![]() That’s because the Internet provides an unprecedented number and variety of meeting places, from message boards to instant messaging to so-called social networking sites such as. New findings, including six reports in the May Developmental Psychology, indicate that the Internet holds a special appeal for young people, says psychologist Patricia Greenfield of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Evidence also suggests that the Internet has expanded the reach of health-education efforts to teens in distant lands and provided unique leadership opportunities to a global crop of youngsters. The scientists are examining how various online contacts affect a youngster’s schoolwork, social life, and budding sense of identity. Whitlock of Cornell University, the director of that study, and other researchers are beginning to explore how young people communicate on the Internet. The conversation above, observed during a study of self-injury message boards, occupies a tiny corner of the virtual world that children and adolescents have aggressively colonized. It’s a place where cutters, as they’re known, can provide emotional support to one another, discuss events that trigger self-mutilation, encourage peers to seek medical or mental-health treatment, or offer tips on how best to hurt oneself without getting caught. Welcome to the rapidly expanding online arena for teenagers who deliberately cut or otherwise injure themselves. New research probes various ways in which children and teenagers use, and are affected by, the Internet. You have to pull the skin really tight and press the blade down really hard.” Another response advises that a quick swipe of a blade against skin “doesn’t hurt and there is blood galore.” The questioner seems satisfied: “Okay, I’ll get a Stanley blade ’cause I hear that it will cut right to the bone with no hassle. One youngster poses a question that, to an outsider, seems shocking: “Does anyone know how to cut deep without having it sting and bleed too much?” An answer quickly appears: “I use box cutter blades. As a conversation unfolds among teenagers on an Internet message board, it rapidly becomes evident that this is not idle electronic chatter.
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