How the Internet Facilitates Adverse Childhood Experiences for Youth Who Self-Identify as in Need of Services

2024-10-21

arXiv.org

AI Summary

This study investigates the dual-edged role of the internet for Children in Need of Services (CHINS): while offering emotional support, it may also exacerbate Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). Analyzing 239,000 posts from 1,160 online help-seekers aged 13–17, we integrate large-scale NLP techniques, LDA topic modeling, and qualitative coding to identify four salient themes: self-harm ideation, social craving, family conflict, and substance/sexual risk behaviors. We provide the first systematic evidence that online social craving frequently precipitates offline high-risk encounters; that perpetrators—including family members and external actors—leverage digital platforms to perpetrate bullying and abuse; and that CHINS actively engage in illegal or risky online activities. Based on these findings, we propose an empowerment-oriented, digitally resilient intervention framework tailored to CHINS’ needs, offering empirically grounded guidance for platform governance and adolescent protection policy.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Knowledge Acquisition from the Web
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Mitigating online harms, including harassment, spam, and fake reviews
• Social Networks and Social Media: Generative AI / large language models and their impact on social systems
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Large pretrained models with web data

Abstract

Youth implicated in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, as well as those with an incarcerated parent, are considered the most vulnerable Children in Need of Services (CHINS). We identified 1,160 of these at-risk youth (ages 13-17) who sought support via an online peer support platform to understand their adverse childhood experiences and explore how the internet played a role in providing an outlet for support, as well as potentially facilitating risks. We first analyzed posts from 1,160 youth who self-identified as CHINS while sharing about their adverse experiences. Then, we retrieved all 239,929 posts by these users to identify salient topics within their support-seeking posts: 1) Urges to self-harm due to social drama, 2) desire for social connection, 3) struggles with family, and 4) substance use and sexual risks. We found that the internet often helped facilitate these problems; for example, the desperation for social connection often led to meeting unsafe people online, causing additional trauma. Family members and other unsafe people used the internet to perpetrate cyberabuse, while CHINS themselves leveraged online channels to engage in illegal and risky behavior. Our study calls for tailored support systems that address the unique needs of CHINS to promote safe online spaces and foster resilience to break the cycle of adversity. Empowering CHINS requires amplifying their voices and acknowledging the challenges they face as a result of their adverse childhood experiences.

Problem

• Examining how internet exacerbates adverse childhood experiences for vulnerable youth
• Identifying online risks like cyberabuse and unsafe connections for at-risk adolescents
• Proposing tailored support systems to promote safe online spaces for CHINS

Innovation

• Analyzed online posts from 1,160 at-risk youth
• Identified key topics in support-seeking posts
• Called for tailored online support systems