organization, “Rules or expectations of behavior … within a cultural or social group can encourage violence.”

Children and adolescents who are curious and thrill-seeking seek out content to be shocked, scared, or more “in-the-know.” Other times viewers come across this content by accident. Each of us have our own complicated profile of risk. Perhaps the normalization of violent livestreams reduces our sense of safety, even sensationalizing issues like assault, murder, and suicide. Copycat behaviors seeking notice can also be a problem.

The fact that there are thousands of disturbing videos circulating the Internet at any time makes one question how it got this bad. As a nation, we are becoming more tolerant of viewing violence on-screen. Many argue that certain types of violent videos must be publicly available for informational and educational purposes. In response to this, most Internet platforms have specific rules for how violent videos are filtered.

For example, Facebook now has guidelines regarding which violent videos are permitted to stay on the website and which are removed. Videos of violent deaths are not always taken off the site, because they can help bring awareness to issues such as mental illness or war crimes. Videos in this category are instead marked as disturbing content and blocked from minors. Facebook also permits users to livestream themselves attempting suicide or committing acts of self-harm. The justification for doing so is because they do not want to censor freedom of expression or punish someone in distress. If a person does livestream a suicide attempt, the video documenting the incident may not be taken down if it is deemed newsworthy.

 

Youtube also has challenges filtering inappropriate content. Dr. Bennett was invited as a parenting expert on Access Hollywood Live to discuss the poor judgment of celebrity Youtube Logan Paul after he posted video of a suicide victim hanging in Japan’s notorious “suicide forest.” Although Logan took it down after receiving criticism, over six million of his followers, mostly young people, saw the footage and Logan’s poor taste of giggling uncomfortably throughout. People are increasingly willing to post scandalous content in order for it to go viral. After all, that mean’s BIG profits. Dr. Bennett called for parents to talk to their kids and advocate for better safety monitoring on video and livestream social media sites.

Find out how graphic livestreams may affect mental health in Mara Pober’s last article of her three-part series, “Live Streaming Can Cause PTSD in Adults and Children.”

I’m the mom psychologist who helps you GetKidsInternetSafe.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,
Dr. Tracy Bennett

Works Cited

4 charged with hate crimes in Facebook Live beating of man with ‘mental health challenges’

How Facebook decides what violent and explicit content is allowed

Jailed woman says she livestreamed aftermath of deadly crash to raise funds for sister’s funeral

Las Vegas shooting FRONT ROW at country music concert live stream

Man livestreams murder of baby daughter on Facebook before committing suicide

Nationwide manhunt for suspect in Cleveland Facebook video murder

Post Traumatic stress disorder

Photo Credits

Eye By Richard Broderick

Girl on Computer Notebook

Gun

From Newspapers to Livestreaming: Is Instant Access to News Good for Americans?

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Internet technology has brought us instantaneous access to global information. We see the latest news coverage in seconds with convenient notifications on our smartphones. Personal posts on Facebook delivers everything, including beheadings by ISIS and mass shootings like the tragedy in Las Vegas. Unregulated and increasingly pushing the boundaries of decorum, shocking information and violent images and videos constantly slice into our everyday lives. We at GKIS believe this comes at a grave price to our feelings of security and overall mental health, particularly for kids. Trigger warning: please beware that this post includes graphic news images.

Photojournalism: The First Graphic Images to Reach the Masses

Graphic popular news content is a relatively new phenomenon. Before the Internet, people primarily accessed news from newspapers. The first printed newspaper was written in Germany in 1605. The first newspaper photos in the 1850s were wood-engravings used for printing purposes rather than actual printed photographs. Though these images were not true to life, they still conveyed messages to the masses.

Roger Fenton, one of the first war photographers, captured images of the Crimean War in 1854. His photos revolutionized photojournalism. Due to the limited photo technology of the time, he could only capture stationary objects. As a result, his photos were often staged and depicted landscapes or posed people. He avoided taking pictures of dead bodies and bloodied soldiers.

In 1857, photographer Felice Beato pushed the envelope further to more graphically expose the devastation of war. He captured what may be the first popularly published photograph of a human corpse.

In the late 1800s, newspapers developed a more efficient method of printing photos, called half-toning. These are the black and white images many of us are familiar with. By the 1920s this technology was very sophisticated and could produce high quality images which proved vital for eliciting public response.

