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Study Finds More Than a Quarter of Teens in Relationships Report Being Digitally Abused

The Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center recently released a new study examining the role technology plays in teen dating abuse. According to the study, 26% of teens in a romantic relationship said their partners had digitally abused them during the previous year using social media, e-mail, and text messages. The findings, published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, are based on a survey of 5,647 dating middle-school and high-school students, making it the most comprehensive study of its kind to date.

Although previous studies have examined teen dating abuse, until today few of them illuminated how abusers use technology to hurt their partners. The new study, conducted by Urban Institute researchers Janine Zweig and Meredith Dank, gives insight into the methods perpetrators use, who the victims are, and when the abuse is carried out.

“New technologies—social networking sites, texts, cell phones, and e-mails—have given abusers another way to control, degrade, and frighten their partners,” Zweig stated.

“Abusers use technology to stalk their partners, send them degrading messages, embarrass them publicly, and pressure them for sex or sexually explicit photos,” Dank added.

Among the study’s key findings:

• Girls in a relationship are digitally victimized more often than boys, especially when the abuse is sexual. Overall, girls in relationships report being victims of digital abuse more frequently than boys: 29% and 23%, respectively. This divide widens when the reported abuse involves sexual behavior. Approximately 15% of girls report sexual digital abuse, compared with 7% of boys. The gap narrows when the reported digital abuse is not sexual: 23% of girls compared with 21% of boys.

• Tampering with a partner’s social media account is the most prevalent form of digital abuse. More than one in twelve teens in a relationship (8.7%) say their partner used their social networking account without their permission.

• Acts of sexual digital abuse are the second and third most-reported complaints. Approximately 7% of teenagers say their partner sent them texts and/or e-mails asking them to engage in unwanted sexual acts. The same percentage says their partner pressured them to send a sexually explicit photo of themselves.

• Digital harassment is a red flag for other abuse. Digital abuse in a relationship rarely happens in isolation: 84% of the teens who report digital abuse say they were also psychologically abused by their partners, 52% say they were also physically abused, and 33% say they were also sexually coerced. Only 4% of teens in a relationship say the abuse and harassment they experienced was digital alone.

• Roughly 1 out of 12 teens report being both perpetrators and victims of digital abuse. Approximately 8% of teens say they were subjected to digital abuse, but also said they treated their partners the same way.

• Schools are relatively free from digital harassment, but remain the centers for physical and psychological abuse. Most digital harassment happens before or after school; only 17% of the teens who report digital harassment say they experienced it during school hours.

Victims of relationship digital abuse include girls and boys, middle-school and high-school students, and teens of all sexual orientations. All have one thing in common: they rarely seek help from teachers or authorities.

A summary by Zweig and Dank is available here.

This study is the first of a two-part series by Zweig and Dank on the role of technology in teen dating and relationships. Research looking at digital abuse and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning community will be released in the spring.

— Source: The Urban Institute