Sociology professor and Canada Research Chair in Inequality and Gender Kaitlynn Mendes is at the onset of a five-year study looking at the role of digital technologies in shaping tech-facilitated violence and harms. Building off previous research conducted in the United Kingdom, Mendes is hoping to better understand Canadian youth’s online practices to better support them.
Mendes’ work sits at the intersection of media, education and politics. Her research and teaching adopt a feminist perspective to combat gender inequalities and their relationship with media technologies. She will be presenting her work on May 30, at Congress 2023 held at York University.
Why is it important to understand how digital technologies affect our youth?
The big question is, “What is the role digital technologies play in impacting our society?” We can start by looking at young people because they are often early adopters of new technology.
We need to be thinking about what all this screen time is doing to young people and we can think about it sociologically, from the perspective of mental health and cognitive development. There is much research that needs to be done and a lot we just don’t know.
What specifically are you looking to better understand in your study?
My research is interested in how youth are interacting with one another. I’ve always been interested in what drives violence, sexual violence and gender-based violence and now we are trying to understand what role digital technologies are playing.
I’m also interested in how young people are being supported to navigate this new world where tech-facilitated harms are on the rise. Young people are experiencing all these different kinds of harms and there is very little guidance to help them manage this new digital environment.
Why use the term ‘tech-facilitated violence’?
We’re really trying to move away from terminology such as ‘cyberbullying’. For example, we are trying to use what we call tech-facilitated violence. Cyberbullying is a problematic term because it’s too broad. It can minimize a lot of harms. A situation where someone has posted intimate photos of you without consent is more than just bullying. We also need schools, teachers and parents to be better equipped to support and guide our youth.
What is an example of an area where better guidance is needed?
One area is youth exploring their sexuality online. Young people are going to use digital technologies to explore and express sexuality. However, when this goes wrong, they don’t tell adults because for a long time all they’ve been told is, “just don’t do it,” giving the impression they’ll get in trouble rather than be helped. Youth are left to sort these situations out themselves and many are unsuccessful.
We’re not talking to young people about safer ways that they can explore their sexuality and that for me is a piece that’s really missing.
Kaitlynn Mendes, associate professor in the department of sociology at Western University (Robert Rombouts photo)
How is your Canadian study different from your U.K. study?
We are trying to reach a more diverse group. We are specifically looking to speak with LGBTQ+ communities, racialized communities and Indigenous communities. We will be doing focus groups in French in Quebec to better understand differences in experiences based on language. Canada is also a far bigger country. We don’t want to assume that the experiences of young people in Yukon are the same as those in Toronto, or the same for those who live in rural versus urban communities.
We’re going to ask young people about who is helping them, and who they want to help them. We want to find out where young people want the help to come from and then be sure we are investing resources accordingly. In the U.K. study, we found almost no one was going to their school for help, they were in fact going to their friends or dealing with issues on their own.
We will also be looking at Canadian laws. We want to talk to young people about what they think the laws are around some of their practices.
What are some surprises you’ve encountered in your research with youth?
Although I was not surprised by the amount of tech-facilitated harms that girls experience, I was surprised by the number of boys who experience it. For example, boys reported higher rates of growth in body shaming spurred on by social media, than I expected. Boys also have slightly higher rates of reporting this harm to parents or schools. I would have expected girls to be more likely to ask for help.
What drives you to do your research with youth?
Previously I was looking at how (mostly young people) were using digital technologies to fight for feminist aims to challenge rape culture, misogyny and sexism. I had spent a lot of time talking to young people about their use of digital technologies. We realized there was an awful lot of abuse and harm they received any time they went online.
The move to explicitly study what I now call technology-facilitated sexual violence was also spurred on by my closest research collaborator, Jessica Ringrose from University College London. We also wanted not just to focus on girls, but boys, trans people and those who are generally gender nonconforming.
It’s important that all my work can facilitate impact. I got a taste of this in previous projects, and since I see my research as a key part of my feminist activism (I identify as a feminist scholar primarily), this has been important. I like this kind of work because I am not only finding out what’s happening to young people, but working to make their lives, hopefully, better.
