Unsolicited nudes have become a common and unwelcome part of online life for many women - let’s explore how we can change the conversation, and behaviors, to prevent this often harmful form of interaction.
If you’re unfamiliar, OnlyFans is a social media platform that is proving to be uniquely dangerous for content creators, while simultaneously becoming extremely popular. The latter may be an understatement. In 2020, it grew from 7.5 million to 90 million users and jumped from 120,000 content creators in 2019 to over 1 million in 2020.
Entering 2020, cyberstalking and online harassment were already an emerging crisis.
Then COVID-19 hit.
Potential victims - and those seeking to stalk them - flowed online in record numbers in the wake of stay-at-home quarantine measures. Much like the surge in reports of online child sexual abuse, the conditions are equally ideal for a rise in cyberstalking.
Online abuse was already occurring at historic levels before COVID-19. It’s about to get worse as more victims -- and those seeking to harm them -- gravitate online amid self-isolation measures. Italy has seen a 70% increase in internet traffic. Reddit is reporting traffic increases of up to 50%. Incidents of online abuse - gender based violence, stalking, bullying and elder abuse - will undoubtedly escalate in this crowded environment.
We are facing a digital public health crisis that receives far too little attention. People are being harmed online and via technology — often by someone they know — at historic rates. In an increasingly digital world, today’s victims are targeted where they spend their time — online and on their devices. This has enabled familiar forms of abuse — bullying, gender-based violence, stalking, elder abuse and human trafficking — to proliferate rapidly by going digital.
#1 The stats don’t lie.
Victims are being harmed online and via technology at historic rates. There are a ton of statistics out there, so we’ll just mention a few. The National Domestic Violence Hotline has seen a 146% increase in digital abuse calls the past two years. 1 in 12 people are victims of nonconsensual pornography (aka revenge porn). Older Americans (60+) are the #1 targets of cyber crime (aka elder abuse). 59% of teens now report being victims of cyberbullying. These signs cannot, and should not, be ignored.
#2 This problem isn’t going away. In fact, it’s getting worse.
Our dependence on technology is at an all-time high, with no signs of slowing. 81% of U.S. adults are online daily and 94% (ages 18-49) own a smartphone. Victims rely on their devices and online accounts to communicate, shop, work, pay for things, date, engage with their communities and more. It makes sense this is where and how they are being harmed. As we usher in an age of new technologies — smart homes, facial recognition and virtual reality — this problem is only expected to worsen.
#3 You don’t need to be an expert to engage with technologies being used to harm someone and make difference.
Technology-enabled abuse is not some new form of abuse. It is simply the way familiar forms of abuse — stalking, harassment, threats, impersonation, etc. — are perpetrated via technology. Victim serving organizations, such as those in law enforcement, human services, education, healthcare and the military, are built to address these familiar forms of abuse.
And here’s the thing — the majority of perpetrators are not cyber experts. At best, they are tech-savvy. More likely, they lack tech expertise and exploited an opportunity due to a personal connection (intimate partnership, friend or family member) to the victim. If the perpetrators aren’t experts, then those assisting victims needn’t be experts either.
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