Sharing Too Much

Young people are being encouraged to self-harm by images they’ve seen online of others hurting themselves, according to the NSPCC.

The children’s charity says one in every four 11-14 year olds and seven out of ten of 18-21 year olds have seen images online showing someone self harming.

And of those who had seen an image of someone self-harming, over half of all 11-14 year olds and one in every four 18-21 year olds said they had ‘felt like hurting themselves’ after seeing these images.

As part of OUR #HarmLESS campaign, we’re encouraging YOU to talk about self-harm and reduce the number of young people doing it.

Hannah, who we aren't naming in full - to protect her identify, started self harming when she was 15-years-old.

She said: “I got diagnosed with depression and anxiety ... that was all due to being bullied since primary school.

“It got worse as time went on and spiralled out of control.

“I was self harming ... I felt like I needed to hurt myself because I had done something wrong - just by living.

“I was always looking for people who connected with me, as in went through the same thing, or for different outlets to get my emotions out on.

*“First it was just writing down how I felt but then I realise, there was a lot of harmful images - like people who took images of themselves self harming and that just made me trigger which then made me want to do it much more.*

“You'd see a picture and for some reason it’d turn in to a competition where you felt like you had to do it worse than they did because you deserve it worse - they don’t deserve to do it to themselves so you should do it worse than them so then you’re even …

“I once wrote a suicidal note and posted it and one of my friends from school had seen it and she rang the police and the police had to come over in the middle of the night and it was then, when I saw how upset my mum and dad were, I realised that it is bad.

“There should be more things on websites to block (images) off because they have a message that will say 'Are you sure you want to see this?' but they should just block them all together, they should ban pictures from being seen because it does trigger people.”

You can watch an extended interview with Hannah here: