An Introduction to Social Media, Platform Economies, Consent, Images and Abuse
摘要
This chapter introduces our study on image-based abuse carried out with nearly 500 young people through a UK wide survey and interview and arts-based research across seven distinct school settings. We sketch some of our main survey findings showing young people experience high rates of harm on specific social media platforms. We explain our socio-cultural and tech affordances approach to social media platform economies, which uncovers how game-like engagement features push users to expand their networks, use the apps more frequently, and stay on them longer, with the goal of increasing profits. These same application features designed to keep kids online, create considerable online risk and harms. Our key concept in the book image-based sexual harassment and abuse (IBSHA) helps us to understand how and when consent is bypassed when using social media apps. We show how educational policy and curriculum focused on abstinence approaches, anti-sexing messaging, and child pornography laws are lagging behind youth experiences of social media and failing to address risks from adult predators and peer to peer abuse. We conclude by charting our books’ goal to develop better digital literacy and sex education that supports young people.