Digital violence

The term digital violence refers to the whole range of insults, belittling, coercion, (sexual) harassment and discrimination that take place in the digital space (social media, chat forums, messaging, etc.). In most cases, these acts of violence take place from a place of relative anonymity for the perpetrators, which makes it difficult for those affected to protect themselves or defend themselves. The fact that the attacks happen at any time and can often be followed by many people often makes digital violence particularly distressing.

Digital violence is committed in very different ways. Some of them are considered sexualized violence, such as sexting (unwanted sending of pornographic material), sextortion (blackmail using intimate photos/videos), revenge porn (publishing intimate photos/videos) or cybergrooming (sexual harassment of minors via the internet). Others have a more fraudulent motivation - such as identity theft or marriage fraud.

Another, very large area of digital violence has the sole aim of belittling and insulting other people (either individually and/or with a sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, queer-hostile or other inhumane background), for example in the form of hate speech (hate comments), defamation or cyber-harassment (digital harassment).

In other cases, acts of violence are also virtually "continued" in the digital space, such as intimate partner violence or cyberstalking (often following a separation), cyberbullying or the more or less direct threat of physical or sexualized violence.

Even if you have experienced this or similar types of digital violence in any form, you can contact us at any time. Such acts of violence are never okay and often have serious emotional consequences that you do not have to deal with alone.