A poignant example of graphic news coverage evoking public response was the Emmet Till incident in 1955. Emmet was a 14-year-old African-American boy who was senselessly lynched when a white woman claimed that he had disrespected her. Her husband and his brother abducted Emmet and beat and mutilated him before tossing his body into a river. When his body was discovered, Emmet’s mother allowed journalists to photograph his severely disfigured body. These disturbing images outraged the public and brought light to injustice in the South. Emmet became the face to The Civil Rights Movement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

News Video Coverage: A Revolutionary Medium

The introduction of film media added an even more sophisticated layer of interaction between news reports and the public. The first filmed news coverage, called Newsreel, was prominent from the 1910s to the 1960s, before Americans had televisions in their homes. Newsreels were short documentary-style films reporting on current events, most often shown before motion pictures in movie theaters. They tended to be informative and non-graphic in nature, often used as propaganda to influence public opinion on war and politics.

When televisions became common in American homes in the 1960s, TV stations began producing their own newsreels. Soon there would be entire programs dedicated to news, marking the beginning of nationwide news broadcasting stations like CBS.

In the 1970s, innovative technologies emerged that could record audio and video for television broadcasting, called electronic news gathering. With the onset of the unpopular Vietnam war, news broadcasters covered the battlefield in graphic detail. This exposed the world to raw and real depiction of the brutalities of war, fueling anti-war sentiments.

For example, on March 27, 1970, CBS News aired a graphic report with correspondent Richard Threlkeld. In the clip, Richard accompanies several soldiers patrolling the jungles of Vietnam. Suddenly shots fire, and Richard and the soldiers take cover. One of the soldiers, Kregg Jorgenson, is shot in both legs off camera. With gunfire sounds in the background, Richard briefly interviews the heroic soldier who earned his fourth Purple Heart that day.

In more recent memory, the graphic videos of 9/11 traumatized a nation. Millions of television viewers were entranced by the continuous hours of disturbing footage. Particularly horrifying were the images of victims jumping from the burning towers to their deaths. Richard Griffiths, the senior editorial director at CNN, ruminated with his colleges about whether or not to air “The Jumpers.” Ultimately, they decided to show a four-second clip of a person falling before impact. This decision was met with universal disapproval as audiences were shocked and deeply upset. How far is too far in television journalism?

Livestreaming: The New Frontier

With the advent of smartphones, we now have immediate, continuous access to the unregulated Internet. Not only can we conveniently view video coverage, but we also can take and share it real-time. Livestreaming is the ability to transmit live audio and video footage over the Internet. Popular livestream mediums are Facebook live, Twitter, Instagram, and Periscope.

The problem with livestreams is that it’s impossible to moderate and filter graphic content. It’s raw, authentic, and very real. Captured livestreaming incidents have included rape, torture, and murder. Most recently, the world looked on at the horrifying livestreaming videos of victims during the Las Vegas shooting. Viewing livestreamed events can feel like you’re actually there but helpless to do anything to aid victims. Just as we saw with 9/11 coverage, audience response has been emotional and, in some instances, symptomatic of secondary trauma.

Thank you Intern Mara Pober for giving us a great overview of photojournalism and how the tide has turned. Stay tuned for her article next week, “Graphic Livestream Horrors” to learn why  viewing graphic video content can contribute to clinical distress for all of us, particularly children.

I’m the mom psychologist who helps you GetKidsInternetSafe.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,

Dr. Tracy Bennett

Works Cited

Felice Beato Biography

How “Electronic News Gathering” Came to Be

Newsreel archive

Vietnam War, 1970: CBS camera rolls as platoon comes under fire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89_3DgW_7mg

9/11: ‘Jumpers’ from the World Trade Center still provoke impassioned debate

Photo Credits

Emmet till before and after the incident:

Before:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/11304375@N07/2534273093/in/photostream/

After:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/11304375@N07/2534273097/in/photostream/

Felice Beato

Twin Towers

Iraqi Girl

YouTube Beauty Gurus Suck Money and Teen Confidence

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With more pressures at school and with friends, middle school can be awkward, scary, and lonely. Middle school is also when many tweens and teens onboard social media. Although social media is a fun way to keep up with friends and follow special interests, it has also been proven to increase insecurities and make kids feel left out and excluded. Cyberbullying is not uncommon and can lead to depression and anxiety. Insecure about their looks, teenagers are the perfect target for online beauty gurus and product marketing. Are beauty videos innocent instructional fun or high-tech marketing? Today’s GKIS article covers the beauty guru craze on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok and how they trick us into buying expensive and unnecessary beauty products.

