| Conducted by | Respect Victoria |
|---|---|
| Date | August 2024 |
Overview
‘Your image belongs to you’: Young people, social media and image autonomy presents findings from an exploratory study that considers new avenues for practice, policy and research on what might help or inhibit children and young people to be safe online.
In this study, Body Safety Australia and Respect Victoria spoke with specialised facilitators who deliver respectful relationships education (RRE) to thousands of children and young people in Victoria each year. We used their insights to investigate two overlapping research questions:
How can respectful relationships educators’ observations about how children and young people talk about social media, gaming, online safety and image sharing help us to understand how to prevent image-based harmful sexual behaviours, including AI-generated harmful sexual behaviours?
In what ways might social media algorithms be understood as a contributing factor to gendered violence enacted by children and young people?
‘Your image belongs to you’ makes three important, new contributions to primary prevention research and practice evidence:
- the report introduces the concept of image autonomy – the idea that every person, no matter their age, has the right to decide how their image is taken and shared – into policy and research literature
- it explores how social norms modelled by adults may influence how children perceive respect and consent for image taking and sharing
- it examines the role of social media algorithms and algorithms on other online platforms as mechanisms that contribute to the likelihood and occurrence of technology-assisted harmful sexual behaviours (TA-HSBs) enacted by children and young people.
Methods
This research was an exploratory qualitative study jointly led by Body Safety Australia and Respect Victoria. The research draws on two focus group discussions with respectful relationships educators – specialist practitioners contracted by schools to facilitate respectful relationships and consent education in classrooms. Participants had worked as respectful relationships educators for between nine months and seven years at Body Safety Australia.
We asked participants about their observations of how children and young people in Victorian classrooms talk about gender, social media, and harmful images generated by their peers using artificial intelligence (AI) programs and apps. Participants were also asked to share what they have observed of how peer, teacher and school community interactions and dynamics shape attitudes towards use of AI-generated images and image sharing.
Key findings
The report presents three key findings from the analysis.
1. Children, young people and adults do not appear to understand the concept of image autonomy.
Educators in the focus groups shared that many young people think it is normal for their image to be captured and shared without their consent, because these practices have been commonplace throughout their life: for example, parents or family members sharing candid photos on social media platforms. These established norms can create barriers for educators in talking to students about image-based autonomy and consent in the context of online safety and addressing TA-HSBs.
If you say, ‘Your image belongs to you’, even from grade 3, they’re debating you and they’re saying, ‘No it doesn’t, because my mum posts photos of me all the time and that bath photo of me, I hate it, but … this person is sharing it.’ (footnote 1)
Social media platforms appear to influence understanding of image autonomy, as they incentivise high volumes of image sharing. The broad range of online content that children consume can contribute to poor understanding of image autonomy by normalising the prolific sharing of day-to-day life and modelling the non-consensual sharing of a child’s image for profit. This helps to maintain a widespread belief that children don’t have a right to say no to participating in photos or videos.
It’s just so popular [with kids]. That it’s adults who have a family [vlog] … that’s their entire form of income … filming their family, and so it really normalises the whole [idea that] as children … all family can do whatever with our image.
2. Exposure to gender norms, stereotypes and misogyny across online platforms may influence young people’s behaviours in the classroom.
Children’s and young people’s exposure to harmful gender norms, stereotypes and misogyny across social media, gaming and adjacent platforms appears to influence their attitudes and how they behave towards their peers and teachers in the classroom. The educators in the focus groups had had different experiences with how often children brought up famous manosphere influencers such as Andrew Tate in the classroom, but most agreed that it was very common for boys to use gendered meme language they had been exposed to through the social media platforms used for streaming games, such as Discord, Twitch and YouTube. Many of them had observed boys using manosphere language such as ‘sigma’ and ‘alpha’ – terms that have been popularised within manosphere culture as a way to class different types of men within a perceived hierarchy of hegemonic masculinity – during classroom discussions.
I feel like when I was in school, we all kind of used the same meme language, but they, yeah, you’ve got ‘slay, baddie’ [from the girls] and then you’ve got ‘rizz Ohio sigma’ [from the boys], like completely different gendered relationships with memes.
Children’s and young people’s online activities appeared to influence how they resisted the messages of gender equality and consent education. This appeared to be exacerbated by examples of victim-blaming discourses in the media surrounding high-profile sexual assault and domestic violence accusations or court cases.
