In this group danger sign, team members support a decision in public that they oppose in private.

(Reuters Health) - Rule-breaking may be just as irresistible to teenagers today as it was in their parents’ day, but a new study of secret social media hashtags like #selfharmmm suggests that new technology is helping kids share dangerous behaviors more easily than ever before.

When it comes to what’s known as non-suicidal self-injury – cutting, burning and scratching done with damage rather than death in mind – teens can be quite crafty at deploying hashtags that mask their activities, evade content safeguards and advisory warnings, and make it much harder for parents to monitor their virtual lives.

“The online communities that develop around these hashtags can draw in adolescents and provide them a strong sense of belonging and support that is centered on these unhealthy behaviors,” said lead study author Dr. Megan Moreno, a specialist in adolescent medicine at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Research Institute.

“This can make recovery from these behaviors more challenging,” Moreno added by email.

Moreno and colleagues used the search term #selfharmmm to identify public posts on the social media platform Instagram, a photo-sharing service popular with teens, that related to destructive habits like cutting and burning.

Then, they used the search results to identify a list of ambiguous hashtags such as #blithe, #MySecretFamily and #SecretSociety123 that were tied to the same dangerous behaviors.

Other hashtags related to mental health conditions through use of common names, such as #Deb for depression, #Annie for anxiety, and #Olive for obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The number of search results for self-harm hashtags was high and grew over time.

The broad term #cat, which refers to cutting, had more than 44 million search results in 2014 and more than 56 million in 2015, the study team reports in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Over that same period, use of #selfharmmm also grew, generating 1.7 million search results in 2014 and more than 2.4 million in 2015. In its various permutations, #SecretSociety123 grew by approximately 500,000 search results.

One limitation of the study, the authors acknowledge, is its reliance on data generated by starting with a single term, #selfharmmm, which was selected for its popularity as a portal into online communities that focus on these behaviors but might omit some relevant content. The study results are also limited to self-harm, and don’t look at other destructive behaviors such as substance abuse or eating disorders

Still, the results show that parents can’t rely on social media sites to provide safe places for their kids, and highlight the need for parents to be proactive in communicating with children about their online experiences, Moreno said.

One effective response to unhealthy content on social media may involve meeting teens where they live their virtual lives, suggests a second study focused on eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia.

For this study, researchers analyzed videos posted on YouTube that promoted eating disorders using terms like “pro-ana” as well as posts opposed to the dangerous behavior with terms like “anti pro-ana.”

While pro-ana videos were more popular, garnering 4.8 million views compared to just 1.4 million views for clips opposed to this behavior, the opposition content drew more comments overall and more positive feedback, the study found.

This suggests that posting content advocating against dangerous behavior might help combat social media content promoting unhealthy choices, said lead study author Dr. Atte Oksanen of the University of Tampere in Finland.

“YouTube has this powerful user community opposing pro-anorexia users,” Oksanen said by email. “Kids might not listen to their parents or adults in general, but they still might be influenced by their peers within social media and user communities might succeed where parents and health campaigns fail.”

SOURCE: bit.ly/1JebPa7 Journal of Adolescent Health, online December 17, 2015 and bit.ly/1RU3lfu Pediatrics, online December 16, 2015.

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CHARIKOT, Nepal (Reuters) - A daylong search failed to find a missing U.S. Marine helicopter on Wednesday, a day after the second Nepal earthquake in less than three weeks killed scores and triggered landslides across the Himalayan nation.

Nepal is still reeling from last month’s devastating quake, which killed more than 8,000 people and injured close to 20,000.

The U.S. helicopter was delivering aid in Dolakha, one of the districts hit hardest by both quakes, on Tuesday when it went missing with six Marines and two Nepali soldiers on board.

Six Nepali helicopters and about 400 soldiers found no sign of the Marine Corps UH-1Y Huey in forested and rugged terrain.

“There is no positive confirmation of any sighting of the aircraft, and we have no communication with them at this moment,” said Marines spokeswoman Captain Cassandra Gesecki. She said there was no evidence to indicate a crash.

Roads in Dolakha were cracked and littered with large boulders, a Reuters witness said. In the village of Suspa Kshamawati, 80 percent of the houses were destroyed.

Krishna Budhathoki, 40, now lives in his cattle pen. “We want to be able to build a new home before the monsoon, but there’s not enough time to do so now, and how can we build during the rainy season?” he said.

The Canadian Red Cross pulled a nine-member medical team out of Tatopani, which is on the road from Kathmandu to Tibet and was close to the epicentre of Tuesday’s earthquake, citing the danger of landslides.

“When the earthquake happened, big blocks of mountain came down that took away houses,” team leader Cyril Stein told Reuters from Kathmandu. “I heard the top of a mountain collapse while I was on the telephone with my team.”

The field clinic, which had been treating more than 50 patients a day, was threatened by a mountain block that looked like it might break loose, he said.

In Dolakha district’s capital, Charikot, other relief and military helicopters brought people injured when buildings collapsed and landslides struck in outlying hamlets to an open-air clinic where they were treated on bloodied tarpaulins.

The helicopters alternated between evacuating people and searching for the Marines’ Huey, which lost radio contact after crew members were heard talking about fuel problems.

Two other Marine Corps Hueys and two tilt-rotor V-22 Ospreys spent about 21 hours in the air searching for the missing helicopter on Wednesday, the U.S. military said.

The Hueys each carried two U.S. Air Force para-rescue troops able to jump into a site to offer medical help. One of the Hueys was outfitted with a hoist so it could lower people to help if no landing zone was available, U.S. Pacific Command said.

A Pentagon spokesman said he had nothing to verify reports that the helicopter had been found and that the aerial search would resume on Thursday.

SEARCH DELAYS RESCUE EFFORTS

Bala Nanda Sharma, a retired Nepali army general, visited the army base in Charikot and discussed the search for the missing U.S. helicopter.

“If it just landed in that forest, it would be lost. Only helicopter pilots who have the eye will be able to find it. This terrain is very beautiful, but very difficult,” he said, gesturing towards a hillside.

Nepal Home Ministry official Laxmi Prasad Dahal said he feared the search was diverting resources from relief and rescue operations.

“The work of sending relief and rescuing the injured people to hospitals has been delayed due to this,” he told Reuters.

A police official in Kathmandu said 80 people had died and 2,376 were injured in Tuesday’s quake, which also killed 17 people in neighbouring India. Charikot, 75 km (45 miles) east of Kathmandu, was one of the hardest-hit areas.

Most of the reported deaths were in towns and villages which, like Charikot, were only just starting to recover from last month’s quake.

Tuesday’s quake and subsequent aftershocks forced many panic-stricken Nepalis to spend yet another night outdoors in makeshift tents and relief camps.

“It looks like a graveyard here,” said Aula Bahadur Ale, the assistant administrator of Dolakha.

“Even those houses that have not been flattened have developed cracks. People are too afraid to go into them. We are still feeling the aftershocks that makes people terrified.”

The April quake damaged or destroyed hundreds of thousands of buildings, including ancient temples, and triggered an avalanche on Mount Everest that killed 18 climbers and cut short the climbing season on the world’s tallest peak.

The tremors have left areas of Nepal perilously unstable, leading to fears of more landslides, especially when seasonal monsoon rains begin to fall in the coming weeks.

Additional reporting by Gopal Sharma in KATHMANDU, Frank Jack Daniel and Douglas Busvine in NEW DELHI and David Alexander and Phil Stewart in WASHINGTON; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Louise Ireland

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