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Online Dating Abuse Affects Girls More Than Boys

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The online dating industry is growing day by day, but there are some consequences that come with it.

A new study from “News Nation” states that girls who undergo difficult behaviours from an online dating partner – such as control, threats, pressure, monitoring or coercion using digital mediums – are more likely to have serious consequences than boys. The team of this particular study inspected the impact of gender on 703 US high school students’ occurrence of digital dating abuse behaviours.

Lead author of the study, as a Assistant Project Scientist at University of California-Santa Barbara stated that “Although digital dating abuse is potentially harmful for all youths, gender matters”. This statement backs up the findings that revealed that girls showed more frequent digital sexual victimisation.

Girls had been testified to being more distressed and having more negative emotional responses when confronted with certain behaviours like “pressured to sext” (sending a sexual or naked photo of them-self), sent a threatening message or looked at private information to check up without any permission given to scrutinise activities and locations.

Richard Tolman, Professor at the University of Michigan also stated that ““Boys often treat girls as sex objects, which contributes to the higher rate of digital sexual coercion, as boys may feel entitled to have sexual power over girls.”

Tolman added, “Girls, on the contrary, are required to prioritise relationships, which can steer to more jealousy and possessive behaviour. Thus, they may also tend to monitor boys’ activities.”

 

 

It was investigated as to whether girls and boys conveyed equal levels of digital control and monitoring, and digital direct violence and hostility. The results showed that both genders did have equal levels of control. Having said this, girls were found to react by blocking communication with their partner when faced with direct aggression, such as threats and rumour spreading. Whereas, boys did not have the same reaction.

 

Chloe Gay

Chloe is a reporter at Global Dating Insights. Originally from Bracknell, she is studying Communication & Media at Bournemouth University. She enjoys writing, travelling and socialising with her friends and family.

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