Adolescent girls who self-harm overestimate negative comments in social media

Adolescent girls who self-mutilate feel they receive more negative feedback than they actually receive and are more sensitive to rejection reactions than other teenage girls. These are the findings presented by Irene Perini, a researcher at Linköping University's Center for Social and Affective Neuroscience (CSAN), in a recently published article.

Irene Perini has already examined what happens in the teenage brain when they use social media. She used images taken in a magnetic resonance camera to show that it is an expectation of social judgment that initiates processes in the brain. The areas of the brain that direct our attention to what interests us most, namely what we call the salience network, are particularly affected.

When we post a photo or comment on social media, the brain records the expectation of being judged, baderted, as something important. "

Irene Perini, Researcher, Center for Social and Affective Neuroscience (CSAN), Linköping University

She continued to examine the effect in more depth and compared a group of 27 healthy girls to 27 girls with non-suicidal auto-traumatic injury (NAMI), which refers to the intentional destruction of her own tissue. without suicidal intent and for non-social purposes. sanctioned. The project is a collaboration with other scientists, including Maria Zetterqvist, clinical psychologist and CSAN researcher, who works with adolescents with NSSI.

"We know that healthy social interactions are especially important for adolescents, and we also know that social stress and self-harm are linked in young people." Interpersonal stress, perceived criticism and perceived social rejection are triggers. NSSI ", explains Irene Perini. .

During the test, she used an online game that simulates interactions between young people on social networks. They were asked to decide if they liked the other players and they themselves were judged. No matter how they interacted, they received an equal number of thumbs up and down.

With regard to activating the saliency network, the experiment did not reveal any difference between the two groups. However, they were also asked to answer several questions about the game. How often did you get a boost? How did you feel? Do you like to see your own face (a selfie)?
The answers to these questions differed significantly between the two groups.

The girls who self-injure thought they had received a thumb more often than the reality, and the negative feedback affected them more than the control group. Their taste for their opponent was less strong and their taste for their own face was also lower than that of the control group.

"The quality of the interaction was kept artificially neutral, in order to look for a possible bias in the interpretation of social experiences: indeed, girls with NSSI manifested a clearly negative bias", said Irene Perini.

A detailed badysis of the images of the magnetic resonance camera (fMRI) showed that another part of the brain is activated while waiting in the group of girls who self-mutilate, the part usually badociated with emotions and thinking.

"But we have to be careful when interpreting fMRI images, especially until the results can be replicated in later studies," she says. At the same time, she hopes that the results of the work will help therapists to progress, now that they know there is a negative bias: patients interpret the situation as worse than it has been.

Should therapists recommend care when using social media?

"It's probably a good idea that parents and therapists make it clear to teens with NSSI that they are more sensitive and that they overinterpret the negative," replies Irene Perini.