'I started cutting my arms when I was 13. I still don’t know why I did it – I’m currently in therapy trying to work that out – but it definitely made me feel better,' says Rebecca Le Maitre, 18, a student from Oxfordshire, 'back then, nobody else was influencing me; I honestly thought there was only me in the world doing it. The following year, I discovered self-harm images on Instagram, and straight away, I’d found my own community.'
Last week, Instagram announced it would remove all graphic self-harm images from the social media platform following pleas from a bereaved father, whose 14-year-old daughter, Molly Russell, committed suicide. Finding her Instagram activity was littered with searches for self-harm images, her family said the platform has 'helped kill' Molly.
In response, Adam Mosseri, head of product at Instagram, promised to remove any self-harm images 'as quickly as we can, responsibly,' stating they were trying to balance 'the need to act now and the need to act responsibly'.
Borne from the days of Tumblr, where users shared various graphic imagery of self-harm cuts and scars, creating a self-harm community, the images now sit on Instagram and are easily searchable. Type #selfharm into the search bar and while 'no results found' immediately appears, press enter and you're given a warning 'Can we help?' it reads, 'Posts with words or tags you're searching for often encourage behaviour that can cause harm and even lead to death. If you're going through something difficult we'd like to help'. The options are then 'get support' or 'see posts anyway'. Click to see posts anyway and you're met with near 700,000 images. Rebecca hasn't self harmed or shared her pictures for a couple of years, but there are still hundreds of thousands of others doing so.
'Initially, I’d been posting innocent pictures on my account – I live in a pretty area and was putting up photographs of the surrounding countryside,' she said, 'Out of curiosity, I then started searching for pictures of self-harm. I came across so many of them – and found them so easily – that the idea of posting similar pictures started feeling very normal. That’s when I began to post my own.'
'Looking back, the images I put up were absolutely disgusting and really gory; I can’t believe I did it,' she continued, 'But at the time I felt that opening up to the online world stopped me from feeling so alone. Social media was a safe space where I could say whatever I wanted behind the comfort of a screen – I didn’t want to tell my family or friends as I knew it would upset them too much.'
Becoming invested in a community that sits within a platform encouraging you to get more and more likes for your content, Rebecca's journey with self-harm became one of seeking validation.
'The self-harm community was also competitive,' she stated, 'Everyone was so emotional and it is easy to get caught up in feeling the same way. There was definitely a sense of competitiveness, a sense of "I have more problems than you". Everyone was clamouring for the most attention.'
Luckily, when her online interactions were reported to her school, they reacted without hesitation and implemented new policies across the administration.
'Eventually, after a year of posting these images, a friend found my account and told one of my teacher,' Rebecca continued, 'They informed my parents who were devastated, especially since I still couldn’t really explain why I was harming myself. But one of the good things that has come out of this is the way my school reacted. They were horrified at how easy it is to access and post images similar to the ones I was putting up, and, as a consequence, they’re now informing other pupils and parents on how to use social media more safely.'
And now, she too wishes Instagram - as well as other social media platforms - would have stopped her from posting the images.
'I no longer self-harm – I was fed up of feeling sad, and these days want to make the most of my life,' she said, 'I’ve also deleted my Instagram account. But I still can’t believe how easy it was for me to access such awful images – and that no one stopped me from posting my own. If I could put all the owners of the various social media companies in a room and speak to them, I’d tell them they need to get their values in order. The social media world feels very skewed right now.'
If you're struggling with self-harm, or any difficult feelings, contact Mind for immediate help at 0300 123 3393 or text 86463.