Stalking awareness for adolescents

Dr Asha Pemberton

teenhealth.tt@gmail.com

STALKING CAN impact everyone. This phenomenon is often the subject of thriller movies and novels, but occurs in society more often than is taken seriously.

By definition it is referred to as unwanted and repeated surveillance or contact by an individual or group toward another person.

Stalking behaviours are interrelated to harassment and intimidation and may include following the victim in person or monitoring their activities.

While research on stalking among adolescents is limited, estimates generally suggest that adolescents are stalked at higher rates than adults, with the online environment providing ample opportunity.

Young people often recognise patterns of persistent or unwanted communication or surveillance, but unfortunately their concerns are often downplayed or unrecognised.

Consistent with statistics about adult-stalking victims, adolescent girls are more likely to be stalked than boys, while adolescent boys perpetrate stalking at higher rates than girls. Adolescents tend to stalk and be stalked by someone they know or have some connection through their social networks.

While online stalking is sometimes dismissed by parents, it should not be. For a variety of reasons, such activity has the risk of escalating into other forms of violence. Even in the online space, there is the capacity for many forms of maltreatment or distress.

Emerging research in adolescence demonstrates that the more common forms of stalking are persistent unwanted communication, insertion or showing up at events when unwanted, or using in-person or remote means to spy or monitor activities.

Those interviewed reported acute distress, feeling unease or distinct fear, or harm, or violence. Due to the tendency of young people to sometimes exaggerate circumstances, legitimate stalking is often ignored.

Equally, the term is sometimes used in humour or bullying, which complicates the ability of adults to decipher circumstances. Due to the potential of stalking behaviour to escalate into violence, and because of the likelihood of mental instability in perpetrators, more attention should be paid to these behaviours.

Adolescent-stalking victims were more likely than youths who had not been stalked to experience post-traumatic stress, ongoing anxiety or feelings of hopelessness. In severe cases, stalkers create multiple accounts through multiple platforms in an attempt to gain access.

When young people post intimate details of their whereabouts or lives, they provide fodder for stalkers to use in their pursuits.

Due to the fickle nature of online communication, and the ability to rename, delete and recreate accounts, it can be difficult to prove such activities. For this reason, as soon as tweens and teens are allowed access to devices and online communication, this topic should be discussed.

Young people need to be aware and fully empowered to recognise persisting and unwanted contact and have a mechanism to report such to their parents.

Young people who have cognitive or developmental differences are a particularly vulnerable population. Due to variations in social awareness, they may be initially less able to differentiate friendly from worrisome communication. This makes them naïve to persisting intruders who have non-wholesome intentions.

Although documented research is still in evolution, it would appear that the primary reason that stalking activity proceeds in the online space unchecked, is due to challenges in reporting.

Some young people feel fear, embarrassment, or believe that they may have somehow encouraged the activity and should therefore manage it themselves.

Parents have a responsibility to dispel these myths. Any unwanted and persistent pursuits should be stopped and, if continued, reported to the protective authorities.

Online stalking is an important topic that should be discussed and reinforced by all parents of young people with access to the online world.