Adolescents With Self-Injury Linger Longer on NSSI-Related Social Media Posts, Eye-Tracking Study Finds

Adolescents with recurrent nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) spend more time looking at Instagram-style posts depicting self-injury than at negative or neutral posts, and they report stronger urges to self-harm after viewing them, according to a new study published in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health.

The research, led by Annika Lozar and colleagues including senior author Oswald D. Kothgassner, used eye-tracking to measure where adolescents directed their attention when scrolling through a feed of mock social media posts. The team also recorded skin conductance responses as an index of sympathetic arousal, and asked participants to rate their tension and NSSI urges after each post.

Forty-eight adolescents aged 14 to 18 years, all of whom had engaged in recurrent NSSI during the previous 12 months, completed the task. The feed consisted of 30 mock Instagram-style posts presented across three conditions: neutral content, negatively valenced content, and NSSI-related content.

The eye-tracking data showed a clear attentional preference for the self-injury-related material. Participants viewed NSSI-related posts for longer than either the negatively valenced or the neutral posts. Within the NSSI-related posts, the images themselves received greater sustained attention, reflected in higher fixation counts and longer total fixation durations as well as longer first fixation durations.

Subjective reactions followed the same pattern. Trial-by-trial ratings indicated higher tension and stronger NSSI urges following exposure to NSSI-related posts compared with both the negatively valenced and the neutral conditions. This means the heightened urge response was specific to self-injury content rather than a general reaction to distressing imagery.

Exploratory analyses of the skin conductance data suggested more electrodermal responses during exposure to NSSI-related posts, a pattern the authors interpret as consistent with increased sympathetic activation. Because these physiological analyses were described as exploratory, the authors present them as preliminary evidence that the subjective and attentional effects are accompanied by autonomic reactivity.

The study addresses a gap in previous research. Earlier work had suggested that adolescents who engage in NSSI, but not healthy adolescents, show attentional bias and urge reactivity when exposed to NSSI-related cues, but little was known about whether these effects extend to social-media-like contexts. The new findings indicate that they do, at least in this experimental setting.

The authors conclude that the results point to sustained attentional engagement with NSSI-related social media imagery alongside heightened subjective and autonomic reactivity, supporting the potential relevance of social media exposure as a proximal cue-reactivity context in adolescents with recurrent NSSI.

Several limitations should be kept in mind when interpreting the findings. The study involved a single laboratory session with 48 participants, and the posts were mock Instagram-style content rather than a real social media feed, so the results do not directly measure everyday social media use. The skin conductance findings were exploratory, and the study design cannot establish whether exposure to such content causes self-injurious behavior over time.

Nevertheless, the study offers a controlled, multi-method picture of how self-injury-related social media content captures attention, elevates tension and urges, and may engage the autonomic nervous system in adolescents with recurrent NSSI, providing a foundation for future research into how online environments may contribute to the maintenance of self-injurious behavior.

Subject of Research: Attentional bias and urge reactivity to self-injury-related social media content in adolescents with nonsuicidal self-injury

Article Title: Attentional bias and urge reactivity to self-injury-related social media content in adolescents with nonsuicidal self-injury

Article References: Lozar, A., Goreis, A., List, R., Zesch, H., Oehlke, S.-M., Pfeffer, B., Prillinger, K., Laczkovics, C., Klinger, D., Voracek, M., Marschik, P. B., Garcia, D., Claes, L., Plener, P. L., & Kothgassner, O. D. (2026). Attentional bias and urge reactivity to self-injury-related social media content in adolescents with nonsuicidal self-injury. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13034-026-01199-x

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s13034-026-01199-x

Keywords: nonsuicidal self-injury, adolescents, attentional bias, urge reactivity, eye-tracking, social media, skin conductance, sympathetic arousal, cue reactivity, mental health, Attentional, bias