Social Media and Adolescent Health (2024) / Chapter Skim
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7 Online Harassment
7 Online Harassment
Pages 175-196
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From page 175... ...
These forms of harassment run from the relatively common, as in cyberbullying, to the rare but serious, as in child sexual exploitation. This chapter sets out some steps that social media companies and the federal government could take against digital harassment, thereby reducing the harms associated with exposure to social media.
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From page 176... ...
. Additionally, while teens tend to view their parents' efforts to control online harassment favorably, they have a far less positive impression of the efforts of their teachers, law enforcement, social media companies, or elected officials (see Figure 7-1)
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Those who did not give an answer are not shown. FIGURE 7-2 Percentage of respondents ages 13 to 17 who say they have ever experienced cyberbullying when online or on their cell phone.
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From page 178... ...
. Qualitative research among female gamers suggests that sexual harassment is an unfortunately common feature of their experience, in part because of the continued stigma against women participating in a stereotypically male activity (Kuss et al., 2022; McLean and Griffiths, 2019)
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From page 179... ...
If neither deplatforming users nor relying on firsthand reports is effective, their best strategies to forestall harassment involve some invasion of privacy, mostly likely through using machine learning to identify suspect interactions and some combination of human and automated tools to follow up. But collecting information about children potentially subjects companies to liability under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)
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From page 180... ...
. A recent, smaller study of Canadian college women, most of them 18 or 19 years old, found that almost a quarter had received unsolicited nude pictures online or on their phones; more than half had experienced some form of online sexual harassment.
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From page 181... ...
. Less has been published about the online sexual harassment of minors.
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From page 182... ...
A recent survey of undergraduates found that over 20 percent recalled interactions as minors that met criteria for online grooming; 38 percent of these young people (about 8 percent of the total sample) eventually met the adult in person, and a sizable majority of those who made in-person contact (68 percent or roughly 5 percent of the total sample)
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From page 183... ...
. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has received an exponentially growing number reports of child sexual abuse online since it started collecting them, many from internet service providers (Bursztein et al., 2019)
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From page 184... ...
Recommendation 7-1: Social media companies should develop sys tems for reporting, follow-up, and adjudication for cases of online harassment and abuse. These systems should be easy to use, uni versal, accountable, and transparent.
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From page 185... ...
At the same time, the abuses described in this chapter represent an important harm of social media to children's and adolescents' well-being and one that social media companies have a responsibility to mitigate. The committee recognizes that social media platforms already rely on flagging and reporting systems to handle online harassment and abuse.
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From page 186... ...
What is more, pending legislation in Congress, such as the Kids Online Safety Act, emphasizes platforms' "duty of care" to mitigate mental health problems, addictive behaviors, online bullying and harassment, and exploitation.6 The same interest is reflected in Chapter 5 of this report, which encourages companies to report on their efforts to remediate young people's mental health problems and report these measures to the FTC. The committee shares the admirable goal reflected in this legislation of protecting young people from sexual exploitation and abuse online but acknowledges that these societal protections may come at the cost of ceding individual privacy protections, including the privacy protections guaranteed to minors under COPPA.
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From page 187... ...
These ambiguities suggest that both the social media companies and society would benefit from greater clarity of the circumstances under which COPPA permits the collection of information necessary to address the problem of online harassment and exploitation. Any such guidance should reflect the fact that the appropriateness of actions that override legal protections on privacy necessarily depend on the severity of the problem those actions aim to solve.
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From page 188... ...
In the same way, the privacy protections on social media may need to take into account the magnitude of problems faced even under less extraordinary conditions. The FTC may want to consider if similar discretion is necessary for COPPA violations in light of growing concerns about the mental health and potential exploitation of young people online.
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From page 189... ...
Children may be reluctant to identify inappropriate actions of an adult online for many reasons, the most obvious being that they do not realize there is something wrong with the interaction until it is too late. For this reason, the educational programs described in the previous chapter should include information on how to identify and report inappropriate sexual advances made online.
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From page 190... ...
For this reason, it would be helpful to include police and district attorneys in the development of the recommended interventions. Including law enforcement in this discussion of protecting children is important given concerns that laws have not kept pace with online harassment and sexual crimes and with the ever-changing social media platforms.
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2023. Moderating online child sexual abuse material (CSAM)
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From page 192... ...
Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 29(7)
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From page 193... ...
2019. Female gamers' experience of online harassment and social support in online gaming: A qualitative study.
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2015. Abuse characteristics and psychiatric consequences associated with online sexual abuse.
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2021. The state of online harassment.
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