The Shadows Behind the Screen
Welcome back readers to another blog post!
Many people, myself included, use social media. It’s pretty common for me to be found scrolling through Instagram Reels on a daily basis. This week I decided to focus my research on how media can impact adolescents who self-harm.
I first read an article finding the correlation between self-harm and time spent on social media among students in Norway. The study concluded that those who spent over 3 hours daily on social media have a higher probability of self-harm. In addition, roughly 20% of adolescents reporting self-harm explicitly stated social media influenced them. This association between self-harm and time spent on social media can be led to various factors including direct triggers from videos showing self-harm, cyberbullying, or losing sleep.
I continued the topic of the media’s impact on self-harm in my conversation with my mentor where we discussed how the media has the possibility to both positively and negatively impact adolescents. She mentioned how videos that show an uplifting recovery from self-harm and encourage seeking therapy may help others start their own recovery. However, other videos that glamorize or show techniques for self-harm may cause more adolescents to try it. She specifically talked about the show 13 Reasons Why and how it portrayed suicide as a way to get justice. Because of this glamorized portrayal of suicide, adolescent suicide rates increased after it was released. Although this show focused more on suicide rather than self-harm, social media content promoting self-harm can have the same effect on viewers.
This week, I was also able to draw a rough outline of my sketches on my canvases. The outline isn’t as detailed as my sketches because it purely serves as a guide for the rough size and shape of my painting’s components. I pressed too hard on the pencil when I drew on the head of the shadowy figure, as I forgot that it’s difficult to erase on the canvas, so it currently looks a little messy. But it’s nothing a few coats of paint can’t fix!
I’m excited to start adding color and more details to my canvas next week, so see you then!
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