OPINION: Social media is making women and girls less safe online and everywhere.Here’s what you can actually do about it

Editor’s note: Kara Alaimo, associate professor of communications at Fairleigh Dickinson University, writes about issues affecting women and social media. Her book, “Beyond influence: Why social media is harmful to women and girls — and how we can take it back. ” was published by Alcove Press on March 5, 2024. Instagram, Facebook and X. The opinions expressed in this comment are her own.read more opinions On CNN.

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When academic Caitlin Reger and her team set up an account to search for information that young people in the UK commonly seek, such as information about loneliness, mental health and fitness, they found misogynistic content on TikTok’s ‘For You’ page. The amount of content was suggested. quadrupled In just 5 days. In response to the report, TikTok told the Guardian: “Misogyny has long been prohibited on TikTok, and we actively detect 93% of the content we remove for violating our hateful rules.” The methodology used in this report does not reflect how real people experience TikTok. ”

“Extremist misogyny that was once really segregated… [less mainstream] The platform has now spread to more popular platforms such as TikTok and permeated youth culture more generally,” Regehr, an associate professor at University College London who studies online extremist groups, told me. Told. A few years ago, Regehr points out, posting on a mainstream social network about the damage to a woman’s anatomy after violent sex would have been considered shocking. Now, “we’re moving into this new act, where that kind of dark, edgy humor is less shocking and unique compared to other forms of extremism.”

This kind of content began in the so-called “manosphere”, where many men gathered to share their hatred and frustrations with women. Social media provided a space for them to find and interact with each other, making their beliefs even more extreme. Over the past few years, these views have spread to more mainstream platforms.

Friday is International Women’s Day. In many ways, women are less safe this year and have fewer rights and resources than they did just a few years ago. Not only is progress stagnant, we are moving backwards. As I argue in my new book Over the Influence, there are many reasons for this, but one we need to start addressing is violence directed at women on social networks. and how abuse makes the offline world more dangerous for women. we.

It’s common to use the phrase “in real life” (or simply IRL) to refer to things that happen offline. This phrase is not just outdated, it’s now dangerous because it negates the real impact of what’s happening online. What our society shares and sees on social media has a huge impact on how we view and treat women in all aspects of our lives.

For example, the percentage of American high school girls who say they’ve been forced to have sex increased from 12% to 14% from 2011 to 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey released last year. There are approximately 15.4 million high school students in the United States. Applying these findings, assuming that about half are women, means that approximately 154,000 additional girls were forced into sex.

Among many factors, one that may explain this is the violence against women and girls celebrated on social apps. A wide range of research confirms that people who witness acts of violence in the media are more likely to commit acts of violence.

As this kind of thinking and posting about women becomes more normalized, it’s no surprise that people feel more free to abuse women and take away our rights and resources offline. Activists in Africa told the New York Times that killings of women have increased during the pandemic. Of course, when we all spend more time online. Women have also experienced greater domestic violence during the pandemic, sometimes confined to their homes with abusive spouses.

By June 2023, one year after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, half of U.S. states had passed laws banning or restricting access to abortion. When interviewed for her book, Palestinian-American feminist activist Linda Sarsour said, “This is the first time in American history that we have to tell the next generation that they have less rights than we do.” generation,” he said.

Of course, long before X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok, right-wing groups were working to repeal Roe. However, for the High Court to strike down a woman’s right to terminate a non-viable, life-threatening pregnancy, women are reluctant to lose this potentially life-saving legal protection. I needed to accept and believe. One thing that may have factored into their calculations about the political and social feasibility of this is that our culture has shifted towards accepting and even glorifying misogyny. is. This is a very online trend.

This may also help explain why the U.S. government thinks it is acceptable to deprive women of necessary resources. In September, Congress allowed temporary funding for much-needed child care provided by the American Rescue Plan Act during the pandemic to expire rather than make it permanent. As a result, the Century Foundation estimates that more than 70,000 child care programs have closed, 3.2 million children are without care, and many mothers have been forced to quit their jobs or reduce their working hours. It is estimated that

Similarly, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) had enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress for 25 years until last year, but rising enrollment and food costs have led to lawmakers calling it necessary. We were unable to provide additional funding. As a result, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 2 million pregnant and postpartum women and infants lack the assistance they need to feed themselves.

In some cases, the sequence of events may appear more clearly. For example, last year in China a 23-year-old woman died by suicide after being viciously attacked on social media.Her bullying started when she shared a photo of her visiting her grandfather in the hospital and telling him about it. she entered graduate school. Some accused her of being a prostitute because she had pink hair. Others falsely claimed that her grandfather was her husband. Another Chinese woman, a high school teacher, also recently died of a heart attack. She claimed that her daughter was disrupted by hackers from her classes online and was also prevented from sharing her slides.

A question I often get asked when talking about my work is, if I believe the apps are so harmful, why don’t I just encourage women to delete them? But this does not address the fact that others are using social networks to spread misogyny and hatred that is putting women and girls at risk.

To solve this problem, tech companies need to stop hosting misogynistic content on their platforms. We need to improve how we identify and quickly remove such content, using both human moderators and artificial intelligence. When we see a friend or family member posting, we need to do what activist Loretta Ross calls “calling them out.” in” or offline conversations about why it’s a bad idea (clap back at trolls on social media will only increase their engagement). You should also report content that violates a social network’s community standards to the social network where it appears. Tech companies are often notorious for not taking action on these reports, but if we did this all at once, we would be able to force users to stop abusing people on their platforms. This will send a powerful message to technology companies that they are here to stay.

And we do this by posting, following, reposting, and engaging with the content of others who do so about influential women and the issues we care about. You need to compete with your content. I have posted a list of “feminists to follow” on my website to add my own contributions. If we all start sharing more content that empowers women, social network algorithms will feed us more content.

What happens on social media goes beyond social media. This means that we can no longer end the abuse we face without women updating the serious situation on social networks.