'Social media': the harms to women and girls

Europe needs to address a major factor in the mental-health crisis facing adolescent girls in particular.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/social-media-the-harms-to-women-and-girls



‘Social media’ have become rapidly integrated into almost all aspects of human life and social organisation, from product marketing and political communication to health, fitness and dating. Despite their many positive affordances, it is however increasingly clear that women and girls experience online disproportionate and different harms online, compared with boys and men. These include: sexist stereotyping in online-advertising content and algorithmic targeting, negative body images induced by comparison with idealised images of women, misogyny and gender-based abuse, technology-facilitated coercive control, economic and political marginalisation, and side-effects of the dehumanisation and degradation of women in misogynistic pornography.

Our study, ‘The impact of the use of social media on women and girls’, was commissioned by the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM) of the European Parliament—to which we are presenting today—in response to growing concerns about the scale of digitally mediated harms experienced by women and girls. Academics, policy-makers and activists have recently devoted increasing attention to gender-based and sexual digital harm, with various large-scale surveys indicating its alarming scale and intensity.

This study uses data, reports and analyses from a wide range of sources—from academic scholarship as well as the European Union, national and other international institutions. It covers sexism and gender stereotypes in online advertising and the impact of pro-anorexia and ‘thinspiration’ content (images and text promoting thinness). It addresses gender-based and sexual abuse and harassment, coercive control and targeted hate campaigns against female politicians, journalists and other professionals. And it takes in algorithmic bias and radicalisation, misogyny in gaming and the general rise of male supremacism and pornography.

Targeted and judged

All these activities impair democracy and civic participation more widely and should therefore be of urgent concern to policy-makers, activists, legislators and educators. Among the most disturbing of our findings are the ways in which women are being targeted and judged on their appearance, subjected to image-based sexual abuse and silenced in public debate. The research shows that internet usage, particularly on image-based ‘social media’ platforms, is associated with increased body-image and eating anxiety, and that adolescents appear particularly vulnerable. Because girls grow up in a (real) society in which women’s bodies are routinely sexualised and used by others to assess their value, women tend to be more self-conscious of how they present themselves.

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