Self harm in adolescence: the context of the real versus virtual environment and Emo and Gothic subcultures
Abstract
The article focuses on self harming as maladaptive coping strategy in
adolescents. The role of real and virtual environment of adolescents, which is
important for this phenomenon, is emphasized. The research is of explorative
character, data has been collected through half-structured online interviews
with 9 adolescent girls aged 15 through 18, who write about self harming on
their blogs (online diaries), and analysed using the grounded theory method.
It has been found that both real and virtual environment can have a huge impact
on the emergence of self harming behavior in adolescents, its character and
experiencing. Both environments might act as a medium for spreading knowledge of
self harming and even as a source of self harming itself. Although the self
harming online community is being looked at as supportive, it did not bring an
end to self harming behavior in the case of our respondents, unlike the real
social environment. On the contrary, the risk of normalisation of this behavior
by sharing information on blogs occurred. The real social environment is then an
important helper in ending the self harming behavior. The intersection of real
and virtual environment of adolescents might be the Emo and Gothic subcultures.
The connection of subcultures and self harming is being widely discussed by
media in these days. In our research we did not prove such a connection.
(Fulltext in Czech)
Keywords
self harm, communities, subcultures, Emo, GothicLiterature
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