Self-harming by teenage girls doubles in 20 years - The Times

[TimeLady]

Lead story in today's Times

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/self-harming-by-teenage-girls-doubles-in-20-years-x2vbzm87m?shareToken=aa76c3a10f27546edb439bb8a6ddcf6c

The relentless scrutiny from 'friends' with camera phones, in my book, has a lot to do with this. I'd hate to be a teenager today.

I think self harming to a mild extent was pretty common when I was at school. There was a certain cachet to it and we would all have deep and meaningful conversations about the causes.
These days it seems much more pathological and the emphasis on looking porny and perfect is much much worse. I look at teen girls these days and think I wouldn’t have managed at all.

The rise starts sharply in 2013-2014. Didn’t we see the same thing the other week in a graph someone posted regarding referrals to gender clinics?
That’s such a huge rise and happens fast - now it’s continuing. Why?

What happened in that 2013-2014 year? I’d love to see a breakdown of ages of these girls. If that rise is specifically in one age bracket for example that could point to something linked to the school system (new exam regime?)

It points to some sort of cultural change, school change or something in that 2013-2014 timeslot.

You're right, Babel. Something odd was going on back then.

I wonder if 2013 was the year by which the majority of teenage boys had formed their views of normal sex by watching violent Internet porn from the age of ten or so?
And inflicted this on their teenage girlfriends? I imagine being throttled and anally raped would lead many young girls to self harm.
The teen years were always grim for girls - the obsession with looks, the realisation that you would be a second class citizen expected to defer to men, the relentless unwanted sexual attention even from men old enough to be their fathers, the pressure to conceal intellect and aspire to being “hot” - but those of us who grew up pre internet and with an active feminist movement (that had not been hijacked by TRAs) learned to dismiss a lot of it.
Nowadays the pressure from social media etc is inescapable.

I'd like to see some stats re. the ownership of smart phones by under 16s for the same period too.

It used be face to face bullying at school.

Then via the single family PC, which at least could be monitored by parents.

But now kids are targets for bullies in their bedrooms 24/7

Yes, Babdoc, the ease with which porn is now accessible is surely a factor. Even if you monitor what your own child is watching via the net, its far too easy for them to have full access elsewhere.

Porn is a huge problem. Absolute massive issue and I’m sure is a key contributor to how unhappy so many young people are.

It’s just that sharp rise in a single year...

Seems to indicate something event-specific or cohort specific. And it’s the same thing I’ve seen in other graphical representations (ie the gender clinic referrals.)

Timelady - what you said about bullying in bedrooms 24/7 is so true. I went on a course about anti-bullying day at work (teacher). After listening to what they said about that issue and the impact on children who are then exhausted, can’t concentrate at school etc, when my children got smart phones the rule was they were charged downstairs at night, NEVER allowed in their bedrooms (exception is if they have friends for a sleepover and they are all mucking about on them). Best parenting teens tip I ever got.

I'd guess a correlation between smartphone ownership. Didn't the iPhone come out around 2008? Smartphone ownership for 11 year old (year 7) perhaps started to grow a few years after that.

Smart phone ownership stats (don't you just love Google)

www.statista.com/statistics/271851/smartphone-owners-in-the-united-kingdom-uk-by-age/

This is also happening at the time of the effects of substantive cuts to supportive services taking full effect.

2016 report

www.emarketer.com/Article/Teens-Ownership-of-Smartphones-Has-Surged/1014161

Here re more stats
www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/media/media-releases/2015/cmr-uk-2015

From that report it is almost certainly increased smartphone ownership and use amongst teens and a sharp increase in time spent online.

Another who agrees that smart phones are one of the issues. The amount of porn that children are able to access with ease is having a huge impact. Back in the day, when children were exposed to 'age inappropriate' material - videos, magazines etc it was a huge red flag with social services getting involved. Now (although the threshold is still there) it can all be accessed by developing minds with no problems and little or no adult intervention.

BTW, fascinating to see how the Times has been leading on abuse / welfare issues in relation to girls and women recently. Over the weekend it focussed on the dreadful issues of girls being raped and abused for visas and entry to the UK for older men. Some excellent investigative work which hopefully will have an impact.

I think part of it might be educational pressure. It's all much more intense than when I was at school, and there are young people who think (and are told repeatedly at school) that if they don't do well in one set of exams they're a failure and will only ever have terrible jobs. They've been told that missing one day of school if they're ill might affect their results. The pressure on teachers to meet targets has trickled down to the students. I don't say this as someone who naively thinks that years ago there was no pressure - I self-harmed as a teenager and absolutely could not cope with school pressures. But I was the only one at my school and the couple of people I told there were horrified.

Body image, too - there was always a pressure to be thin but now there's more of an emphasis on changing your appearance with heavy makeup and looking good in photographs. All those products cost a lot of money but they're seen as part of what you 'should' do to fit in. And Babdoc is right - a little girl can be clever and intellectual and have that valued, but there's the perception that value as a woman is linked to being 'sexy' or pornified. Of course that isn't universally true, but if the only media you had access to was that typically consumed by teenage girls, you might think it was.

