Technology

This is a complicated topic for me. I'm 35 so my experience is obviously different than today, but I self-harmed from age 12 into my 20s. Finding community and understanding on the internet amongst peers going through similar things was transformative for me, especially in my younger teens. Many days/months/years this community felt like the only reason I was still hanging on.

Obviously I am not in favor of the "encouragement" of self-harm, but I also wonder how much nuance is applied when categorizing this content as such. For example, is someone who is posting about how badly they want to self-harm "encouraging" this or just seeking support? Idk. I have no answers, I just think about how even bleaker my early teens would have felt had I not found my pockets of community on the early internet where I could express myself and receive support. On the other hand, sometimes I do wonder if we all subconsciously egged each other on and perhaps the trajectory of my mental health journey would have been different had I not found them. That's not something I can ever be sure about, but I think given my home life and all the things I was going through already, if anything, my mental illness might have just manifested itself in a different way, like through substance abuse issues or an eating disorder or something. (And to be clear, I was hurting myself before I found the community, so it might have just been business as usual.) Like I said, I don't have any answers, it just feels more nuanced to me, as someone who lived some version of this.