Guidelines for oversharing teenagers on social media – The Wall Street Journal

Parents of British teenage girl, Molly Russel who committed suicide at the age of 14 years " have no doubt that Instagram helped kill" their daughter. When they examined her social media use; they found that she was communicating with other teenagers who were suicidal and self-harming. Some of the users were actively goading other members to take drastic action. In some instances it has become an online version of crowds shouting at a suicidal person standing on a building to "Jump". The media coverage of the Molly Russell case prompted a public apology from US social media giant Facebook and a promise to do more to tackle these kind of posts. As Julie Jargon has highlighted in this article in the Wall Street Journal; there is a noted shift from Millennials posting their perfect lives and destination pictures to Generation Z who want to be more "real" on social media. With the quest to be real, open and vulnerable, there has been an increase in anxiety expressed on social media platforms. What teenagers may not be aware of is that the motive of influencers are first and foremost to get clicks and likes for profit and that there could be influencers with more sinister motives driving the need to be "real". Jargon offers guidelines on what parents can do to mitigate the risk for their teenagers. – Linda van Tilburg.Sadfishing, predators and bullies: The hazards of being 'Real' on social media.By Julie Jargon ___STEADY_PAYWALL___.(The Wall Street Journal) – It seems like lately everyone on Instagram and YouTube is feeling anxious, stressed and depressed. Images of amazing vacations, flawless bodies and beautiful homes that once dominated social-media feeds are being replaced with snapshots of real life, with all its laundry piles and stretch marks.Celebrities and influencers are sharing more of their emotional baggage. But when regular teens do the same, it can be risky.Influencers have used the word "anxiety" three times more so far this year than they did in all of 2016 and more than six million posts on Instagram reference #mentalhealthawareness, according to Captiv8, an influencer marketing firm."With millennials, everything on social media was about curation, showing the perfect life. They were raised where it was all about the group and fitting in," said Jayne Charneski, founder of Front Row Insights & Strategy, a consumer-insights firm. "Generation Z is being raised by Gen-Xers, who are fiercely independent, and so it's cool to be different. Gen Z is an inclusive, open-minded generation, and vulnerability is social currency now."There are upsides to opening up online, as my colleague Andrea Petersen recently wrote. Research shows that self-disclosure can be beneficial to people struggling with mental-health issues because it removes the stigma. Teenagers with mental-health problems have found all of this new openness from the people they admire to be empowering. Seeing celebrities and influencers sharing their struggles can show followers that no one is perfect.What teens might not realise is that influencers' motivation for doing so isn't always pure. When influencers share personal struggles, it tends to result in more followers, likes and comments, which results in more brand sponsorships. (This might start to change. Instagram's CEO last week said it will expand a global test of hiding "like" counts on certain users' posts to the US starting this week.)Influencers see an increase of 7 to 10 times the level of engagement when posting about mental-health issues than they do with more mundane posts, according to Captiv8. As a result, some are accused of what is known as sadfishing, in which people exaggerate their issues for personal gain."As an influencer, you're taking followers on an emotional roller coaster. The higher the highs and the lower the lows, the more engagement you have," said Captiv8 co-founder Krishna Subramanian.Worse, as young people emulate this practice, inspired to share more genuine sentiments online, they also are opening themselves to predators and bullies who prey on vulnerability."We had a case where a girl was on Instagram talking about her problems with a predator and we caught it right before they were about to meet," said Chris Hadnagy, founder and executive director of the Innocent Lives Foundation, a nonprofit that helps law-enforcement agencies identify and stop anonymous online child predators.Hazel Rodriguez, a 12-year-old ballerina from Naples, Fla., noticed a spike in followers after she began posting about the challenges of dancing and the bad days she has."She would go maybe three months without gaining a single follower and just in the last 30 days, she has gotten over 75 new followers," said her mother, Gigi Rodriguez, who manages the account. "The difference has been an increase in natural, normal posts.""I think what people like the most is you being real," said Hazel, who has more than 16,000 Instagram followers on a public account in which she represents several ballet-wear brands. "There are so many pages of people just showing perfection and it discourages people."While sharing her struggles has gained her more followers, it also has attracted the wrong kind of attention. Hazel's mom, who intercepts all of the direct messages on her daughter's account, said she has received countless messages from people she suspects are adult men posing as teens, saying things like, "I know how you feel, if you ever want to talk."Ms. Rodriguez said she can tell when the messages are legitimate and when they aren't, because when she replies that she is Hazel's mom, the posers disappear."Seeing a teen who is posting about feeling badly and even being accused of sadfishing opens the door for predators to fly in as the hero who will provide warmth and support," said Casie Hall, a licensed professional counsellor in Raleigh, NC, who treats teens suffering from trauma and is on the board of the Innocent Lives Foundation. "A predator is looking for an easy opportunity, and building rapport is part of the grooming process."Teens usually don't realise the person they are bonding with is actually an adult until they agree to meet in person or get blackmailed into sending increasingly risqué photos.There are other risks of emotional oversharing that many teens also don't anticipate, such as the possibility that some public posts could influence a future employer's hiring decisions. And there is the danger that teens could look to social media as a replacement for professional help.When Helen Nurse's teenage daughter told her that a good friend of hers was frequently posting about feeling sad, Ms. Nurse advised her not to comment on the posts but to offer her support in person. "My daughter stopped acknowledging the posts, which in turn resulted in her friend asking why she wasn't supporting her," said Ms. Nurse, a preschool teacher in Charlotte, NC, who said she and her daughter both gently told the girl that she should talk to her parents and seek professional help."She became very defensive. It turned into, 'You don't believe me,' " said Ms. Nurse, explaining that the girls are no longer friends. "Seeking help online isn't dealing with an issue properly."What parents can doExperts advise parents against trying to take social media away from teens or simply telling them not to post anything of a personal nature because, let's face it, that's likely to backfire. But there are right ways to share online while also being safe, and parents should keep these guidelines in mind:Know who their friends are. Privatising social-media accounts is the first step in creating a safe online space in which to share. Talk to your children about approving follow requests only from people they actually know and not responding to direct messages, or DMs, from strangers, even if they appear to be teenagers.Urge them to state their intentions. Whether children are posting on their own accounts or in online support groups, suggest that they be specific about why they are sharing their feelings, such as "I'm just looking for some words of encouragement," suggests Casie Hall, the counsellor. "If you state what you're looking for first, people can't accuse you of sadfishing and it can stave off a bully situation. And any type of assertiveness will be off-putting to a potential predator."Let your teen be the guide. "If I could tell every parent one thing, it's that when you want to talk to your kid about something, lead with a question," Ms. Hall said. "You can say, 'I read this article about sadfishing, what is that?' By letting your teen feel like the expert, they're not seeing you as lecturing."– Write to Julie Jargon at julie.jargon@wsj.com

Guidelines for oversharing teenagers on social media – The Wall Street Journal

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