Trolling and safety fears plague many young women online, UK study finds

A woman displays a display of her smartphone in Abuja, Nigeria September 21, 2020. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde/File Photograph

LONDON, June 1 (Reuters) – Younger ladies are a lot more involved about the mental overall health impact of getting online than other world wide web end users, with quite a few citing personal security fears and the harm induced by trolling, a study by Britain’s media watchdog has located.

Regulators and activists throughout the environment are progressively contacting on Huge Tech organizations to tackle hate speech on on-line platforms, a plea echoed by the head of Britain’s Ofcom regulator as she unveiled the report on online use.

“The message from women of all ages who go on the web is loud and very clear,” Ofcom Main Government Melanie Dawes said in a assertion on Wednesday.

“They are considerably less self-confident about their individual on the web protection, and truly feel the negative consequences of dangerous content like trolling additional deeply.”

The report discovered that girls aged 18-34 were a lot more probable than any other group to report a damaging all round affect on mental health and fitness, with 23% of them disagreeing that currently being on the internet has a beneficial influence on their mental health.

In comparison, 45% of men more than the age of 18 agreed with that statement, whilst boys aged 13-17 ended up most possible to concur with it.

Dawes urged substantial tech businesses to choose women’s on line basic safety fears very seriously.

The investigate, which was performed previous year and surveyed extra than 6,000 men and women, identified that 60% of female customers who had knowledgeable trolling claimed they were bothered or offended by it, when compared to just 25% of guys.

The examine also uncovered that ladies really feel a lot less equipped to have a voice and share opinions online.

The web pages and applications most frequented by older people were owned by Alphabet (GOOGL.O), the owner of Google and YouTube. That was followed by Meta, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, and Amazon (AMZN.O).

Reporting by Muvija M
Enhancing by Helen Popper

Our Criteria: The Thomson Reuters Rely on Ideas.