Dear Curiosity, Facebook and graphic videos. DO NOT….

DEAR CURIOSITY,

DONT LOOK!!
SEX!!
NO…DONT LOOK!!
Graphic Media!!
STOP LOOKING!!!

If you are reading this you are either a cat or a human. (Insert well known phrase about cats and curiosity!)

For the purposes of this blog though lets assume you’re a human. Who wanted to know what this was about. You were warned though not to look and here you are making your way through the text.

So let me make my blog point clear and begin with the recent news that Facebook is going to add warnings to graphic videos and prevent them from autoplaying to >18 year olds until you click that you want to watch it. So don’t do it, no seriously it may shock you, it may offend you or upset you, seriously DONT DO IT! if you are a teenager or younger… YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED!!…. so….DONT DO IT!!!!!

Okay, so now you know that you’re definitely a curious human and you’ve got this far into the text because you might just have made the link that I am now going to elaborate on.

Humans possess characteristics such as curiosity that are intriguing to me to research, communicate to you the reader and also talk about in therapy and here we are:

Humans are nosey and curios to the N’th degree, but do they really want to see/feel/experience what the ‘thing’ is?
Perhaps.
Example 1. Rubbernecking at an accident. Curiosity..Check!
Example 2. There are indeed people who seek out excitement or fear in a form that they can control. It is suggested that children who live with domestic violence, trauma, abuse and those who are not as well developed in Emotional Intelligence which covers areas like cognition, self control and emotional regulation. (=being able to control their emotions) will seek out experiences that they feel they are in control of and are able to manage, for example, watching a scary movie. Curiosity..Check!
Example 3. Sometimes young people who are not in these environments and would be called ‘Normal’ (whatever that actually means) even seek out the thrill of “not being able to manage, for example joy riding, roller coasters and drugs. Curiosity..Check!
We know this through the numerous research papers and texts that talk about risk taking in young people. This is because their brains are going through physical changes from early puberty to approximately 25 years of age and risk taking is a normal part of this maturation.

Anyway back to the curiosity bit.
Most parents, teachers and anyone who has ever encountered a child will tell you if you say “you cannot”, “you shouldn’t”, “Don’t do it” and so on, the likelihood is a child WILL. Period. And So will Adults.

So Facebook are implementing a system whereby warnings will appear on videos for those that are registered as 18+ (A further discussion to be had here but not now) that contain graphic images or content…WHO ON EARTH WILL BE MONITORING EVERY VIDEO UPLOADED NOW AND IN THE FUTURE?? HOW ON EARTH IS THIS EVEN GOING TO BE POSSIBLE? ah, wait..its going to be up to the person who ‘uploads’ the video. Nicely done Facebook, nicely done, shirking the responsibility there! (see recent articles in the media which explain that a spokesperson from Facebook says “we ask people to warn their audience”) So this in reality is not going to be happening in the way it has been portrayed. I have much more to say on the videos and how they appear and how they could appear but this is not the blog for that.

Furthermore the warning is likely to contain the words “Are you sure you want to see this?”
Well, of course your curiosity will be piqued by this very sentence! At this point and based on you reaching this far in my blog because you are a curios human a very intricate system in yours and most peoples brain begins. Self talk may go something along the lines of either:

Person A: “I’m NOT watching it” : Thats the end of that and person A does not watch and continues about his/her social media business.

Person B:
“ooohhh”
“it could be awful”
“yes, it could…how exciting!”
“Do I REALLY want to see this?”
”……are you a chicken?”
“what about if its a video of.……?” Insert any number of cognitive distortions and thinking here based on your previous life experiences
“ah what the heck…I’ll just have a peek and if I don’t like it ill turn it off”
The video plays and you probably freeze, watching but not wanting to, maybe panic sets in and you try to turn it off fumbling at the keys or scrolling to hide it from view.

“OMG!!!! Why did i just watch THAT????”

In some/most cases and nearly ALL cases with young people

*******Trauma*******
Most probably, even if its the type that makes your blood boil with anger at a view/opinion you have just heard spoken, or it is an image you have witnessed or indeed actually been traumatised by as per the Psychological definition. (this would include feelings of nausea, anxiety, horror, anger/rage and the list goes on)

