When Hannah Smith committed suicide after being viciously bullied on social media site Ask.fm, we vowed as a society to do more. We said we would force social media sites to be accountable for their lax moderation, and crack down on those tormenting teenagers to death with vile abuse. Why, then, less than a week after her funeral, did photos of a teenage girl performing oral sex on a boy in a field become the second worldwide trending topic on Twitter on Monday? And why were there endless jokes, insults and disapprobation slung her way, and not at the boy concerned?
The incident happened during an Eminem concert at Slane Castle in Ireland. And immediately the girl was branded a slut online with hashtags: 'slanegirl' and 'slaneslut' fast becoming trends.
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When it comes to online safety, social media is repeatedly and unrepentantly failing teenagers. The usage of sites such as Twitter and Facebook has increased sharply over the past few years, and yet the care with which they are monitored seemingly has not. These social media suicides are a worryingy trend that shows no signs of slowing down, in spite of the damning press in the wake of its latest victim. How many young people need to kill themselves as a result of online torment for it to trigger some actual change?
A teenage girl giving someone a blow job is not shocking – standing by and taking photos before posting them to millions of people is. And the image says it all really: the boy stands triumphant, arms raised in self-congratulation as she kneels in the mud, trying to appease. The boy being completely naked is of course no matter when it comes to those venting their disgust at the girl’s actions – it is her, she is the sordid one, and social media will see that she is duly rebuked.
Sites such as Facebook and Twitter need a complete overhaul of their safety and moderation measures – it is simply not good enough that foul images, pages or messages are allowed to be created, and then only taken down after particularly loud and prolific campaigns.
These organisations know that the average teenage girl won’t be able to leverage a damning movement against them, so they continue to allow people to offend, and to fail to protect, without fear of repercussions. If social media sites target teenagers to join in the first place, why should they not be held accountable when they are used as vehicles for malice? The by and large refusal of companies to reform their sites demonstrates just how the welfare of users ranks well below their drive to increase traffic.
Not all teenagers are ignorant to the perils of using social media, but a hell of a lot of them are, and we have to take responsibility for the way children as young as 11 or 12 are being treated online. If we saw someone getting verbally abused on the street we would defend them, so why does that same mentality not translate to the internet?
By refusing to properly examine the way certain sites are moderated and monitored, we are enabling keyboard warriors from around the world to pick their victims at will. And for the most part, teenagers, and teenage girls, specifically, become the target – viewed as too weak to defend themselves, and too insignificant to be defended by society.
This perpetual cycle of social media misery completely distorts what sites of this ilk set out to do in the first place – i.e. to connect people socially. No online environment should become a breeding ground for bullying and hostility towards the young and vulnerable.
There is constant talk from both politicians and media outlets about how the sexualisation of children is the primary issue facing young girls, but to me, harassing children to the point where they literally feel they can't bear living for a second longer is a far more urgent matter than shielding bikini shots of Kim Kardashian. What kind of tragedy needs to happen to make these companies up their game.
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