‘We can’t put a lid on certain topics in the hope that they will go away’

In Online Harms and Cybertrauma, therapist and researcher Catherine Knibbs argues that damaging and self-harm content is so rife online that simple directives to take it all down won't work. Deputy Editor Jennifer Gledhill asks her about the role psychologists, parents and policymakers need to play in communicating and considering the risks… 

Why did it feel important to write this book?

As a trauma therapist working with children, I see the horrific implications that exposure to some online material can have on our young people. As professionals, we have a duty not to stick our heads in the sand and to find a way to talk about what is happening, however difficult. What we tend to do is shut off communication about the stuff that scares us, or, shut it down by bringing in legislation and pointing the finger of blame instead. We're never going to stop damaging content becoming available, it's rife… so we must educate ourselves and young people and provide a space for them to talk about what they experience.

You warn that the book can be a scary and a difficult read at some points. Did you worry about overwhelming your readers? 

Absolutely. It was overwhelming for me when writing about this stuff and I'm a trauma therapist! In the very first paragraph I warn that I will be talking about all the negative and bad things about technology. And this is coming from someone who loves tech. There are so many amazing things that exist in the digital world, but, sadly, I'm very aware of the dangers too. The topic of cybertrauma and the sheer volume, for example, of child sexual abuse material out there is simply incomprehensible. And because these things are so big, we feel unable to hold the concept and therefore shut off. 

So I say two things to readers: remember to breathe and take time out from the chapters when you feel overwhelmed, but also, if you're finding it difficult to read, spare a thought for the children who are living in this world. To walk in the waters of trauma, you will inevitably find yourself getting wet.

The book is written for professionals working with young people, but it also asks us to reflect on our own cyber-naivety. Is there something young people can teach us?

In counselling psychology, we are taught that self-disclosure is a tricky subject, and we are mindful about this when with our clients. However, therapists will often freely give out personal information on social media, not even thinking about clients bringing it back into the therapy room. Professionals may argue that they have a right to be a person on the internet, and of course they do, but because they haven't grown up in this space, they remember a time when they just had to be careful about what was verbally shared. Many young people I work with are so much more aware of privacy than older people. Some wouldn't dream of posting a picture of their friends without permission. They have grown up online, older practitioners may have worldly wisdom in some ways, but cyber-naivety around disclosure.

One of the harms you examine is watching and partaking in hoaxes, dares and challenges and how this behaviour circles back to our basic attachment needs; being seen and liked by others. How do we begin to tackle this?

We have been seeking approval and hurting and shaming others since time began, there's nothing new in dares, stunts and belittling others. Before the internet it was TV, with shows like You've Been Framed, and certain talent shows. We are drawn to seeing others win, fail or looking stupid. In the cyber world however, 'pranks' can be problematic on many levels: they can be emotional and psychological abuse dressed up as a joke, such as giving a baby super-hot sauce or throwing food in their faces. On another level, it's about how a child learns that 'shaming others is okay'. 

So, it's not just viewing online shaming that is harmful for kids but how they see their caregivers react when they view shaming material?

Children learn from adults about what is funny and how they view risk. As parents and practitioners, we need to be aware that young people can't necessarily appraise and consider levels of risk; remember #necknomination, where people posted themselves drinking large amounts of alcohol and nominating someone else to do the same? If we, as adults chose to push the limits of the mature body, we know younger people will likely do the same.

You also challenge our notion of cyber-bullying. Do we need to consider what this can look like?

There's a myriad of ways for a young person to experience cyber-bullying; they can be bullied in a game they enter, where others cheat or kick them out, they may have their images changed, doctored and shared. You can be bullied by someone who 'isn't somebody', but an algorithm or bot that responds to a post.  Many parents and professionals have never experienced this in our own childhoods; it didn't exist. So we really need to listen to lived experiences about this phenomenon, rather than overlaying our lens of what we think or know bullying to be. The old advice of 'don't let it bother you' and 'close the lid' is the advice often given to young people who encounter this kind of behaviour online. Of course, it bothers them, friendships in childhood and adolescence are needed to survive and develop. It's not a case of 'find other friends', because to a child these are my friends. I ask practitioners not to focus on classifying cyber-bullying in whatever format it emerges, but to ask about the impact it has on that person. 

The Online Safety Bill aims to protect children from dangerous content online. Will it succeed?

The Online Safety Bill focuses on removing harmful content from the internet and social media as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, the issues around what this means in practice are far more complicated than issuing a direction to 'remove it all'. This doesn't mean we shouldn't take any action. The versions of self-harm that can occur online mean that we need to look at what is going underneath the harming behaviour for that young person. Online issues get labelled very quickly as behaviour alone without understanding the why. Besides, young people who are actively self-harming don't use the major platforms; their material gets taken down quickly. Neither do they use the formal or well-known hashtags or identifying markers for the same reason. Disguised tagging is constantly changing, and keeping up with it can be difficult. 

You discuss parents, professionals and society in general feeling uncomfortable when talking about self-harm. How do we tackle this?
Parents are likely to remove their children from subject matters they are frightened of… we see this with sex education lessons, religion, gender discussions and specific online issues, such as porn viewing. So how does a child find support or help, especially if they haven't told an adult, or are carrying this out privately or secretly? In the book I talk about the difficult subject of self-harm support networks… not all sites are a 'how-to' manual, some are, and we need to keep that in mind. Others have information on 'how to safely…' with instructions for keeping wounds clean and free from infection, other sites have a community of helping each other not to do it. Professionals need to help children understand that even though viewing self-harm images can be motivated by wanting to make sense of their feelings, the reality of doing this can result in repeat trauma.

Do you feel overwhelmed by the knowledge of what harms are out there?

As a tech lover, when something new emerges I get really excited for a few seconds, I'm like 'oh wow, this is really going to change the way that I game or interact with something'. That lasts half a second. Then I think, "Oh no, that means this could happen" and I go into what I call 'perpetrator thinking' about the potential for harm. For example, the many ways you can interact in the metaverse is you can wear items that help you have a more immersive gaming experience. I immediately think about what that means in the landscape of child sexual abuse, where the threat is and what is going to come into my therapy room in a few years or even months from now. 

So as psychologists and parents what should we be focusing on?

During my talks and training sessions I regularly hear professionals saying 'I don't want to think about it too much. I can't deal with it.' I say to everyone, 'yes you can. You've survived your own childhood to become an adult. You know what life is about, recognise your skills'.  We get overwhelmed by the concept of the internet. I remind people that it's not about screen time, it's about the space. As adults in the outside world, we have a concept of dark, dangerous places where we don't want to walk. Talk to children about this… we're not asking you to go into those places but likewise, we can't pretend they don't exist.

• Online Harms and Cybertrauma is published by Routledge. Find out more about Catherine and her work.

How to manage your social media and gaming habits: From science to solutions, a book in the British Psychological Society 'Ask the Experts' series, is due out in October, and Catherine will talk about that book in a later issue of The Psychologist.