So Facebook, (and other social media sites) IMHO you’re late, way too late to start with this, approximately 7 years to be truthful. This should have been in place way back when you started becoming popular in 2007. Videos that depict violent images, graphic scenes, torture, child, people and animal cruelty should have been banned in the first place. Not because I disagree with the content per se and not because I disagree with free speech or condemnation of this type of violence in society. Its the psychological, emotional, social and furthermore the physical damage to the brain that has probably occurred to people who would not necessarily been exposed to these types of videos throughout the last 7 years, unless they made the active choice to go looking for it. The likelihood is younger people will find a way to access these videos and this will have an effect on the population of the younger generation of the Facebook community who see these videos. This is because children brains are not able to handle this kind of trauma. To be honest no-one’s brain is really equipped for this. We are possibly and probably de-sensitising the youth of today to graphic images, which encourages them to seek higher levels of this kind of stimulation in order to get the same feeling of excitement and fear. Perhaps even copying the videos as some research suggests. (see above for reasoning!). By allowing the videos to exist on Facebook the guarantee is young people WILL see them, regardless of the number of warnings or measures put in place now.

Inserts saying about “horses, gates and bolts”

Facebook, beheadings and other gruesome material.

I wanted to keep this blog hidden until after I had presented at the Trauma Conference in November. However the media has a funny way of bringing things to people’s attention.

Facebook, beheadings and other gruesome material.
Let’s be clear about my stance on this topic. Cyber trauma needs to be spoken about to help repair ANY damage caused by witnessing and viewing traumatic material.

I have been developing workshops for professionals, parents and adults who work with young people around this topic for over 18 months as I am beginning to see the effects of this through my work as a therapist and Relationships & Sex Education tutor. (See my website)

So what am I talking about? Cyber trauma, what does this mean?
I don’t want to come across all Greenfield-ist, but.. Young people who are watching horrific, traumatic, abusive and cruel images and videos are encountering traumatic responses which are manifesting as behaviours in schools, homes and elsewhere. Now I’m not saying this is every young person, what I am saying is the number of young people and concerned adults that I am talking to in my roles is becoming alarmingly incremental.

So what I decided for this blog was to give a quick overview of trauma, the growing young person, that is the adolescent brain and what happens to that young person after witnessing such a video over the Internet. NOT always Facebook, however this is one area I wan to highlight.

Trauma has a biological effect on the growing brain, which in short affects learning, brain development, empathy, peer and ‘other’ people relationships, behaviour patterns which could be misdiagnosed, memory problems, communication problems, thinking processes and (possibly, but more probable) desensitisation just to name a few.

In short young people are carrying the images as a biological response, which is unconscious so will be ‘out of the persons awareness’. This is showing up as ‘bad’ behaviour which can include self harm, self injurious behaviour, attention deficits, suicidal thoughts and actions, aggression and even possibly reenactments of the images or videos to others.

Just to add to this the young people are under peer pressure, social norms and cyber bullying if they do/don’t watch and share these videos. There is an expectation to be able to handle this level of ‘horror’ in whatever format it appears in. It’s talked about in and out of school and is the new gossip. If children live in low SES households (Socio Economic Status), or have parents who are sensible and try to protect their children through e-safety at home they are not protected from this ever increasing trend as mobile technology allows for the viewing on someone else’s device. Without parental consent or knowledge 😦

The videos themselves cover a large area of trauma, ranging from horrific murders, assaults, child abuse, sexual and physical, this includes videos of young people abused by peers and then used for blackmail purposes, adult abuse (similar?) animal cruelty, surgeries, accidents and injuries and protestors for the rights of any of these topics using the videos to ‘get their point over’.

Now this is interesting as a phenomenon in itself as to why there is a sudden increase in these types of videos and who actually has an interest in this world? However as adults we have a choice to go looking for this type of information, if we do it’s at our own discretion and peril and we can click onto some websites that freely hold some of these images. I DO NOT KNOW OF, NOR WISH TO CONDONE SEXUAL ABUSE SITES!!! although p*rnography, especially BDSM may look traumatic to young people witnessing it for the first time!

Young people are not getting this choice. It’s happening by accident, through peer pressure, videos are marked to look like something else, there’s an expectation to comment and like the videos with “ha LOL, funny vid!!”, people are tagged, it shows up in someone else’s news feeds and most importantly young people (everyone to be fair) is CURIOUS! It’s non intentional mostly, and this is why trauma has the biggest effect. There was no psychological preparation. Even so watching someone have their head cut off would make me nauseous even if I was prepared for the image.

I have an opposite argument to weigh up the costs of trauma, and to argue for and against who, how and where this is having an effect but lately I’ve got a bee in my bonnet about this area not being acknowledged by large media attention.

I want to discuss this in more details in social services, schools, youth clubs, with parents and so on, but for now I will present at the Trauma Conference and see where I go from there. Maybe no one wants to listen. Ostrich syndrome perhaps?