Young survivors have been calling for help to deal with online abuse – we should listen to them

Long before proposed social media bans for under 16s, young people have been calling for help, our research shows they want an approach that works around them, Sara Davis and Camila Gil write

Countries are working to bring in social media bans for those under 16 (Getty)

Looking back, it’s alarming to realise how casually our global society ushered children into the near anarchy of social media – seemingly with little regard for the long-term consequences for their safety and wellbeing. Now, there is a scramble to remedy damage done to young people around the world, with calls to ban social media for under 16s gaining popularity.

But when it comes to online abuse, adults, not children, tend to be the problem. There have certainly been no calls to ban adults from social media. So, how do we protect young people from abuse?

To answer this question, we did what young people often say we should do more often. We asked them.

We spoke and worked with 300 young people from diverse countries, many of whom were vulnerable to online abuse: living with HIV, LGBTQ+, sex workers, and rural young women. Our study was co-produced with young people from the countries as fellow researchers. These young people told us that the burning issue they face is fear of stigma and abuse. Three-quarters of these young people described online abuse against themselves or peers - some saying they had experienced it as children – including cyberbullying, fraud, hacking of personal accounts, blackmail, stalking, and falsified pornographic images.

In Ghana, where an anti-homosexuality bill is before parliament, young sexual minorities described how rising homophobia led to vigilantes targeting them with violence. Young HIV activists, who use social media to promote HIV prevention and encourage peers to get tested, described a torrent of abuse by adults, including religious leaders, warning them that they would strike them down for immorality.

In Colombia, a young transgender person told us that she and her friends had tried many times to report abuse to the police, but “most of the time, nothing happens. Many times, you don’t even report, because you feel it is pointless.” Others said reporting abuse to social media companies either resulted in no action or, at best, the shutdown of a user account that would pop up a day later under a new name. Algorithms often fail to detect abuse in diverse languages.

In Kenya, young people in our study demanded law reform, legal aid, and training in their rights to bring cases of online harm to court. They also said that abuse had led to depression, isolation and self-harm.

Young activists around the world are now speaking to local governments, parliaments, and UN agencies to share the resulting report, Paying the Costs of Connection, and demand action.

Crucially, the current social media ban proposal will do nothing to protect young people once they are over the age of 16; nor will it address the long-term harms affecting a generation of young people who have already experienced abuse.

This is why young survivors of online abuse want a survivor-centred approach in which the survivor’s dignity, autonomy and voice are prioritised. Survivors of abuse must have access to psychosocial support, tech support, peer networks, and legal aid.

The US, UK and European governments must support a trauma-informed approach that takes online abuse seriously – including investing in law reform, sensitization of police, psychosocial support, tech support, training on digital rights, and legal aid. These structural changes would end normalization of online abuse, driving a cultural shift. Regulation must compel tech companies to invest more in content moderation for local languages and specific cultural contexts. The issues are both local and global – young people want local access to justice and solidarity, and support for border-crossing alliances that demand a better future.

Recent US and UK funding cuts to development and health budgets have devastated the community based organisations that work as frontline responders to abuse. These must be reversed so that young people and communities have resources to advocate and protect themselves.

As our research concluded and we worked closer with young activists, we began to meet young people who described how they had empowered themselves and peers. One activist told us how they had “built the capacity of the police to assist” them. By listening to young people and working with them, local community capacity had grown, and young people were able to find remedy and protection. This work is already happening around the world – young people and survivors just need responsible adults to listen, and support them to make their world safer.

Professor Sara (Meg) Davis is a professor in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick, and principal investigator of the Digital Health and Rights Project

Camila Gil is an anthropologist, strategic communications specialist, and digital rights activist and content creator, and member of the Digital Health and Rights Project Community Advisory Team in Colombia

This article has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project