When he was a teenager and grew in an abusive home, Morgan dealt daily with his mother’s physical and emotional damage. However, she felt safe and supported when she published her experiences in a false Instagram account, widely known as Finsta, which disguised her true identity.
Morgan (unrelated to the co -author of this article) used his fiery to tell his companions for what was happening and to send and receive words of breath. Without that lifeguard, he told us in an interview at 21: “He would probably not get ahead.”
We are social work and public health researchers who study how people use digital technologies to seek help after experiencing violence. We have discovered that social networks became a crucial exit for young people to reveal abuse, connect with colleagues who had similar experiences and learn about security strategies.
Every year in the United States, it is estimated that more than 1 in 7 children face violence or negligence in their home. These experiences are often not reported. Some children do not recognize their experiences as abuse. Others are ashamed. Many fear what will happen later if they talk.
When young people reveal negligence or abuse, they are more likely to resort to informal support systems, such as friends, instead of authorities. In the current digital world, these disseminations occur more and more online. Amid the growing concerns about social networks that damage young people, their platforms offer important benefits for some vulnerable young people.
Share difficult stories
To understand how and why young people talk about online abuse, we begin by analyzing publications on “family problems” made on a peer support website called Talklife. We find many examples of young people who describe the abuse.
They wrote about people in their homes that retained food, sexually abused them or hurting them physically, leaving them with bruises or dislocated limbs. In general, these damages were inflicted by a caregiver: a father, stepfather, grandfather or other tutor. The young people who shared these experiences were generally venting their feelings, asking questions or looking for support.
We also analyze more than 1,000 responses to these publications. The colleagues were overwhelmingly comprehensive, offering emotional support and advice, or sympathizing with their own abuse or negligence. The responses that joked and minimized the experiences of the posters, or that did not support other ways, were comparatively rare.
To understand these dynamics more deeply, we survey young people from 18 to 21 years in the US among the 641 respondents, about a third reported having experienced abuse or negligence during their childhood. Of this group, more than half, 56%, had talked about their abuse in social networks.
We interviewed a subsample of these participants to know what motivated them to share their experiences in social networks and how these interactions affected them. Eva, 21, said:
“(It is) a place where other people like me, who wanted attention and wanted to feel validated and wanted to talk about it in a kind of low risk situation, came to that place. Then, all together, we support each other and say, he hears, whatever you feel is valid.”
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Why seek help online?
Most young people use social networks to interact, express and learn new things. Some users are exposed to new information that helps them identify their experiences such as abuse or negligence.
A 20 -year participant who published his experiences in a Reddit forum dedicated to supporting mental health problems said: “I was born in (abuse), right? So this was my normality, this was my day to day … The more I began to age, the more I began to hear other people’s experiences. I said ‘Oh, something about this with what I grew up, I don’t think it’s normal.”
Maltated young people also resort to social networks because they lack other options. Minors do not usually have legal or financial power to move from an abusive home or begin to see a therapist without parents participation.
“When you are a child, you really do not have a lot of agency about things in your life … If everything you have access is social networks and people in line to talk about, that is really the only way you can vent and express that you are fed up and that you need help,” Kara told us, 20 years old.
Even when there are resources as available school counselors, many young people avoid them because these people or agencies are subject to mandatory reports requirements. Publishing on social networks allows young people to talk about their experiences, often anonymously, without fear that the situation will get out of their control.
“It is a very dangerous position to ask children to report their abuse, especially knowing the failures in our system (child protection services),” two, 21, told us.
Participants in our study described online support relationships among individual users, as well as within broader social media communities. Eva, 21, discovered that when she published about her experiences, people online were “more willing to discuss it and have empathy for you of what you would see in the average person on the street.”
But resorting to social networks can also have serious disadvantages for young people fighting abuse or negligence. Lacking off -line support systems, these users are highly vulnerable to online damage. Social networks can expose them to erroneous information, traumatic content or predatory behavior disguised as support.
Without safe adults that help them navigate these spaces, young victims of abuse face a paradox: Internet can be their only connection option, but it is not always safe or reliable.
The role of adults when young people suffer abuse
From our interviews, we see three key conclusions for educators, policy formulators and technological platforms:
Young people need better access to safe and reliable information and resources on how to deal with abuse and negligence offered by anonymity and do not trigger mandatory reports. While the denunciation laws are designed to protect children, they can discourage dissemination if young people fear that seeking help trigger immediate and unwanted intervention.
In our opinion, it is essential to create resources that balance security with autonomy. Confidential direct lines, such as the National Direct Line of Child Abuse, are among the only places where children can speak with an adult anonymously.
The policies that prohibit social networks or require the permission of parents for children can involuntarily increase the risks for mistreated young people. Creating safer routes for the use of the Internet is a more effective way to protect young people online.
Since caregivers and other adults are not always available or willing to protect children online, we believe that platforms should be responsible for design characteristics, such as algorithms, privacy controls and moderation strategies, which can make sites insecure for vulnerable young people seeking support.
Social networks cannot replace resources offline for children who are being mistreated. But for many young people, these platforms have become a first step towards recognition, connection and survival. By learning how and why abused young people share their experiences digitally, adults can better understand their needs and build systems that meet them where they are.
*Morgan E. Pettyjohn is a Social Work Assistant Professor at Texas University in Arlington and Laura Schwab Reese is a public health professor at the University of Purdue.
This article was originally published in The Conversation/Reuters
