The digital age is the future of all younger generations nowadays. Teenagers are constantly on their cell phones and many are facing the harrassment and abusement of sexual partners through their smartphones.
According to a recent national survey of teens who had been in a romantic relationship the past year, researchers found that 28% had been victims of “digital dating abuse”. Surprisingly, boys were targets more often than girls.
Even though teen dating abuse has been a problem for a long time, digital devices and media has opened up new ways for it to occur according to lead researcher Sameer Hinduja, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center and a professor of criminology at Florida Atlantic University.
Nowadays teens can threaten others through text, post embarrassing images online, share unwanted private sexual images to friends, take others phones to find their secrets, and so many more possibilities. Media has made it easier for teens to find the information they need to use against their partner. The new findings, from a nationally representative survey, give a better sense of how common the problem is among U.S. teens, Hinduja said.
“This helps clarify what’s going on with youth who are in romantic relationships,” he said. “Many teenagers,” Hinduja said, “really don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to building healthy relationships.
Online dating abuse is not an isolated issue: many teens in the study state that they have been abused offline including physically, verbally, and coercive behaviors. This often correlated with digital abuse. This fact is not shocking since unhealthy or toxic relationships usually manifest both face to face and online.
Elizabeth Englander, a researcher who was not involved in the study, agreed. “It makes no sense to think that someone who is being abusive toward a dating partner would do so only in person,” said Englander, executive director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center at Bridgewater State University. “This is an important [study],” she said. “It demonstrates the close relationship between different psychological types of dating abuse.” So when talking to kids about dating abuse, Englander said, it’s important to address both real-world and online behavior.
Another findings surprises most people: boys were significantly more likely to say that they have been abused that girls. Roughly 32 percent of boys reported it compared to 24 percent of girls. It remains unclear why. But, researchers noted that young girls, when dealing with relationship problems, may turn to aggressive behavior that is stereotypical of boys.
Overall, teens who were victims of dating abuse offline were more than 18 times more likely than their peers to report digital abuse, too. Many children are at increased risk including those who are sexually active, who has ever sent a “sext”, who has depression symptoms, or who have every been cyberbullied in the past. Researchers believe that it is very possible that when sex or “sexting” becomes part of the relationship, one person fill feel they have more power than their partner.
Many schools work hard to implement programs that help children to deal with cyberbullying and sexting. But kids also need to learn broader lessons.
“We should be talking to them about what healthy, respectful relationships look like — both platonic and romantic,” Hinduja said. “And it should start in middle school.”
That was also his advice to parents.
“I wouldn’t want parents to have a knee-jerk reaction and take their kids’ devices away,” Hinduja said. “We need to let our sons and daughters know they can talk to us, and have nonjudgmental conversations about these issues.”
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