Monday, May 1, 2006
Role of Internet in Self-Injurious Practices Among Young People
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Spending a lot of time on the Web can have both negative and positive effects on young people. A recent study found that Internet message boards provide a powerful vehicle for bringing together self-injurious adolescents.
© AFP/File Spending a lot of time on the Web can have both negative and positive effects on young people, i.e., the sharing of self-injury practices by some and the improvement of academic performance and health awareness by others.
To understand the role the Internet plays in linking marginalized adolescents and spreading potentially damaging behaviors, Cornell University researchers explored the role Internet message boards play in creating communities centered around self-injurious practices. Self-injurious behavior typically refers to a variety of behaviors in which the individual purposefully inflicts harm to his or her body without the obvious intent of committing suicide. The authors observed 406 message boards to investigate how adolescents solicit and share information related to self-injurious behavior. Females 14-20 years of age visited these bulletin boards the most.
The findings show that online interactions provide essential social support for otherwise isolated adolescents, but these online boards may also normalize and encourage self-injurious behavior and add potentially lethal behaviors to the repertoire of established adolescent self-injurers and those exploring identity options, said lead author Whitlock.
The authors also found that Internet message boards provide a powerful vehicle for bringing together self-injurious adolescents. In the last five years, “hundreds of message boards specifically designed to provide a safe forum for self-injurious individuals have come into existence and may expose vulnerable adolescents to a subculture that normalizes and encourages self-injurious behavior,” said Whitlock.
The Internet can also be a good educational tool for hard-to-reach populations. Researchers from Michigan State University examined the positive effects of home Internet access on the academic performance of low-income, mostly African American children and teenagers. In this research, 140 children aged 10–18 years old (83% African American and 58% male) living in single-parent households (75%) with a $15,000 or less median income were followed for a two-year period to see whether home Internet use would influence academic achievement.
The children who participated in the HomeNetToo project were online for an average of 30 minutes a day. Findings indicate that children who used the Internet more had higher standardized test scores in reading and higher grade point averages (GPAs) at one year and at 16 months after the project began compared to children who used the Internet less, said lead author Linda Jackson, PhD. Internet use had no effect on standardized test scores in math.
“Improvements in reading achievement may be attributable to the fact that spending more time online typically means spending more time reading,” said Dr. Jackson. “GPAs may improve because GPAs are heavily dependent on reading skills,” she added.
Another study reveals benefits of teens using the Internet for health information in the developing world, where access to health information is scarce. The authors found in their survey of 778 15- to 18-year-olds living in Accra, Ghana, that regardless of the users’ school status, gender, age or ethnicity, 53% went online to find health information. In fact, the Internet was even a relatively more important source for out-of-school than for in-school youth, a finding with important social implications. Youths said the Internet provided interesting material that helped them solve a problem or answer a question. The most common topics searched on the Internet for in-school youth were sexually transmitted diseases, diet/nutrition and fitness and exercise. For the out-of-school youth, sexually transmitted diseases, sexual activities and sexual abuse were the topics of choice.
This study serves as a reminder to parents that they need to monitor their children's online behavior, says Whitlock.
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