BodiMojo Teen Health Blog – Teenage Nutrition, Fitness, Stress, Relationships & More

MTV launches A Thin Line, a new initiative to stop the spread of digital abuse –cyberbullying, sexting, and digital dating abuse. One hopes that the likes of MTV might have enough cache and brand loyalty to get kids’ attention. Surveys consistently show misuse of digital communication as a real problem among youth with concerning psychosocial consequences (see executive summary). More than half of teens (53 percent) report receiving digital abusive behavior. Thirty percent of young adults send photos of themselves nude or semi nude and depending on which survey you read, anywhere from 10-40 percent of teens have either posted or texted something sexually explicit. Since I have a tween girl, this news leaves me horrified to think that about one of every three girls in her friendship group might do something as dense as this someday. That’s just as horrifying as knowing that one in three women are sexually abused at some point in their lives – a statistic that has stayed with me for years.

Maybe it’s the classic teen impulsivity confronted with the alluring “send” icon, or the need to create an alternative identity as one grapples with lots of transitions; or the need to control a relationship and bolster one’s sense of self, or power or self-esteem. Whatever the case, the intriguing digital venues of today have outpaced digital common sense – and kids need to call on a whole set of skills that their brains have not quite mastered: delayed gratification, reasoning and planning, thinking through consequences. Emotional consequences are serious for digital abuse: 12 percent of teens who have sent or posted explicit material contemplate suicide. (Suicide is the third leading cause of death among teens. Let’s not compound the situation!)

One of the thing I grapple with as a health psychologist is how to get effective public health campaigns right. Theories abound: Fear tactics don’t work in short term; show immediate rather than long-term consequences; tailor the information to the demographic; use role models to demonstrate the health promoting behavior, and so on. The challenge with teens is they don’t think bad things will happen to them: “That’s not my brain on drugs,” “I’m in total control,” and “Everyone else is doing it.”

What’s exciting about A Thin Line initiative are all the stakeholders on board, including Facebook and MySpace and numerous public health organizations: Love Is Respect, DoSomething.org, The National Teen Dating Abuse Hotline, WiredSafety, Anti-Defamation League, Blue Shield of California Foundation and PBS, which is premiering a companion program on Frontline (A Thin Line).

Importantly, they are also engaging youth in a contest to come up with antidotes to digital abuse: Redraw the Line Challenge. It will be great to see how this campaign can provoke a national conversation and empower youth.

For starters, take the quiz.

I’m totally on board. How about you?