If you’re anything like my parents, you probably wouldn’t even understand most of the content that floods my social media, no matter how hard I try to avoid it.
Here’s a recent example from Instagram: “Do y’all females ever tell ur homegirls ‘Sis chill you letting too many dudes hit?’” Essentially, that means: “Women – do you ever tell your girlfriends that they’re whores and need to stop letting so many guys fuck them?” The reel, posted by a 19-year-old man, appeared on my Instagram feed without me wanting to see it, or ever interacting with any other similar content. The comments that followed were pure misogyny. “Women see body count as a leaderboard and they try to outdo each other,” was one of them. Translation: all women are competitively promiscuous.
Consider the use of the word “female” in these posts. It is not a neutral term here, it is a term of abuse. It’s used by teenage boys to degrade us and equate us to animals. Boys are never described as “males”, but girls are always “females” – the equivalent of sows or calves, creatures that are less than human. We’re also “thots” (whores), “community pussy” and “bops”. “Bop” stands for “been over passed” and is a derogatory term used by boys to refer to a girl they’ve decided has been “passed around” or had too much sex. Sexual equality has ceased to exist online. It’s absolutely fine for boys to have sex, but when girls do, they are called worthless and referred to as objects. “When community pussy tries to insult me, I just want to beat that bitch up.” That’s a message I saw on TikTok.
I’m a 15-year-old schoolgirl and like most teenagers I spend a fair portion of my spare time on social media, often scrolling through short-form videos on apps such as Instagram or TikTok. All of my friends use those apps, and many spend multiple hours a day on them. I actively try to avoid online misogyny, but I am met with it incessantly whenever I open my mainstream social media apps. It only takes a few minutes before there’s subtle or overt misogyny, such as comment sections on a girl’s post filled with remarks about her body, videos made by men or boys captioned with a degrading joke, and even topics such as domestic violence or rape, trivialised and laughed about.
Don't use Instagram or TikTok ✅👍
Enragebait is a well known consequence of using a profit-driven Algorithm, i.e. enshittification.
15-year-olds are not being specifically targeted so much as caught up in the phenomena occuring overall.
The thing is this isn't a phenomena that's recent. This type of shitty misogynism has been going on for decades/centuries. The only difference between then and now is that we have social apps that make it easier to spread.
I'm coming up on 70 yrs old and misogynism has always been the bane of my existence.
I'm not quite 70 years old, but I've been around for long enough to laugh at this line from the article: "Sexual equality has ceased to exist online"
Only a 15 year old could think that sexual equality ever existed online. It may be hard to believe, but it's probably better now than it ever has been. Back in the early days online spaces were so male dominated that people had trouble believing that women were even online at all.
Maybe we shouldn't laugh at it because we still have young women having to go through this kind of revelation after thousands of years of civilization.
I'm not actually laughing at it.
The extent of apps promoting and amplifying this hate posting is a recent phenomenon, through the so-called algorithmic feeds. It all needs attacking.
Yep.
The primary problem is that 'the algorithm' amplifies all of our worst traits, to the extent that someone is not critical of what it is showing them.
Oh, and its also addictive.
Oh, and its also hugely profitable.
Its a giant ratking of feedback loops, and we really should just use Alexander's solution to knots.
The underlying biases and bigotry in humanity has ways of addressing and alleviating it.
But apparently, nothing is strong enough to defeat convenient, targeted, personalized reinforcement of basically, your Jungian shadow.
And its very much relevant that all of this is done to sell advertisements and establish brands, which themselves basically just are also selling you validation, a personality, opinions, 'facts'.
Its the fanciest Skinner Box that's ever been designed.
If misogyny were somehow magically solved tomorrow, then Xhitter would still remain a ~~misogynistic~~ hellhole, featuring a cesspit of whatever traits of humanity triggered clicking or views or whatever generates the highest profits (maybe in the future, trying to gain the attention of bots will vastly outweigh what happens to us here humans, in the same manner as corporations replaced individual businesses in the economic sphere?).
