an article by Florian Arendt (University of Vienna, Austria), Sebastian Scherr (KU Leuven, Belgium) and Daniel Romer (University of Pennsylvania, USA) published in New Media & Society Volume 21 Issue 11-12 (November 2019)
Abstract
Suicide is a leading cause of death among youth, and media depictions of suicidal behaviour can be a contributing risk factor.
Of interest, Instagram recently received more scholarly attention due to its large number of publicly available, explicit, and graphic depictions of self-harm. Importantly, researchers have hypothesized that exposure to this content could be a risk for self-harm and suicide in vulnerable audiences.
We tested this hypothesis using a two-wave US panel survey among young adults (N = 729).
Analyses indicated that exposure to self-harm on Instagram was associated with suicidal ideation, self-harm, and emotional disturbance even controlling for exposure to other sources with similar content.
As hypothesised, exposure to self-harm on Instagram at the first wave prospectively predicted self-harm and suicidality-related outcomes at the second wave 1 month later.
These findings provide evidence that such exposure can lead to contagion in vulnerable users.
Implications are discussed.
Full text (PDF 21pp)
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