What is a beauty guru?

Beauty gurus are social media celebrities who create images and videos that offer makeup and hairstyling tutorials, skincare reviews, and fashion advice. They are popular on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook.

Millennials (those born between 1980 and 1995) and Generation Z (those born between 1996 and 2015) are the targeted populations for beauty gurus.

  • Tweens, teens, and young adults spend an average of 11.3 hours on YouTube each week.
  • 60% of them follow YouTube celebrities on social media.
  • Nearly a third of teens ages 13 to 17 prefer YouTube celebrities over movie or TV celebrities.
  • As of 2015, there were approximately 45.3 billion views on YouTube for beauty videos alone. [1]
  • Each month, 50 million people watch over 1.6 billion minutes of beauty guru content. [2]

Why are beauty gurus so popular?

Developmental changes during adolescence make teens perfect targets for beauty marketing. As kids develop and mature, they are getting used to maturing bodies and also switch attachment focus from parents to peers.

To attract their tribe, teens focus on their looks and often believe that others frequently watch and judge them. Child psychologist David Elkind coined this developmental phenomenon imaginary audience.

Is a judging audience imaginary? After all, the hundreds of social media selfies and YouTube videos teens view each day fuel the idea that everybody is watching, scrutinizing, and judging.

Teens are also attracted to the fame and influence of YouTube celebrities. Fifty-six percent of teen subscribers aspire to be a YouTube star. [3] Beauty gurus are particularly admired because they are often more relatable than polished celebrities like Kylie Jenner or Angeline Jolie. They’re “normal girls” just like everyone else, right? 

Videos Shot for Profit

High subscriber numbers mean high profits. Although beauty videos appear to be spontaneously self-produced, informal chats into the camera, they aren’t. Most teens would be surprised to learn that these videos are expertly produced with scripting, expensive cameras and sound equipment, professional lighting, digital filtering and enhancements, and extensive editing. Newly created video editing software offers filters that enhance the skin and hide imperfections.

Beauty Box Video is an example of a digital enhancement software product. “This early-generation video plugin automatically identifies skin tones and creates a mask that limits the smoothing effect to just the skin areas…[It’s] Powerful, Easy, Real-time skin retouching for video” (website product description). With retouching software and filters, beauty gurus lead their audience to believe that their flawless skin is the result of a skincare item or a makeup product available for purchase rather than photography, video, and editing tricks. [4]

Some beauty Youtubers are not even amateurs. They are professional makeup artists or stylists. Some Youtuber celebrities may have started innocently making videos, but when subscriber numbers rise, advertisers offer attractive incentives to better sell. For example, Youtuber Michelle Phan was initially endorsed by Lancôme and now has her own makeup line called EM Cosmetics. Her brand makes millions of dollars a year.

Fake Friends and Confidants

YouTube beauty gurus intentionally create a false sense of intimacy in their videos that appeal to a lonely generation of young people who are captive audiences to their screens. Intimate video titles such as “Get ready with me” or “Storytime” offer the viewer a false sense of friendship with the Youtuber. [5]

Although teens may feel entertained and satisfied with learning, hours of watching may also contribute to their dissatisfaction and loneliness. Despite the teen’s best efforts, they will never be able to attain the professionally produced look of the beautiful Youtuber. The most popular beauty gurus are very attractive to begin with. Youtubers with average looks rarely get views and endorsement deals. The prettier the Youtuber, the more brand deals they get, and the more discouraged teens get sold on expectations they can’t achieve.

Compare and Despair

Many teens look to beauty gurus as role models. Unfortunately, beauty gurus rarely encourage their audience to explore interests outside of beauty and fashion.

Instructional beauty videos reinforce gender stereotypes that our worth is based on beauty, which requires time, skill, and money to achieve and maintain. These stereotypes are reflected in filter features that reflect Western beauty biases. We covered an example of this in our GKIS article, Beauty Filters Don’t Embrace Brown Beauty: The Rise of Colorism.

Also disturbing is how many beauty gurus discuss their plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures on camera. Browse “I got injections,” and you will see dozens of videos produced by surgically enhanced influencers with millions of views each.