The specific situation described in the article is misogy, but it points to deeper roots of enshittification. The 15 year old girl will still feel put upon, even unsafe, even if it has nothing to do with her femininity anymore.
good thing these men don’t exist outside of social media! whew, we dodged a big one there…
and i sure hope this school girl doesn’t go to any place regularly where she sees these teenage boys, oh wouldn’t that be unfortunate???
School is mandatory, Xhitter is not.
If she walked home and along the way stopped off at a particular cafe, and always got side-eyed by people there... then yeah, I would say hang out somewhere else?
Be the change that you want to see in the world, and all of that.
Woman: I keep getting catcalled on the street and it’s disturbing my sense of safety.
OpenStars: stop going outside, easy.
Knowing that these sites are bad and the algorithm is part of that doesn’t make “just don’t use those sites” a viable option when most or all of someone’s peers are also using them. That is part of the social media companies’ strategy, to make switching costs so high no one leaves.
False equivalency. Going outside is not similar to using Instagram.
Looks like you've mistakenly replied to the wrong comment. Which is ironic because... try reading? With your eyes?
Yep. Apologies.
I agree with your sentiment here. Obviously, it's possible to avoid using Instagram and TikTok, and it's basically impossible to avoid using the street.
On the other hand, if you're a teenage girl, it may be nearly impossible to not use these big corporate social media sites. A big part of being a teen is socializing with other teens. A big part of being an adolescent is learning to fit in with other adolescents without constant adult supervision. It's one of the reason that home schooled kids have a rough time once they hit college, university or work. Many remain deeply strange for a long while after that.
If all the other teens in your social group are using Instagram and TikTok and you're the one person who isn't, you're probably going to be ostracized. Liking and commenting on each-other's social media posts is an important ritual of friendship at that age.
Sometimes parents ban or restrict social media usage by their kids. To a certain extent that can shield the kid, because it's no longer their fault, and their friends might accept that. But, still, if the kid isn't on social media, they're probably not getting invited to in-person events, they don't know what the important topics of conversation are, and so-on.
I mean, the nerve of saying "don't use social media" on a social media site is pretty rich. And, don't think a 15-year old is going to switch from TikTok to PeerTube or something. You might be able to get them to try it out, but you're not easily going to migrate her entire friend group. The content is also not there. Plus, fediverse sites are inhabited by deeply strange people. I love you all, but I wouldn't want you interacting with a 15 year old girl.
Such a strange thing to say. A lot of the people here probably have daughters around that age. A lot of the people here are perfectly normal people.
Wait, you include yourself?! 🤣
If you always get catcalled between Fourth Street and Sixth Street, and you never get catcalled on First through Third Street or Seventh and above, then yeah, maybe just know that going onto Fifth Street you might get catcalled?
You could try expressing your explicit disapproval to Elon Musk directly, maybe that will help?
Actually no, it's not just "Fifth Street", it's Fifth Street in an entirely different country. Tiktok is based on China, Insta and Twitter are in the USA. Normally the rules governing a platform are a combination of the origination point and whatever interrelations exist - although obviously Donald Trump is rewriting those at will to suit him. And yet the UK could do the same... or make an alternative, if it wanted to?
Yeah, in general, my answer to "I don't like using Internet site X" is "well, don't use that site."
There are a vast number of sites out there. Use one that you like. I don't have a very high opinion of lemmygrad.ml, but I deal with that by not going there.
"But TikTok is a big site!"
Okay. I don't use Instagram or TikTok. I can assure you that it's very possible to not use them.
"But my friends use Website X!"
Well, making the probably-reasonable assumption that the relationship is symmetric and they also use it because you do, that situation isn't going to change unless someone decides to use something else.
