Social media algorithms expose many adolescents to self-harm content, study finds
· Medical Xpressby Ingrid Fadelli, Medical Xpress
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Digital technologies have profoundly transformed how adolescents acquire information and interact with each other outside school. Numerous preteens and teenagers worldwide access social media platforms daily to read posts, view images, watch videos, post content and communicate with their friends.
While these platforms can be sources of connection and creativity, they also come with risks. For instance, they can sometimes expose users to disturbing or unethical content, ranging from nonconsensual intimate or embarrassing images to pornographic images, violent videos, hate speech and even content related to self-harm.
Researchers at the University of Oxford recently carried out a study exploring the extent to which adolescents are exposed to self-harm-related content online and how they stumble upon it. Their findings, published in Nature Mental Health, suggest that one in three adolescents living in England could encounter self-harm content on social media, even if most of them never searched for it.
Investigating adolescent exposure to self-harm content online
When using social media platforms, people encounter both content that they previously searched for and content that is selected for them by algorithms. These computer programs analyze users' past behavior and demographics, adding posts and advertisements to their feeds that could match their individual preferences or characteristics.
Dr. Holly Bear and her colleagues wanted to shed light on the extent to which adolescents encounter self-harm-related content online, as well as how they end up viewing it. To do this, they analyzed data collected as part of a large-scale survey they conducted in early 2025.
"Our paper draws on data from the OxWell Student Survey, a survey of over 32,000 adolescents, ages 11 to 18, across England," Bear, first author of the paper, told Medical Xpress. "We asked students about self-harm content online, covering three things: whether they'd come across self-harm content online in the past month, how often they'd seen it, and how they came across it. From their answers, we looked at different routes of exposure and compared each group against those with no exposure at all."
The researchers' analyses yielded various interesting results. First, the team found that exposure to self-harm content on social media was common among the adolescents they surveyed.
"One in three adolescents (i.e., 34.5%) told us they had come across self-harm content online in the past month," Bear said. "This isn't a rare experience limited to just a small group—it's part of the everyday online environment for many adolescents. Notably, most of this content wasn't sought out. Three in four exposed students encountered this content only through passive, unintentional routes while being online—no searching involved at all."
Bear and her colleagues also investigated the routes through which adolescents ended up being exposed to online content related to self-harm. They identified five distinct exposure pathways, which they dubbed passive-only exposure, active-search-only exposure, active-receive-only exposure, mixed exposure and other-only exposure.
Passive-only exposure, which is entirely algorithm-driven, appeared to be the most common pathway, with 72.9% of students saying they had not deliberately sought out self-harm content, yet it appeared on their feeds. The second most common was mixed exposure, with 12.1% of students encountering self-harm content after searching for it, receiving it from others and seeing it recommended on their feeds. The other three exposure pathways—active-search-only, active-receive-only and other-only—appeared to be less common.
"When we looked at the specific routes of exposure, of those who saw this content, two-thirds said it came through their feeds via algorithms, which was the single most common route students named, while around 7.5% said they'd actually searched for it themselves," Bear said.
Key insights for developers and policymakers
This study further highlights the shortcomings of algorithms used by social media platforms to recommend content to users. Specifically, it suggests that when it comes to adolescents, these algorithms might not consider the psychosocial risks of viewing the content they select.
The researchers also asked survey participants to rate their loneliness, adverse experiences online and other indicators of psychosocial well-being. They found that exposure to self-harm content, via any of the pathways they identified, was linked to greater psychosocial risks.
"Every pathway was linked to greater vulnerability, though we can't say from this data the direction of that relationship," Bear said. "Compared with adolescents who reported no exposure, every group—including those who only encountered this content passively, through feed suggestions—reported higher levels of anxiety, depression and loneliness. That's an association, not evidence that the content itself caused those outcomes. It's possible that young people who are already struggling are more likely to come across or engage with this kind of content in the first place."
In the future, the results gathered by Bear and her colleagues could inspire the development of new strategies or recommendation algorithms that better protect adolescents from online content that may compromise their well-being. In addition, they could encourage policymakers to introduce new regulations aimed at restricting the content that adolescents can access online.
Written for you by our author Ingrid Fadelli, edited by Gaby Clark, and fact-checked and reviewed by Robert Egan—this article is the result of careful human work. We rely on readers like you to keep independent science journalism alive. If this reporting matters to you, please consider a donation (especially monthly). You'll get an ad-free account as a thank-you.
Publication details
Holly Bear et al, Algorithmically driven exposure to online self-harm content and its association with broader psychosocial risk in 32,000 adolescents, Nature Mental Health (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s44220-026-00682-w.
Journal information: Nature Mental Health
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PsychiatryPsychology & Mental healthPediatricsChildren's health Who's behind this story?
Ingrid Fadelli
Freelance journalist with BSc Psychology and MA International Journalism. Covers AI, robotics, neuroscience, and astrophysics since 2018. Full profile →
Gaby Clark
MA in English, copy editor since 2021 with experience in higher education and health content. Dedicated to trustworthy science news. Full profile →
Robert Egan
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