In Xiaxue’s video titled, “Plastic surgery questions answered!” she discusses her nose job and double eyelid surgery as if it’s an everyday, simple get. Surgical transformation is a dangerous proposal to a lonely, self-conscious teen who has spent hours mesmerized by enhanced marketers slowly grooming her desperation to be reinvented. Anxieties inspired by this type of content can lead to mental illnesses like body dysmorphic disorder and eating disorders. [6]

Popular YouTube celebrities boast large followings, high influence, and big profits off of vulnerable teens. A top beauty influencer, Wayne Goss, blew the whistle on this misleading phenomenon in his video, “WARNING. YOU’RE BEING LIED TO.” In his illustration, Wayne shows his audience what his face looks like before and after using skin retouching software. But knowledge doesn’t always cut through compulsive video viewing habits. [7]

What you can do:

    • Recognize that worth is more than skin deep and emphasize this among friends and family. Provide opportunities for intellectual, spiritual, and character growth. Value substance.
    • Be a good role model. Makeup-free days and clean, natural living balance special, glitzy occasions.
    • Parents can filter streaming video content with screen safety management tools like those offered in our Screen Safety Toolkit. The more developed your child’s personality and self-concept, the more resilient they’ll be in the face of relentless marketing.
    • Educate kids about the risks and benefits of watching beauty guru videos. Make sure they understand that beauty videos are meticulously edited to make a profit from unsuspecting targets.
    • Help each other know that we don’t need to alter our appearance to be genuinely loved and accepted.
    • Monitor and limit how often you or the people you care about view beauty guru content. Take notice if you or those you care about are showing compulsive viewing habits or are negatively affected by the content they are consuming.
    • Teach balanced, healthy, and fun beauty activities like giving to others, gratefulness, kindness, a clean diet, and satisfying fitness. Beauty radiates from within, not from ten-minute ombré lips and $50 shimmer. Sometimes it’s important to dare to go bare.

Thank you to CSUCI Intern, Mara Pober for providing parents with information about the beauty gurus of Youtube. For more parenting support to dull the influence of high-earning, big-influence celebrities like Kim Kardashian, check out the GKIS article What Parents Need to Cover About Kim Kardashian’s Un-covering.

I’m the mom psychologist who helps you GetKidsInternetSafe.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,

Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
GetKidsInternetSafe

Works Cited

[1] Beauty on youtube in 2015

[2] The Leading Role of Influencers in the YouTube Beauty Community

[3] DefyMedia Acument report

[4] Beauty Box Video

[5] Making Sense of Beauty Vlogging

[6] Plastic surgery questions answered!

[7] WARNING. YOU’RE BEING LIED TO.

Photo Credits

Decolored eye Pix from the Field, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

creative commons Sharon Wesilds, CC BY 2.0

Shélin Graziela, CC BY-SA 2.0

Astrology junction creative commons Sharon Wesilds, CC BY 2.0

Should Parents Monitor Teen Texts?

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  Teen Safe and Get Kids Internet Safe Working Together

Today’s world seems far more complicated for kids than it was for us. No longer is a kid’s stomping ground only as big as his neighborhood. With the Internet, kids interact with strangers every day from all over the world. Global real-time connection creates profound learning opportunities. But with opportunities comes risks. Locking doors and windows is no longer enough. Screens are the danger portal. Today’s article tackles the controversy about monitoring kids’ online activity. Should you monitor teen texts or not? And if you do, should you keep it on the down-low from your kids?

3 Types of Digital Parents

The free-range/permissive parent argues that we must trust our kids by being “eyes off” their digital activities, allowing kids to make and learn from their own online mistakes. They feel that failure and recovery results in resilience.

The helicopter/authoritarian parent argues that kids don’t have the judgment to go it alone. The risks are too dangerous. Parents must monitor with vigilance, ready to intervene at any moment. They further believe that parents have the right to withhold information about monitoring in order to access the good stuff. If kids know of the monitoring, they’ll backchannel forbidden conversations, effectively cutting parents out of the loop.

The authoritative parent believes that monitoring is necessary due to the dangers on the web and the impulsivity from an immature brain, but also believes in honesty and transparency about monitoring. Honest discussion provides opportunities for teaching critical skills and providing the content necessary for ongoing, cooperative parent-child dialogues about Internet safety.

GetKidsInternetSafe and TeenSafe Belief Systems

As creator of GetKidsInternetSafe and a psychologist who sees the fallout from all types of parenting strategies, I recognize that each argument has its legitimate strengths. Each child is different; each parent is different; each family is different. However, for the typical family I whole-heartedly advocate for authoritative parenting.

