Teen girls’ self-harm crisis

Back in 2018 The Guardian ran an article about social media and a rise in school work being blamed for the doubling of U.K. hospital admissions of teenage girls for self-harm.

According to British National Health Service figures, in the two decades since 1997, the number of girls under 18 admitted rose from 7,327 to 13,463. The figure for boys remained broadly the same. The number of girls being treated for attempted substance overdose rose more than tenfold to 2,736. Research published the previous October found that self-harm reported to GPs among teenage girls under the age of 17 in the UK increased by 68% over a period of three years. The study also found that self-harm among young people aged 10 to 19 was three times more common among girls than boys, and those who self-harmed were at much greater risk of suicide than those who did not (From The Guardian, 6 Aug 2018)

My comment: So two years ago the Press was publishing horror stories about the effects of social media, in this case on girls. Leave aside political lies and fake news for a moment (and that is disgraceful enough, goodness knows) and think about the societal effect of social media on the young. As far as I know nothing has been done about this, not will it because people are making money out of it. (Somebody just phoned me from a research project wanting to talk about social media – I had pleasure in saying I would have nothing to do with it).