“As a society, I think that there’s a lot more that we could be doing to make young girls feel more accepted,” says Anthony Asfour, reflecting on the findings of a UK study showing happiness among girls and young women is at its lowest since 2009.
A supervisor for the charity Childline, Asfour and his team of volunteers in London are contacted 84 times a day, on average, by children and young people in distress. Many of the issues highlighted in the report by Girlguiding this week, especially those around online abuse, ring true with them.
“The number of contacts that we’re getting with regards to online sexual harassment, online sex work, exploitation, even online bullying is increasing. It’s something that is really kind of plaguing young girls at the moment.”
According to Girlguiding, 37% of girls and young women aged 11-21 have been sent upsetting photos or content by people they know, up from 17% 10 years ago.
For the parents and teachers it is a snapshot of the online world that their daughters and pupils are having to deal with.
“You can’t tell girls not to be on social media, because that’s not the society we live in any more,” says Molly Smith, a 21-year-old student from Southampton.
“You can’t turn it off. If you’re on your phone, you’ll see it.”
Sixty per cent of 11- to 21-year-olds who responded to the Girlguiding survey said they worried about the negative impact that being online had on their mental health.
The effects on a girl’s self-esteem can last into adulthood, says Olga Jurasz, a law professor at the Open University who recently led the biggest ever UK survey into online violence against women.
“The survey I led on shows the detrimental impact their lives in the online space has on their day to day lives, not just now but long-term.”
Prof Jurasz’s study, conducted online by YouGov in February, heard from 4,000 women and girls.
Eight in 10 said that experiencing online violence – which includes abusive messages, intimate photos being shared without their consent, trolling and threats – had affected them negatively.
“I think it is shocking, although it doesn’t surprise me that young women and girls feel that way,” she says.
For many women, being attacked online leads to them losing confidence, and withdrawing from posting or getting involved in debates. Instead, they become more passive consumers: 37% of women aged 16 to 24 said online violence had left them feeling less able to express themselves online.
Prof Jurasz worries that could lead to women’s voices being silenced in wider society, and damage their job prospects.
Smith, along with Charlotte Cook, Millie Johnson and Jiya Mehta, all 16, are at Girlguiding headquarters in central London. The question of education, in particular the need to teach young men to better respect women, comes up.
“One of the statistics is that 69% of girls have reported hearing boys and men say something that they would deem as toxic,” Johnson says, outrage in her voice.
“There’s a lot of language thrown around and it’s very harmful to girls to hear a whole gender spoken about in that way, especially online.”
The rise of misogynistic influencers such as Andrew Tate has increased pressure on parents and teachers to educate boys in how to respect girls and women, a feat that Johnson, encouragingly, says her school in Dorset is tackling well.
“They’re having assemblies talking to boys about these issues, so that they’re not in the dark and that all they’re seeing is Andrew Tate and people like his followers online. They’re getting a broader opinion.”
Nevertheless, the Girlguiding study suggests many girls and young women are feeling intense pressure to live up to the “perfected”, heteronormative visions of beauty they see across social media.
“Like, putting filters on photos and stuff. That’s not the real image. And no one’s going to ever achieve that,” says Johnson.
“Sixty-eight per cent of girls in this survey said they want to lose weight. They want to lose weight because they’ve seen it online, and it’s completely unrealistic. Body ideals are changing all the time.”
Smith is studying drama at university, and in her spare time leads a Brownies group for seven- to 10-year-olds. She says many of them are being affected by the same pressures as teenagers.
Cook, who is sitting by her side, nods in agreement. She says that even when she’s not seeking them out, negative or pressurising images come up on social media, thanks to the powerful algorithms of sites such as TikTok and Instagram.
“You can go in with best intentions, like, you type in ‘workout videos’ and suddenly you get given all these harmful things [saying] ‘you should lose weight, you should look like this’. We get bombarded.”
Cook says despite the challenges her generation faces, she is excited about what they can achieve – as feminists, climate activists and in their careers.
She hopes to work in mathematics, a field she says older people frequently tell her, dismissively, is “very competitive”. Some days, the future can feel insurmountable.
“I think that’s why we are so unhappy. Because every single day, you will put yourself under pressure to do your best so that you can do the thing you want to do.”
With the multiplicity of pressures young women are facing today, it’s more vital than ever that parents and carers make a space for them to communicate frankly.
Mehta says: “I think parents should give their children a space and sort of get an open conversation going. Just saying, ‘Have you seen this on social media? Did you see anything like that?’
“Teenagers are often hoping for someone to talk to them.”