When the founder of TeenSafe, Scott Walker, first contacted me several years ago, we had a heart-to-heart talk about the parenting strategies we use in our own homes. TeenSafe is the first and leading independent smartphone control and monitoring service for parents. In fact, I had been using TeenSafe with my family and had been recommending it to GKIS subscribers for several months before me and Scott met. I was pleased to find that we agreed that only parents can make best, informed decisions about their families, while still believing that open and honest tech monitoring with awesome parenting strategies are keys to achieving Internet safety.

Scott shared a story about how he founded TeenSafe based on a painful experience in his family where his daughter was the victim of a vicious cyberbully campaign at her new school. I shared stories from my practice of devastated families victimized by pornography, sexting, and predation by pedophiles and human traffickers. We also shared that with our teens, we simply didn’t feel comfortable leaving them untethered in the scary World Wide Web, and that lying to them or excessively intruding on their online peer relationships seemed dishonest and hypocritical. Bottom line, we shared the mixed feelings and parenting dilemmas faced by our subscribers.

Dr. Tracy Bennett is named Global Ambassador for TeenSafe

Today I’m happy to announce that several years after our first meeting, TeenSafe has invited me to be their Global Ambassador. TeenSafe and GetKidsInternetSafe are natural partners for offering expert screen management strategies to parents. Here are my top reasons why I think authoritative parenting is the best strategy for building healthy family relationships, and why monitoring and managing screen use is a necessary parenting task.

Dr. B’s Top 4 Reasons Parents Should Use TeenSafe AND Tell Their Kids About It

The most powerful tool for a child’s education, skill building, and emotional well-being is a fun, safe parent-child relationship. Build it don’t threaten it!

Nobody is as motivated and equipped to teach important life lessons to kids as their parents. In order to have maximum positive influence, parents must deliberately build a cooperative dialogue and warmly support negotiative process. By telling your kids that you have a monitoring system in place at the very beginning of their digital identity building, you will reinforce that nothing online is private. Studies show that knowing their parents are monitoring them helps kids moderate their own online behavior. They are more likely to think before they post.

Furthermore, kids are more likely to bring up important discussion topics if they know their parents have seen it come up in their texts. Each conversation is a mutual, bi-directional learning opportunity, setting parents and teens up as teachable moment partners instead of adversaries. Kids may not like that their parents monitor, but just like with other household rules, they’ll appreciate that it’s justified and necessary and will ultimately feel loved. When they do slip (and they will), parents can prevent costly lapses in judgment.

TeenSafe monitoring is a powerful tool all by itself, but when it alerts parents that it is time to have particular conversations, it is an even more awesome tool.

Parents are too often the last to know. We tend to believe our little darlings are incapable of despicable behavior until it’s too late. Parents often dread certain conversations. When parents see inappropriate content on their kids’ texts, it triggers critical conversations as needed. Good timing helps kids develop moral perspective and sound judgment.

Monitoring not only shows what kids text, it also shows what they receive (posting, viewing, and interactive content). Parents get a window into their whole virtual child.

Kids often use the, “You don’t trust me” accusation to scare parents off their trail. Don’t fall for this manipulation. Respond with the truth, like “I don’t even trust myself to use great judgment all of the time, so yes, I guess I don’t have 100% confidence that you won’t make costly mistakes online. For that reason, I’m going to keep an eye out with you and help out until you’re older.”

If parents see the everyday virtual happenings of their kids, they’ll have a much more realistic and informed understanding of teen dilemmas. The virtual world is chock full of ugly, mean, and vulgar behaviors. Buckle in and get ready to see some awful behavior from good kids. It is simply the virtual culture, like it or not.

Modeling family values and maintaining credibility is essential for a fun, happy, healthy parent-child relationship. That means parents must practice what they preach.

Kids are unhappy about being monitored certainly, but so what. There are many important authoritative parenting decisions that will be made throughout their childhood they won’t be thrilled about. If justifiable and managed respectfully, they’ll get it. What they might not get is a parent who lectures about never sneaking and lying all while they are sneakily monitoring and lying about it (helicopter/authoritarian parents); or even worse, a parent who simply doesn’t care (free-range/permissive parents). Younger screen users require more monitoring while older teens need less and less. By 17 years old, most teens have the skills to manage their own texts while still needing support to avoid texting and driving.

