A small study conducted in 2011-2012 by Elizabeth Englander, PhD, showed that 9% of 617 respondents admitted that they had done themselves digital harm. And in the larger Englander study, the rate was 13% among men and 8% among women.

According to Englander, the reasons for this behavior are:

attract attention to yourself;

prove that they can withstand cyberbullying;

attract the attention of adults;

make others worry about them;

make fun of someone else;

purposefully offend another person to create enmity.

Some teenagers thus want to find support from the outside by posting negative comments and messages. When you are struggling with emotional problems, it may be hard for you to ask for help yourself, but when others see such purposeful behavior, they will step in and help.

It is important to remember that every child is different and faces their own problems. However, researchers Soengkoeng and Moustafa have divided the causes of digital self-harm into 3 types to determine the basis for understanding behavior:

Social development: a teenager determines whether his friends will stand up for him, or he wants to prove his psychological resistance to insults on the web;

Personal gain: seeking other people’s sympathy or personal entertainment;

Manifestation of negative emotions: this may be related to the struggle for mental health or specific “triggers” – bullying and bullying.

Like various forms of physical violence, digital self-harm is an inadequate and potentially dangerous way to cope with symptoms of depression and other feelings of pain and frustration. This new form of self-hatred among teenagers is difficult to detect and difficult to combat.