Charlie, now 21, was only 12 or 13 when she first discovered that other self harmers were blogging about their experiences on Tumblr. ‘I was just browsing around the internet generally, when I came across someone’s Tumblr blog about their self harm, and it went on from there,’ she tells The Debrief. ‘I remember going on there and seeing visual images of people’s self harm, whether it was overdosing, or cutting or burning. I felt like finally I wasn’t the only person out there. It felt like reassurance that I wasn’t crazy.’
The internet has long been a place for like-minded people to come together. Early users of MySpace bore witness to the dawning of ‘emo’ culture not only as a musical genre but as a state of mind. And anyone who’s spent enough time on Tumblr, Reddit et al will know how frequently forums will be given over to people expressing their inner turmoil.
Now Instagram has become another social media outlet for people looking to share and talk about their experiences of self harming. And while Instagram’s policing of their nude picture policy is well known, keeping track of and deleting self harm hashtags is proving tricky.
One image shows the crossover of self-harm and eating disorders all too succinctly: a girl has carved ‘fat’ into her arm then surrounded it with raised horizontal stripes of blood.
With just a few taps on my phone, I can see that the r/self-harm discussion board on Reddit has 3,648 readers, but via code-words there are over 200,000 posts about self-harm and suicide on Instagram: its #cutting hashtag has 2,859,000 posts, and #sue (this stands for suicide) has 893,000. #secretsociety123 (a more specific code term) has 200,000. Search through all of them and save for a few people talking about cutting a dress pattern, or hashtagging women called Sue, they seem to be purposefully set up to be pro-self harm and eating disorders. One image shows the crossover of self-harm and eating disorders all too succinctly: a girl has carved ‘fat’ into her arm then surrounded it with raised horizontal stripes of blood.
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The Tumblr pages tend to be more verbose. But alongside longer think-pieces about people’s struggles with self-harm, there are posts like: ‘Relapse; It doesn’t mean you’re weak or make you weak. If anything it makes you stronger in one way or another’ and a picture of a girl holding her jumper sleeves halfway up her hands with the subtitle ‘I’m just cold’, the implication being that she’s a cutter, hiding her wrists from people who might be worried about her.
The moderators of social media sites aren’t unaware of what’s being posted on their pages, and do prompt their users to seek help if they’re searching for a topic related to self-harm. If you look for ‘self harm’ on Tumblr, you’ll receive an ‘Everything OK?’ pop-up, along with an American phone number for you to call if ‘you or someone you know is engaging in self-harm’.
#selfharm has been shut down by Instagram; type it into the search bar and the app replies ‘No tags found’, along with a ‘Content Advisory’ notice, saying ‘Please be advised: These images may contain graphic content.’
An Instagram spokesperson tells us they are trying more ways of getting pro-recovery messages to users, too: 'We’ve recently moved all our report notifications into the app, so when a self-harm image is reported to us, the community member receives messaging the app and not on email, which provides more immediate resources and assistance if someone may be in trouble.'
I didn’t know it was called self-harm, I didn’t know what I was doing or why. I knew it wasn’t the right kind of thing, so I just kind of kept it to myself.
But, the problem is that newly crafted hashtags on Instagram, like #sue, #secretsociety123 or #cutting, are springing up all the time. There are already eight variations of #secretsociety being used.
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Charlie first started cutting when she was 11, and before visiting the sites: 'I didn’t know it was called self-harm, I didn’t know what I was doing or why. I knew it wasn’t the right kind of thing, so I just kind of kept it to myself.’
When she was 15 her mum found out what she was doing – but ‘by then I knew how to do it and keep it a secret.’ Charlie continued cutting herself until she was 20, and started frequenting sites like Tumblr and Instagram to talk to other self-harmers.
‘I didn’t put up pictures of my own self harming, because I didn’t want to expose myself in that way, but I used my blog to write about how I was feeling – it felt secure because it was password protected. I’d had a journal before that but that was discovered, so this felt safer,’ she recalls. ‘I’d look at other self-harmer’s blogs just before or after I did it myself – it was about not being alone really. I’ve seen a lot that probably should have been taken down.’
Charlie admits that on the sites she used, there wasn’t only a sense of competition (‘You would post something and there would be someone else saying “let’s do it together”’), but a lack of responsibility on the users’ parts: ‘Seeing other people on those sites can sometimes be quite triggering when you’re in that mindset.’
After a suicide attempt when she was 15, Charlie was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for a month, which became a starting point for her recovery. Shortly after being admitted, she realised she was sharing a ward with a girl she’d been talking to on self-harm forums – she recognised the girl’s scars from when she had uploaded photos of them on to social media.
There’s nothing wrong with online outlets [for self-harm] provided they are geared towards recovery rather than harm
So what’s the answer? Is greater regulation by social media network owners the answer? Surprisingly, perhaps not says Rachel Welch, a spokesperson for SelfHarm.co.uk. ‘There’s nothing wrong with online outlets [for self-harm] provided they are geared towards recovery rather than harm,’ she tells The Debrief. ‘If the community is pushing towards recovery then everyone moves together and a healthy environment is created. If the ethos is pro-self-harm then people are less likely to engage with support services, because that would mean going against the community. Where’s the motivation to get better if getting better means leaving the people you feel understand you?’
That’s partly the thinking behind Reddit’s seemingly unusual approach to their r/self-harm forum, letting people speak under its banner but vigilantly removing any posts including pictures of self-harm, discussion of suicide or self-harm methods, or personal information. ‘There is no point in making certain terms illegal because it just pushes the whole thing underground. If it’s out in the open we can see what’s happening,’ says Rachel of the usual response.
Charlie says she’s found support groups against self-harm online as helpful as the others were harming.
Charlie now sees a therapist regularly and is volunteering for a pro-recovery website. And ironically she says she’s found support groups against self-harm online as helpful as the others were harming. She also feels that certain instagram feeds have helped her recover from an eating disorder that’s been similarly destructive. ‘It’s more about supporting each other at meal times – if I’m struggling to eat something, or have to go out for a meal I’m worried about I’ll post about it. There are certain people I follow for support and inspiration, rather than following hash tags, but I’m using it less than I used to.’
Charlie’s experience online – part positive, and part negative, exemplifies what a grey area this is – police these areas too heavily and we risk taking away vulnerable young people’s support network. So long as people want to share their feelings about such an emotive issue, triggers can come to the fore. However, instead of shutting down the sites or the hashtags, driving self-harmers further underground, maybe it's worth taking ownership of these hashtags and offering more help to people using them. As Charlie puts it: ‘You just want that recognition that you’re not doing OK. Even if it’s just a message to say “I can see you’re not doing very well”. I guess if someone’s self-worth is extremely low then somebody actually caring about them can make quite a bit of difference.’
If you are affected by self-harming, or think that you could be, please visit Selfharm.co.uk. Further, if you are having suicidal thoughts, contact the Samaritans on 08457 90 90 90 (24 hours) or visit Samaritans.org.
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Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
Picture: Beth Hoeckel
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.