Youth Disclosures of Child Maltreatment and Peer Responses on Social Media: Qualitative Analyses of Posts from the Mental Health Platform, Talklife

Background and Purpose: The CDC estimates at least 1 in 7 U.S. children experienced abuse or neglect in the last year. Early identification and intervention are crucial for interrupting maltreatment and improving long-term outcomes; however, youth are often reticent to disclose for reasons including shame, self-blame, fear of escalation, and concern for their abuser. Youth are more likely to make initial disclosures to peers over adults or legal authorities. Despite digital platforms being a primary mode of communication for the current generation of youth, we know little about the dynamics of peer-to-peer disclosures happening online. Our work aims to address this gap by examining peer-to-peer disclosures of child maltreatment posted on the social media platform, TalkLife.

Methods: TalkLife is designed to facilitate peer-to-peer support among young people regarding issues of mental health and well-being. Users create accounts, post, and interact with other users’ content like traditional social media sites. TalkLife partners with researchers and provides access to de-identified data with the goal of improving youth outcomes. We reviewed 3,645 posts coded by TalkLife’s machine learning algorithm as “suspected family issues” and identified 263 original posts which disclosed child maltreatment. These disclosure posts received 1,090 response comments from other users. We conducted qualitative content analysis on the posts and comments to better understand the dynamics of youths’ online disclosures.

Results: Disclosures of child maltreatment were typically posted by the victim themselves (83%), discussing mental/emotional (37%), physical (22%), or sexual abuse (16%), with neglect/abandonment (12%) and witnessing violence (4%) coming up as well. Abuse was most often perpetrated by their nuclear families (68%) and was ongoing (42%). Disclosure posts were most often precipitated by recent abuse incidents (35%) or the youth experiencing mental and emotional distress (16%), including suicidal ideation.

Almost all disclosure posts received at least one comment (93%), with most receiving multiple responses (79%). Comments often included action-oriented advice (43%), such as encouraging them to report, confront their perpetrator, or leave (e.g., “You should tell someone individually. Be straight up and don’t sugarcoat it”). Youth also provided supportive responses (40%), offering encouragement, solidarity, and empathy (e.g., “I’m sorry you had to go through that”). Some commenters (20%) asked the discloser follow-up questions about their situation to provide possible solutions (e.g., “Can you stay with your friends or someone outside your family?”). Fewer responses (6%) were unsupportive by minimizing, joking around, or rationalizing the abuse described (e.g., “whats your problem? she raised you, didn’t she?”).

Conclusions and Implications:

Youth are disclosing maltreatment in online spaces and receiving advice and supportive responses from their peers. Creating digital tools for identification of disclosures could help connect youth to appropriate resources in a timely manner. Moreover, platforms like TalkLife can support disclosure interactions by educating youth on how to respond to peers’ experiences of maltreatment in a trauma-informed manner and providing accurate information on the dynamics of abuse and how to seek help. Any intervention should avoid violating the peer-to-peer, youth-friendly nature of these platforms which may provide a safe space for disclosure.