I think it's more to do with the stress of academic achievement and expectation thst a string of GCSE's at A* are necessary. In my day (mid 70s), university was the exception, a secretarial course was perfectly acceptable or a cookery course. You could enter nursing at 17 with 3/4 O'Levels. Much of it too is about our young people struggling in huge, one size fits all schools where behaviour is off the scale because exclusions aren't allowed anymore and the environment becomes highly charged.

My dd didn't much care about clothes, social media etc. She did care about noise, seeing others being bullied and being yelled at by teaching staff because she and her classmates were stupid and would fail.

The cutting started in the GCSE year. I didn't know. Largely exam stress. She went to the GP to get help when she started taking small od's as well. I was contacted. I asked for a orivate referral because the GP said CAMHS were useless and wouldn't help. She refused and told me to get help off the internet. I felt that inappropriate and insisted on a CAMHS referral. Six weeks later CAMHS closed the case after offering nadequate and inaccessible group therapy and refusing to negotiate an alternative. Dd had anxiety and depression too. CAMHS said her new school was likely to help and then offered something so badly timed it would have tamen her out for 2/3 of a day.

The inference was that the oroblem was family related. I didn't think so. I was able to appoint a consultant psychiatrist. DD tried CBT, and another counsellor, was given propranolol and fluoxetine. It helped a bit. Just before her yr12 exams she took a v small overdose and worried about herself so went to a&e to get herself checked over They wanted her to stay overnight with a 1:1 nurse at a cost of £850 to facilitate an emergency CAMHS review. She came home and saw CAMHS the follliwing Tuesday. CAMHS looked for family problems again (oh and the hospital and CAMHS reported us to SS). The nurse said she'd get counselling quickly but it didn't materialise.

The following day we saw her consultant psychiatrist who completed the ASD and ADHD assessments. DD has ADHD/ADD variant. This was the problem. She began to turn the cirner immediately.

Phoned CAMHS to tell them "well now mum, I think she's a bit old for that at 17". Their counselling eventually happened. They closed her case after the first session - whilst claiming they can't refer because it's essential they know outcomes.

It is not all about social media and looks. It is largely due to educational pressures, schools that are on the verge of lising control and the failure of child and adolescent mental health services.

My dd was lucky. We had the money for her to receive MH suppirt and care.

I'm incredibly thankful social media wasn't around when I was at school.

There's nowhere that you can go to escape peer pressure, bullying, boys in general if you're a girl with a smartphone now.

The look of teenage girls seems set more than it used to be too I think. It's rare you see a girl without really long hair leaving the school near me. It makes the few without that look really stand out.

I can't imagine the pressure they're under

It seems to me that girls have won, to a large extent, the fight to be seen as just as good as boys academically. And that pressure to achieve is immense. Put that alongside the counter-pressure to be sexy as well as clever and you have an explosive combination.

Even in Primary I see academically over-confident boys and under-confident girls to a far greater extent than the other way round.

I see girls who at 10 are already dieting as they start to approach puberty and lay down the fat they'll need to start their periods.

SurvivedTheirTeens

Thank you for telling your story. You've been so much together

The look of teenage girls seems set more than it used to be too I think. It's rare you see a girl without really long hair leaving the school near me. It makes the few without that look really stand out.

Absolutely. As a teen I had a pixie crop and wore all sorts of stuff. I can’t remember the last time I saw a teen girl with short hair. They all look identical and it’s a very feminine look - long hair, specific makeup, specific clothes. Very samey and no room for dissent.

Related: teens seek plastic surgery to look like their Snapchat filters, many may have BDD.

www.independent.co.uk/life-style/plastic-surgery-cosmetic-snapchat-teenagers-millennials-dysmorphia-bdd-a8474881.html

I despair.

Idle musing:

Correlation between reality/expectations out of whack with this generation?

Social media seems to project this unattainable glamour, it’s just not achievable for most. (It’s not desirable for me but maybe I’m different generation entirely)

FB/insta/all the other platforms make it fairly easy to project a falsely glamorous version of ones life.

So we have an entire generation being told that everyone is achieving far above what they actually are. Plus porn. Plus very narrowed gender stereotyping.

Leading to an odd combination of too high and too low self esteem. We seem to have a massive problem with narcissism and then also a massive problem with kids being unable to hit the unrealistic (and undesirable) expectations - social, academic etc.

From what I have seen so far (my DD is 13) it's almost a trendy thing to do. DD even mentioned she had thought about it as so many friends were and it looked to me very much like it was to get attention (I appreciate there are kids out there who self harm for mental health reasons I'm just not 100% sure that they are in the majority here tbh). They chat so much on social media in groups and the chats I have seen seem quite dark. When we were younger we chatted a lot on the phone 1 to 1 but these group conversations are so long and protracted and the odd musings of the teenage mind are being possibly overdiscussed and analysed by them. Sorry not sure that makes sense! I just think it's too much too young (information, talking etc etc). The internet/social media is definitely to blame here.

Unrealistic academic pressures, particularly in academy schools, are definitely a problem- when my daughter started she was told her class ranking in maths, and then told she would have to "fight all the other students to maintain or improve it".

She was in the top ten in her year.

We told her to ignore it, but you can't deny the effects of intense competition, strict uniform policy and unrealistic behaviour expectations. These kids have very little release from the pressure to achieve, whether it's A*s or instagram likes.