‘From their own words’: A co-produced study interpreting children and young people's experiences of emotional abuse and neglect expressed in anonymous, online peer-peer message forums

Abstract

This naturalistic study researched online help-seeking conversations between children and young people (CYP) experiencing emotional abuse and/or neglect and their peers. We believe this is the first study internationally to perform such research. Engagement with anonymous, online communities potentially offer children a source of knowledge and a platform to express and understand their experiences with peers on their own terms, using their own words. This study, co-produced with 10 young co-researchers (YCoR) (aged 14–18 years), aimed to explore the experiences, psychological characteristics and interactions of CYP engaging with an online peer-peer message board service to explore theoretical and methodological approaches to examine such ‘real world’ data and inform service evaluation. Incorporating contextualised interpretations by the YCoR, a phenomenological approach explored how the experiences of abuse were constructed and questioned by CYP in online texts, and what motivates help-seeking. Findings detail the context of CYPs emotionally abusive or neglectful experiences, their language, disclosed mental health challenges, explicit and inferred help-seeking motivations. The co-produced methodology facilitated a nuanced interpretation of CYPs' experiences to convey the impacts of emotional abuse and neglect disclosed in this anonymous environment. Validation with YCoR with diverse experiences would facilitate further translation of findings.