To learn how TeenSafe keeps teens safer behind the wheel, check out my article How to Help Your Teen Stop Texting and Driving.

I’m the mom psychologist who helps you GetKidsInternetSafe.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,

Dr. Tracy Bennett

What Parents Need to Know About America’s Cutting Epidemic

by

Teenager About to Cut Arm with Razor
Pia was 13-years-old when she cut herself for the first time. She was confused, lonely, and hopeless. Self-harm provided a distraction from her emotional pain and anchored her to her physicality amongst the numbness. She started with a tiny cut, ultimately inflicting deeper and deeper cuts. Even the hours anticipating cutting brought her comfort. She found a community of cutters on an online forum who provided support and caring while also encouraging more dangerous behaviors. She wasn’t alone with her shameful secret. But she wasn’t stopping either … Could your child end up like Pia?

Cutting

Cutting refers to self-harming practice distinct from a suicide attempt. Cutters typically make small superficial cuts on their arms, legs, or parts of the body easily concealable by clothing. Cutting distracts the individual from emotional pain, releases endorphins which may trigger a mood boost, and is often a cry for help rather than an intent to inflict lethal harm (Davis, 2005).

Dr. Bennett often treats teens and adults who self harm. I’ve also seen several cutting incidents working as a paramedic. Because the cutting ritual can take on profound meaning, some injuries are uncomfortably creative. For instance, I’ve seen kids cut shapes, patterns, words, and even sentences into their skin. When I interviewed Pia for this article, she showed me her first “masterpiece,” the word “HATE” cut into her right thigh.

Why cut?

Pia: “I remember a painful time in my childhood when my dad didn’t come home at night. My mom told me he had troubles at work, and that I shouldn’t be worried. But then it started to become a habit, and my dad would be gone most days of the week. I was really attached to him. I missed having a male role model and friend who could tell me what to do when there seemed to be no way out for me. When my parents got a divorce my world fell apart. I felt lonely, hopeless, sad, and misunderstood. I withdrew more and more, lost most of my friends, and started to become depressed. Since I wasn’t able to soothe my emotional pain on my own, I looked for answers online. That was when I found out about cutting.”

***
The most common reasons teens give for cutting are that they’re trying to make themselves “feel alive” instead of the numbness, or they’re trying to distract themselves from intense or overwhelming emotions such as anger or hurt (McCoy, 2009).
***

That was true for Pia. She wanted to have the control and power of harnessing pain whenever she wanted. She said that sometimes when she woke up in the morning, she felt nothing but emptiness. Cutting helped her “feel” her body again rather than just feeling intense emotional pain.

The controversial Netflix show 13 Reasons Why addresses self-harming behavior, with the main character ultimately committing suicide, leaving behind her audio-recorded 13 reasons “why”. The show was a huge success, with children of all ages binge-watching it over spring break without their parents’ consent. I wondered, if this show could be a danger to teens already on the edge?

During an interview for I-heart radio, Dr. Bennett referred to the show and stated that a majority of people have suicidal fantasies at one time or another. She suggested that 13 Reasons Why could trigger vulnerable teens. She lectured in our psychology class that she has seen self-harming behavior be quite contagious in schools and inpatient treatment settings, spreading from teen to teen quickly. Now the Internet is a source of cutting contagion.

Who cuts, and how common is it?

Cutting is a fairly common practice in the United States. There are about two million cases reported annually with approximately 15% of teens reporting some form of self-injury. Studies show an even higher risk for self-injury among college students, with rates ranging from 17%-35% (Mental Health America, 2013). One in five females and one in seven males have engaged in self-injury practices (Gluck, 2016). Ninety percent of people who engage in self-harming techniques start during their teen or pre-adolescent years (Gluck, 2016).

Parent Researching Cutting Epidemic on Laptop

Did the Internet contribute to Pia’s cutting?

Pia: “I remember sitting at my desk. I was supposed to do homework but instead I Googled “how to deal with emotional pain.” Somehow I stumbled on a few websites which mentioned cutting. Pretty soon I was hooked, researching for hours and eventually finding a useful tutorial how to start my first cut.”

Experts say the Internet is the main contributor for teens to not only find out about the various methods of cutting but also to demonstrate or even glorify self-injury (Steinberg, 2014). Forums like “The Cutting-Board” encourage kids to share their concerns and questions about cutting and find useful expertise. Tips and tricks about how to hide their cuts, what do to if someone gets suspicious, or advice when cutting-goes wrong are popular posts. Furthermore, there are several YouTube tutorials of “how to cover up your scars after cutting,” like a video by 14-year-old Julia Ansell.

