The dark side of social media
Six in 10 Canadian girls are harassed online.
A whopping 62 per cent of girls and women ages 15 to 25 have been harassed or abused online, a new study by non-profit Plan International Canada has found.
That’s above the global average of 58 per cent found in the survey of 14,000 girls and women in 22 countries.
Lindsay Glassco, president and CEO of Plan International Canada, called the results “really disturbing,” especially given that young people are relying on virtual spaces more than ever for community, connection and education during the pandemic.
“That’s actually six in 10 girls that we’re talking about, experiencing online harassment,” Glassco said, adding that survey respondents said they’d experienced abuse online as young as eight years of age, and that the abuse peaked when they were between 14 and 16.
The abuse uncovered by the survey included body shaming, abusive language, hate speech, threats of sexual violence, purposeful embarrassment and bullying.
“Harassment of this nature has devastating impacts on girls,” she said.
“While we always think of harassment as being physical, online harassment is just as threatening, if not more threatening.”
Glassco said this abuse is silencing girls by preventing them from participating in really important discussions; 54 per cent of respondents said online abuse lowers their selfesteem and confidence.
“Quite frankly, it’s acting as a barrier to their leadership and their participation in modern life,” she said, noting that 19 per cent of the girls surveyed in Canada said that, as a result of abuse, they had stopped posting content that expresses their opinion.
Ramandeep, a 15-year-old youth ambassador for Plan International Canada whose last name is withheld to protect her privacy as a minor, said she wasn’t surprised to find the climate has gotten so bad for girls online.
“If you go to the pages of other women and girls, you see this type of harassment, death threats and other types of harassment in the comment section. So, sadly, it wasn’t surprising. But I really wish it was.”
It can be difficult for parents to know how to help, but Ramandeep has some good suggestions.
“One of the things that they can do is actually engage with girls and ensure that they feel secure talking about online harassment … so that if they do come across online abuse, they know how to recognize it, they know how to report it and they can also talk to adults in their circles,” she said.
Parents can also become active bystanders themselves, “reporting abuse and amplifying girls voices when it comes to this issue.”
While it may be tempting for parents to react to their daughter’s negative experiences online by forbidding them from using the platform in question, that’s not the right approach, said Farrah Khan, manager of the Office of Sexual Violence Support and Education at Ryerson University.
“Online spaces are some of the only spaces people can access right now for social support and social relationship creation,” she said. But even without a pandemic limiting in-person social time, girls shouldn’t be the ones to shoulder the cost of poor treatment they receive online.
“You want to lead with care, not shame. We don’t want to shame or blame girls and gender nonbinary people and trans folks and everybody from accessing spaces,” Khan said. So instead of making it about your daughter’s use of TikTok, or the cute photo she posted on Instagram, “what we do want to do is name the violence.”
She said parents — or any adult in a supporting role — should begin by saying something like “I’m here to listen,” and also by assuring the girl’s confidentiality.
While it may be tempting to speed-dial the school principal when something like this happens, for instance, it’s important to let girls know that “you’re not going to share with anybody that they don’t want to share with right this moment.”
The next thing is to ask the child how they would like to be supported, Khan said.
She said a parent might say something like, “Do you want me to help you think of ways you can respond to the person? Do you want me to support you in cataloguing the people harassing you? Do you want me to help you look at the rules and the protections that are in place around privacy on these apps?”
But it’s also up to all of us to hold tech companies to account, Khan said.
“I think we have to think about how tech companies are really incorporating ideas of consensual tech in their work, not just about, you know, addressing sexual violence after it happened or threats after it happens.”
Under fire for doing too little to address hate and misinformation on their platforms, social media companies are increasingly being called upon by activist groups to be more accountable to their members. In response to a recent open letter from Plan International Canada, Instagram has just agreed to a series of meetings with girl activists facilitated by the non-profit. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, will be sharing the insights both with its parent network and sister company WhatsApp, a written statement shared by Plan said.
“All members of society have a role to play, including family, communities and governments, but really of all of the power holders who need to act, social media companies are at the top of the list,” Glassco said. “They’re the ones that need to step up right now.
“Girls should not have to put up with behaviours online that would be criminal on the streets.”
Online abuse is silencing girls by preventing them from participating in really important discussions