I think this type of argument is relatively flawed. Obviously I'm very happy to leave one platform for another, but most people dont like change and want to be where thier friends are. I think it's reasonable to expect them to get over the former, but because of the former they would probably have to leave their friends behind. Thats obviously not viable for teenagers and it's a rare few that are willing to do that into thier 20s as well.
Seeing as getting people to make a move is so hard I think forcing these platforms not to be so vile would be a good move. We should put the onus on the platforms, not the users.
If i avoided every place I ever encountered misogyny, my life would shrink considerably. Forget work. Never a church. Goodbye school, the grocery store, movie theaters, almost all spaces online, my local park.
This isn't realistic to tell a kid who uses social media, it's like saying "Don't play Xbox" or "Don't watch new releases, only watch stuff that's out on video already"
This isn't a specific platform problem, it's a social problem and needs social solutions. The solution we need the most involves a lot of tranquilizer darts and reeducation camps for about 28% of society broadly. That's probably not going to be realistic, so the second best approach is the one that people are most adverse to trying, which is more active and involved parenting and reducing screen-time as a whole family.
I'm burning out seeing all this "social media on children" talk when it's the adults' relationship to social media that is causing the most widespread harm.
The erosion of free (or mostly free), teen-friendly physical third spaces is a big part of this problem, imo. As is the culture of clamping down on kids’ free movement irl. Young people need to have safe spots to hang out together without being pressured to spend money or have a ton of adults breathing down their necks.
Not saying that misogyny or bigotry would disappear, but bringing these back in an accessible way could allow kids to grow again without dealing with corporate surveillance apparatuses as their only social lifeline.
I quite enjoyed hanging out with my friends without having a flood of antisocial adults hurl venom at us on repeat. They deserve that chance too.
I absolutely agree, we used to have movie theaters and arcades and skate parks and various kinds of stores that people would hang out at just because going out and shopping was what people did, so shopping areas were developed to make them more attractive.
With the advent of online shopping, places like malls died rapidly and with them also died outdoor activities and people just hanging out around other people in crowds, there was an energy to life that disappeared with malls and so many storefronts. There are still a few malls and pleasant shopping areas here and there, but they're not places you want to spend time at, they're more like showrooms for Amazon.
I don't know if there's a good answer for that though, I don't know if you just started building things like arcades and youth bookstores and the like if you would actually get anyone going out to use them, because that original incentive is gone, the whole "going out and seeing what's new" thing has disappeared, because again... we get all that from our algorithmic feeds.
What would make YOU excited to go out and hang out around other people? I feel that the entire premise is dying, and adults are equally crippled by this problem as kids, which is why I keep saying this isn't just a "kids and social media" problem, this is all of us and our relationship with the internet.
That’s a completely fair question and point.
My being an adult skews my answer, so idk if it’s a fair one but I recently went to a local concert and had a blast with the other people there. What makes me, as an individual, excited overall is knowing other people will be there and the place will feel alive.
Unstructured but available activity seems to be the unifying theme for the location attractions of our own pasts. I don’t have a perfect solution but identifying the issues seems to be a step, at least.
Do these kids just not have parents or adult guardians?
The vast majority probably do. For a parent or guardian to be useful in this sort of situation they need to take an active interest and forge a bond with their ward, and this day and age I don't think that all who wish to do that have the ability to, and there'll be a decent chunk of people who simply don't care.
I've a parent who didn't really give a fuck. I ended up hitting up lots of random dudes, making a bid for some kind of emotional connection, and no one in my personal vicinity knew, cared, or cared to know. It was a terrible idea, but my story is hardly unique, I know a handful of people with very similar stories.
I've seen plenty of misogyny here on the threadiverse. It's not solved just by not using Instagram or TikTok.
Edit: it's in this very comment section, in fact.
It is everywhere, including irl.
However, I would guess it is more prevalent on Xhitter than here.
Better yet, make a UK-based Mastodon instance "for the children", keeping it safe from such?
Read the article instead of the headline ✅👍