How to recognize that your child is cutting

Concealing clothes
If your child suddenly starts wearing long sleeves even during hot days, this could be a sign that she is hiding injuries or scars.

Behavioral changes
Social anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem are often comorbid with cutting (Davis, 2005). If your child starts isolating, eating more or eating less, sleeping more, acts lethargic, isn’t interested in his usual interests, or acts sad or irritable, keep an eye out for self mutilation practices.

Spending time browsing for information about self harm and visits on online forums
Kids often use secret terminology to hide their online activities from parents. Hashtag terms like #sue (a synonym for suicidal) or #secretsociety123 are popular code words to discreetly form online communities discussing self-harm (Yandoli, 2014). Sometimes pictures with these hashtags overlap with other self-harming techniques or mental disorders like anorexia (#ana) or depression (#deb).

Possession of cutting tools
Keep an eye out for sharp objects that may be used for cutting, piercing, or burning like razor blades, knives, paper clips, broken glass, scissors, needles, or lighters.

Cuts, bruises, burns, or scars
Kids will occasionally change methods or location if they fear detection. Escalation is rare but can become an issue. Dr. Bennett has treated clients with comorbid mental illness that went as far as breaking joints with a ball ping hammer or engaging in oddly ritualistic mutilation like the practice of suspension (piercing the skin with hooks and hanging from them).

What you can do for your child?

Be empathetic and sensitive
If you see evidence of intentional injury, ask about it in a straightforward, emotionally neutral manner. Of course share your concern, but be careful not to escalate the situation by panicking, threatening, or lecturing.

Be supportive and present for your child
Let your child know he or she can always come to you with any troubles, issues or concerns. Make yourself available and willing to talk when your child approaches, on her terms. Kids often avoid talking to their parents, because they’re afraid that they’ll lose their trust or add an additional stress factor to an already stressful situation, like going through a divorce or financial issues (Steinberg, 2014).

Express your emotions
Be authentic and present. Not only does this model appropriate communication strategies, but your child will recognize that he is loved and important. Tell him that you can get through this together.

Seek help and treatment
Cutting is often an expression of distress from mental disorders, like depression or anxiety. Consult a clinical psychologist who has specialized training with self harm behaviors. Not only can a clinician work with your child to achieve insight and build resilience by teaching emotional coping skills, but she can also provide much needed consult and support for family members. Often times kids will accept influence from a therapist even when they are dismissive of parenting support.

CSUCI Intern, Lisa Sommer Thank you to CSUCI Intern, Lisa Sommer for writing this important piece. Please share your thoughts in the comments below. Self harm forums are common on the dark net. To find out more about that, check out Dr. Bennett’s article, GetKidsInternetSafe Sheds Light on the Dark Net: Drug Traffickers, Child Pornographers, and Nude Selfies.

I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,

Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
GetKidsInternetSafe.com

*Due to professional discretion, Pia is a fictional name.

Works Cited

Davis, J.L. (2005). Cutting and Self-Harm: Warning Signs and Treatment. WebMD, Retrieved April 23rd, 2017 from: http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/features/cutting-self-harm-signs-treatment#1

Gluck, S. (2016). Self Injury, Self Harm Statistics and Facts. Healthy Place, retrieved April 24th, 2017 from: https://www.healthyplace.com/abuse/self-injury/self-injury-self-harm-statistics-and-facts/

McCoy, K. (2009). When Teenagers Cut Themselves. Everyday Health, retrieved April 23rd, 2017 from: http://www.everydayhealth.com/kids-health/when-teens-cut-themseleves.aspx

Steinberg, S., (2014). What to Do If Your Child Is Cutting. US News, retrieved April 24th, 2017 from: http://health.usnews.com/health-news/health-wellness/articles/2014/02/28/what-to-do-if-your-child-is-cutting

Krystie Lee Yandoli (2014). Inside The Secret World Of Teen Suicide Hashtags. For buzzfeed, retrieved April 30th, 2017 from https://www.buzzfeed.com/krystieyandoli/how-teens-are-using-social-media-to-talk-about-suicide?utm_term=.jtRrkE8Q9#.kpAzK8oX6

Photo Credits

Girl with a Razorblade, 2016 CC0 1.0

Girl on the Laptop, 2016 CC0 1.0

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