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How the Internet Facilitates Adverse Childhood Experiences for Youth Who Self-Identify as in Need of Services

Ozioma C. Oguine, Jinkyung Katie Park, Mamtaj Akter, Johanna Olesk, Abdulmalik Alluhidan, Pamela Wisniewski, Karla Badillo-Urquiola

TL;DR

The paper addresses how at-risk youth self-identifying as CHINS disclose ACEs and seek online support, while also experiencing online risks. It uses a mixed-method approach on a licensed platform: top-down ACE coding for 1,663 CHINS posts, and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) on 239,929 posts to identify four topics of support, followed by thematic analysis of 2,000 posts to map technology-facilitated risks. Key findings show four online-support themes—self-harm urges, social connection, family struggles, and substance/sexual risks—with distinct distributions across CHINS categories; the Internet simultaneously provides support and intensifies trauma through self-harm contagion, meeting strangers online, cyberabuse, and facilitation of risky behavior. The paper argues for trauma-informed, CHINS-tailored online design, including safe spaces, real-time self-harm prevention, automated risk nudges, and a dedicated resource hub, to promote resilience and safety in digital contexts for vulnerable youth.

Abstract

Youth implicated in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, as well as those with an incarcerated parent, are considered the most vulnerable Children in Need of Services (CHINS). We identified 1,160 of these at-risk youth (ages 13-17) who sought support via an online peer support platform to understand their adverse childhood experiences and explore how the internet played a role in providing an outlet for support, as well as potentially facilitating risks. We first analyzed posts from 1,160 youth who self-identified as CHINS while sharing about their adverse experiences. Then, we retrieved all 239,929 posts by these users to identify salient topics within their support-seeking posts: 1) Urges to self-harm due to social drama, 2) desire for social connection, 3) struggles with family, and 4) substance use and sexual risks. We found that the internet often helped facilitate these problems; for example, the desperation for social connection often led to meeting unsafe people online, causing additional trauma. Family members and other unsafe people used the internet to perpetrate cyberabuse, while CHINS themselves leveraged online channels to engage in illegal and risky behavior. Our study calls for tailored support systems that address the unique needs of CHINS to promote safe online spaces and foster resilience to break the cycle of adversity. Empowering CHINS requires amplifying their voices and acknowledging the challenges they face as a result of their adverse childhood experiences.

How the Internet Facilitates Adverse Childhood Experiences for Youth Who Self-Identify as in Need of Services

TL;DR

The paper addresses how at-risk youth self-identifying as CHINS disclose ACEs and seek online support, while also experiencing online risks. It uses a mixed-method approach on a licensed platform: top-down ACE coding for 1,663 CHINS posts, and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) on 239,929 posts to identify four topics of support, followed by thematic analysis of 2,000 posts to map technology-facilitated risks. Key findings show four online-support themes—self-harm urges, social connection, family struggles, and substance/sexual risks—with distinct distributions across CHINS categories; the Internet simultaneously provides support and intensifies trauma through self-harm contagion, meeting strangers online, cyberabuse, and facilitation of risky behavior. The paper argues for trauma-informed, CHINS-tailored online design, including safe spaces, real-time self-harm prevention, automated risk nudges, and a dedicated resource hub, to promote resilience and safety in digital contexts for vulnerable youth.

Abstract

Youth implicated in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, as well as those with an incarcerated parent, are considered the most vulnerable Children in Need of Services (CHINS). We identified 1,160 of these at-risk youth (ages 13-17) who sought support via an online peer support platform to understand their adverse childhood experiences and explore how the internet played a role in providing an outlet for support, as well as potentially facilitating risks. We first analyzed posts from 1,160 youth who self-identified as CHINS while sharing about their adverse experiences. Then, we retrieved all 239,929 posts by these users to identify salient topics within their support-seeking posts: 1) Urges to self-harm due to social drama, 2) desire for social connection, 3) struggles with family, and 4) substance use and sexual risks. We found that the internet often helped facilitate these problems; for example, the desperation for social connection often led to meeting unsafe people online, causing additional trauma. Family members and other unsafe people used the internet to perpetrate cyberabuse, while CHINS themselves leveraged online channels to engage in illegal and risky behavior. Our study calls for tailored support systems that address the unique needs of CHINS to promote safe online spaces and foster resilience to break the cycle of adversity. Empowering CHINS requires amplifying their voices and acknowledging the challenges they face as a result of their adverse childhood experiences.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 43 sections, 4 figures, 7 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Background
  3. Studying Children in Need of Services in the HCI Community
  4. Understanding How Youth Seek Support Online
  5. Methods
  6. Study Overview
  7. Ethical Considerations
  8. Data Scoping Process
  9. Initial keyword search to identify CHINS
  10. Data Analysis Approach
  11. ACEs and CHINS qualitative coding (RQ1)
  12. Topic modeling (RQ2) and qualitative analysis (RQ3)
  13. Results
  14. The Adverse Childhood Experiences of Youth when they Identify Themselves as CHINS (RQ1)
  15. Self-harm (self and family)
  16. ...and 28 more sections

Figures (4)

  • Figure 1: Overview of data scoping and analysis approaches for three RQs
  • Figure 2: Top Words and the Beta Values Generated by the LDA model
  • Figure 3: Results (standardized residuals) of the between-group analysis of teens' identities based on the adverse experiences teens discussed ($N = 1,663$). (*) indicates significant association. Note that green denotes a positive association, while red denotes a negative one.
  • Figure 4: Results (standardized residuals) of the between-group analysis of the top four topics discussed based on the teens' CHINS category ($N=239,929$). (*) indicates significant association. Note that green denotes a positive association, while red denotes a negative one.