Social media is waging a war on women
Opinion
The media industry must stop looking the other way as social media sucks the life out of women and girls; the time for action is long overdue, writes Nicola Kemp.
Trigger warning: this article contains references to suicide and rape, which some readers may find distressing.
The Instagram algorithm hates me. My feed is full of women telling their husbands they can’t pay the mortgage this month, along with their responses to this ‘joke’. Apparently, it is simply laughable that a woman would have the knowledge, know-how, or financial capability to pay a mortgage on a home that she lives in.
Despite the endless dudes on conference stages across the industry waxing lyrical about the personalisation at scale offered by digital media, it seems to my algorithm I will always be a stranger.
Despite the fact that when I lift an iron I immediately feel the weight of the patriarchy in my hands and have to immediately put it down, I am served up a never-ending stream of ‘trad wives’ extolling the virtues of ironing bedsheets.
If I succumb to that terrible habit of deadscrolling Instagram on my morning commute, I am often served up a toxic diet of women preaching domestic servitude. Why are all these women telling me all about the benefits of ironing bedsheets?
And don’t get me started on the ‘sourdough starter’ sisters. The algorithm must recognise that my favourite home-cooked meal comes in a Charlie Bigham’s box.
While it might feel like a joke, the algorithm is waging a war against my life choices.
The cost of that great life you aren’t living
It would be easy to brush this everyday experience off. Make a joke of it even. But on social media, women are always the punchline.
The ‘trad wife’ phenomenon perfectly encapsulates the inauthenticity that forms the rotten heart of the worst aspects of influencer culture. That a generation of women should build their media empires, create endless merch and build commercial deals by selling other women economic disempowerment as a lifestyle choice is the ultimate lie.
Yet the stereotyping, shaming and sidelining of women and girls on social media has become the toxic exhaust fumes that we are expected to endure for the simple act of existence.
If you are childfree, a mother, a CEO, an athlete, a trans woman, a Black woman, a disabled woman, a model, a girl, a woman entering menopause, or a girl embarking on the journey to becoming a teenager, the message is simple yet deadly: you will never be enough.
This loathing does more than clog up our Instagram feeds; it breeds hatred and violence that seeps into every aspect of society. Women are the ultimate rage bait.
The women who speak up even when they are gagged
Social media is waging a war against women and girls, conditioning them to live in a constant state of postponement. After you have lost weight, you can be happy. When you reach an arbitrary number on a scale, you can wear shorts. When you achieve an invisible, impossible and ever-rising beauty standard, you will be enough. On social media, the cost of entry to womanhood will only ever rise.
The national shock that accompanied the sentencing of three teenage boys who raped two girls in separate attacks filmed on their phones shows we haven’t been paying attention. One of the victims, demonstrating barbaric levels of bravery, used her voice once again after the trial to challenge the lack of custodial sentences given to her attackers. A decision, she told the BBC, that was like ‘a rock straight in my face.’
Advertisers fund a digital media ecosystem in which ‘raping for content’ is a reality. Such is the proliferation of secret filming and sexual exploitation of women online that in China, there is a term for this act of online betrayal, ‘toupai chumai.’ Social media has created both a new language and a new platform to terrorise women and girls.
Meanwhile, the AI revolution has supercharged misogyny at scale; 96% of all deepfake videos online are pornographic and 99% of deep fake pornography targets women and girls.
Yet, the voices of these women and girls, who have had their lives, reputations and schooling destroyed by deepfakes, are almost entirely absent from our industry debate. At the same time, young girls increasingly obsessed with their online personas risk becoming disconnected from their own ambitions. Social media thrives on women playing small.
Social media’s judgement reflex
As the medical establishment belatedly wakes up to the real-world harm of social media, it’s easy to advocate for binary solutions. Blanket bans are simpler than the complex solutions needed to address the real-world harm caused by social media.
It’s easy to proclaim ‘Social media is the new smoking’; I know because I wrote that exact headline in 2018. Eight years later, it is clear not only that we are going backwards, but also that the smoking analogy used in the coverage of the new report by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges is misleading.
Smoking implies choice. It obscures the cumulative impact of social media messaging; the digital exhaust fumes that young people have no choice in inhaling. It sidesteps the reality that digital literacy and social engagement have significant economic and emotional upsides.
Yet just as I, as a fully grown woman, am not actively seeking out advice on how to have no responsibility for paying my own mortgage, vulnerable teenage girls are not always actively seeking out content on self-harm. We must recognise the scale of the problem. In the six months before she died, Molly Russell saved, liked or shared 2,100 pieces of content related to suicide, self-harm, or depression.
The price of silence
A child psychologist recently shared with me the growing phenomenon of teenage girls who are unable to recognise or respond to the real-world trauma they experience, because they choose not to share it on their social media feeds. When their content was shiny and happy, these young girls could not process or understand their genuine issues. At its worst, social media makes us all strangers; even to ourselves.
It is a disconnection reflected in the media industry. It’s easy to laugh at the ridiculousness of our feeds. To brush off the rage-baiting and the trad wives. But toxic algorithms and addictive recommendation systems are selling women self-loathing at scale. Safeguarding the well-being of women and girls is not a joke.
Last week, Sarah Wynn-Williams, the Facebook Whistleblower and author of Careless People, made her silence a public act of defiance. She sat on a panel at the Hay Festival, having been gagged by Meta’s lawyers. Her silence says everything we need to hear about the gross power imbalance at play. Her courage makes it impossible to ignore the respective freedom we all have to speak truth to power.
This assault on women and girls is not inevitable. We can reject misogyny at scale. We have a responsibility to draw a line. As organisations, we can choose not to invest in platforms waging a war on the wellbeing of women and girls.
As individuals, we can speak out about the toxic impact of social media. We have a choice. To the women reading this, know this to be true: the problem was never you.
Nicola Kemp has spent over two decades writing about diversity, equality and inclusion in media. She is now editorial director at Creativebrief and writes for The Media Leader each month.