Why youth involvement is key to tackling online gender-based violence

Tech giants and governments need to be consulting young people, as the predominant users of social media, when it comes to tackling the rising level of online gender-based violence. That’s according to Rowella Marri, a gender and digital rights youth activist and project officer at Digital Disruptors Philippines, an Amnesty International project that aims to train young activists to promote human rights by creating their own online campaigns. UN Women defines online or technology-facilitated gender-based violence, or GBV, as an act committed via a digital or internet-based tool that could result in physical, sexual, psychological, social, political, or economic harm. Examples include intimate image abuse, the sharing of personal details online, trolling, misogynistic or gendered hate speech, and threats of offline violence. Data from Plan International USA shows that 58% of young women have experienced online harassment and abuse. But, as it stands, there is an issue in equating acts of violence experienced in the home or workplace with those taking place online, said Marri. “More often than not [it] is disregarded because we are more familiar with violence against women and children offline; the physical abuse, the emotional abuse that happens in houses. We do not anticipate how it translates online.” That needs to change, she said, and as the most avid, and therefore vulnerable, age group online, Marri believes involving young people in conversations around how to prevent online GBV is a crucial first step. “We have to be [at] these tables as people create policies, as people create systemic changes on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram,” she said. “Your community guidelines won't be effective if your users do not get to engage in that conversation. We have to be there when you make these guidelines, because [they] ultimately … affect the young people who are using them.” Sitting down with Devex on the sidelines of the Women Deliver 2023 conference in Kigali, Rwanda, Marri shared how the GBV landscape has been altered by the digital landscape, why young people are particularly affected, and how her work is already leading the charge in addressing this issue. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. How has GBV among adolescents been exacerbated by the internet and social media? I feel like people still don't grasp how easy it is for information to spread online. That information has good [and] bad sides to it, meaning there are a lot of mindsets that are perpetuated online that are very polarizing. … For example, [we] have [social media personality] Andrew Tate with his alpha male ideals. These ideals resonate [with] young males and these ideals are very toxic. ... What you see on social media [is that] an alpha male should not show emotions, an alpha male should consider women as their objects. These mindsets online translate to actions offline. And that's how young males learn these kinds of toxic cultures. Because they read it online, it's easy to access, and no one restricts it. … And when content like toxic masculinity [and] patriarchal ideals spread online, these do not just stay online. These translate into actions that create this cycle of abuse, violence, oppression, and no one is there to correct that because you get to pick what you consume from social media. It just engenders a whole breed of toxicity. It engenders systems of oppression that are very difficult to unlearn. That's the power of online social media. The content that we consume translates, and therefore, exacerbates violence that already exists. What do you think can be done to promote a digital ecosystem that respects young people's rights free from GBV? As a digital rights activist, I have found it really difficult to change systems because these are private companies. These are new institutions that have just been created 10 or 15 years ago, and we're just starting to learn how they work, how they impact people, and how to eradicate these problematic aspects. While I understand that we are fighting for digital rights, we also want to acknowledge the benefits of the digital age. This made communications so easy. It has made connections that before would have been impossible. There is something that can be done, and I believe it’s to, one of the ways, at least, is to listen to the youth [and] empower their voices, especially young activists. It has been my advocacy to uplift youth voices, especially on matters of digital rights, because we are the majority of the users on social media. What can you tell us about the work of Digital Disruptors Philippines in tackling GBV among young people in the country? Ayaw Ko Pagyawa-a is a digital rights campaign that we have been creating for the past year. … The goal of the campaign is to create awareness about online GBV. Ayaw Ko Pagyawa-a roughly translates to “do not play tricks on me.” But the keyword is “yawa,” which means demons. These demons are the various forms of online GBV that we have identified: cyberstalking, cyberbullying, online harassment, nonconsensual sharing of intimate images, online sextortion, and hate speech. The thing is, young people don't recognize these things happening to them. … Where is the line between sexual harassment and compliments? You don't know. It's blurry. For you, it could be a compliment, but for another person, it could be a form of online harassment and we just let it happen. No one is asking these questions. No one is asking, can we define these? How can we make our online spaces safer? That's why one of the main faces of the campaign of Ayaw Ko Pagyawa-a is an unbranded face. … We were just another anonymous profile on Twitter that posted prompts asking young Filipinos, is this harassment? Is this hate speech? Where do we cross the line? We're communicating with them, asking them for their personal experiences. … We want to touch on their experiences, their online realities. The only way to do that is to not intimidate them, [but to] appeal to them, use the language that they speak. The second part of the campaign is the branded face, the usual information giving so that they know what online harassment is, what hate speech is. The way we do it is we first present a real-life example and afterward we give the definition. That way, they will recognize it when they see it. How key is it that youth are involved in initiatives that aim to advance digital rights? We create, we consume, we comment, we react. We're digital natives. We were born into technology. … With that, we are armed with information, [know] how to navigate it, and how to make these spaces safe for us, because we are experiencing it firsthand. We need organizations, political leaders, all stakeholders that want to make the space safe for us, to listen to us because we know what happens on Twitter, on Facebook, on TikTok. … We are demanding you to listen to us. We are demanding you give us these spaces at your adult tables. The digital policies that you are making impact us the most. The digital policies that you are creating now will be forging the future for us. I recognize the benefits of social media. It allows us to communicate, express ourselves, explore our identities, and we don't want it to be stopped. We just need your help to make the online space safer. … We can co-create [and] collaborate to create a safer digital space for everyone. Visit the Generation Why series for more coverage on how we can ensure the digital space advances the rights of all young people and leaves no one behind. You can join the conversation using the hashtags #DevexSeries on #DigitalRights.