Opinion: For many women, social media is ‘IRL.’ Here’s why that’s dangerous

Other 14 March, 2024 22:53

When scholar Kaitlyn Regehr’s team set up accounts and searched for information commonly sought out by young men in the UK, such as information on loneliness, mental health and fitness, the amount of misogynistic content suggested on TikTok’s “For You” page quadrupled over just five days. In response to the report, TikTok told The Guardian that “misogyny has long been prohibited on TikTok and we proactively detect 93% of content we remove for breaking our rules on hate. The methodology used in this report does not reflect how real people experience TikTok.”

“Extremist misogyny that was once really segregated to … [less mainstream] platforms is now disseminating onto much more popular platforms like TikTok and permeating into youth culture more generally,” Regehr, an associate professor at University College London who studies online extremist groups, told me. A few years ago, it would have been considered shocking to post on mainstream social networks about a woman’s anatomy being disfigured after violent sex, Regehr pointed out. Now, “we’re moving into this new act where that type of dark edgy humor is not that shocking, and that is unique compared to other forms of extremism.”

This kind of content started out in the so-called “manosphere,” where many men came together to share their hatred towards and grievances against women. Social media provided a space for them to find one another and commune, making their beliefs even more extreme. Over the past several years, these views have spread onto more mainstream platforms.

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

As this way of thinking and posting about women becomes more normalized, it’s unsurprising that people are taking greater liberties to abuse women and deprive us of rights and resources offline. Activists in Africa told The New York Times that killings of women increased during the pandemic — when we all, of course, spent more time online. Women also experienced greater domestic violence during the pandemic when they were trapped in their homes with sometimes abusive spouses.

By June 2023, a year after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, half of US states had passed laws banning or restricting access to abortion. “We are the first generation in American history to have to tell the next generation they have less rights than us,” Palestinian-American feminist activist Linda Sarsour told me when I interviewed her for my book.

Of course, right-wing groups were working to repeal Roe long before X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok arrived on the scene. But for the high court to reverse women’s rights to terminate non-viable pregnancies that threaten their lives, it had to believe that women would passively accept losing this potentially life-saving legal protection. One thing that could have factored into their calculus that this was politically and socially feasible was the way our culture has shifted to accept and even glorify misogyny — an extremely online trend.

This might also help explain why the US government thinks it’s acceptable to deprive women of essential resources. In September, Congress let billions of dollars in badly-needed temporary funding for childcare provided by the American Rescue Plan Act during the pandemic expire rather than making it permanent. As a result, The Century Foundation estimates that over 70,000 childcare programs will close, leaving 3.2 million kids without care and forcing many moms to stop working or

Friday is International Women’s Day. This year, women are, in many ways, less safe and have fewer rights and resources than we did just a few years ago. It’s not just that progress has stalled — we’re going backwards. As I argue in my new book, “Over the Influence,” there are many reasons for this, but one we need to start to contend with is how the violence and abuse directed at women on social networks is making the offline world more dangerous for us.

It’s common to use the phrase “in real life” (or just IRL) to refer to things that happen offline. This phrase hasn’t just become antiquated — it’s now dangerous, because it negates the very real effects of what’s happening online. What our society is sharing and seeing on social media is profoundly affecting the way women are viewed and treated in all aspects of our lives.

For example, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey, released last year, found that the percentage of US high school girls who said they’d been forced to have sex increased from 12% to 14% from 2011 to 2021. There are about 15.4 million students in high school in the US. Assuming that roughly half are female, if we applied these findings, approximately 154,000 more girls were forced to have sex.