Focus group participants observed that many children and young people seem to overestimate their understanding of how algorithms work, and the level of control that they have over the content they are served by different platforms. This can make it challenging to engage students in critical reflection about the limited content choices they are afforded from recommender algorithms and what that means for their agency as they navigate online spaces. Young people’s belief that they curate their own online experience can also mean that young people, especially boys, blame themselves for being served harmful content. These dynamics highlight the need for digital literacy programs to take on a more comprehensive approach to teaching young people about recommender algorithms.
When you start talking about the manosphere stuff, interestingly, you do get some … boys in the classroom … who kind of take a deep breath once you name it, that it’s algorithm based, and they’re like, ‘I thought I was the problem … I’m not trying to get that content, but it just keeps coming up’ … It’s like [they’re] carrying some sense of guilt or shame around [consuming] that content.
3. Young people’s attitudes about image sharing appear to be shaped by the combined influences of harmful gender norms and poor understanding of image autonomy, and the actions of parents and other adults around them
Focus group participants observed that TA-HSBs and related harms are viewed by many students, particularly boys, as less serious than physical harms. This tendency to minimise online harm and its impacts may combine with students’ and caregivers’ inattention to image autonomy and online exposure to harmful gender norms to heighten the likelihood of children enacting TA-HSBs using images.
I feel like boys generally are less aware or interested in the tangibility of the risks of online harms, because they’re not literally physical harm. And I feel girls are more aware of emotional harm, and the way that emotional harm physically harms them. Boys are like, ‘Well, it’s online, it can’t hurt me’, you know, ‘That bullying online is not real’, ‘No-one’s gonna punch me in the face, ’cause they’re online ... just log off. Just block, delete’, whereas the girls seem aware of the innate harms of non-physical, like, internet violence.
In addition, focus group participants observed how the widespread normalisation and use of generative AI to create fake images may complicate the process of teaching young people about image autonomy.
And so, at the same time as AI coming in, we’re so far away from understanding that if someone is included in an AI image in whatever capacity, that that’s also part of something that deserves autonomy and dignity. Like, we’re not even there with real pictures.
Implications and future research directions
‘Your image belongs to you’ offers several implications from these findings:
- Image autonomy may be a protective factor for image-based harms.
- Social media algorithms may drive children’s and young people’s resistance to prevention of gendered violence by serving polarising and misogynistic content that reinforces gender norms and stereotypes.
- Adults appear to have a vital role in the prevention of TA-HSBs enacted by children and young people using images.
The report also highlights the importance of valuing and amplifying the expertise of primary prevention practitioners in evidence-building efforts and suggests priority directions for future research. These include the need for engaging with children and young people directly, as well as further research into image autonomy, to expand how we think about primary prevention and online social lives and influences, and to understand the role of intersecting forms of structural discrimination in driving TA-HSBs between children and young people.
Read the report
Body Safety Australia and Respect Victoria acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples and Traditional Owners and Custodians of the lands and waterways. We pay our respects to their Elders, past and present. We proudly acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and their ongoing strength in being the world’s oldest living cultures. We acknowledge the significant and ongoing impacts of colonisation and commit to working alongside First Nations communities to effect change. We recognise the ongoing leadership role of these communities in addressing and preventing family violence and violence against women, and will continue to work in collaboration with First Peoples to eliminate these forms of violence from all communities.
Body Safety Australia and Respect Victoria acknowledge the significant impact of family violence and violence against women on individuals, families and communities, and the strength, trauma and resilience of the children, young people and adults who have, and are still, experiencing this violence. We pay our respects to those whose lives were taken and to their family members and friends. We keep at the forefront in our minds all those who have experienced family violence or other forms of abuse, and for whom we undertake this work.
Report authors
- Kate Hepworth, Head of Research, Body Safety Australia
- Hazel Donley, Senior Adviser, Research and Translation
- Dr Stephanie Lusby, Manager, Research
Body Safety Australia and Respect Victoria would like to thank the respectful relationships education program facilitators who contributed their valuable knowledge and expertise to this project. We also wish to thank the following contributors:
Governance group: Dr Jenny Anderson, Deanne Carson, Jacquie O’Brien
Report contributors: Lauren Coutts, Dr Kim Powell
Study design workshop: Lauren French, Jay Jones
Reviewers: Dr Lewis Allan, Jackson Fairchild, Professor Nicola Henry, Dr Laura McVey
Copy editor: Vanessa Winter
Suggested citation
Body Safety Australia and Respect Victoria. ‘Your image belongs to you’: Young people, social media and image autonomy. Melbourne: Respect Victoria; 2025.
Creative Commons information to be added
ISBN 978-1-76130-904-5 (pdf/word/online)
Footnotes
All quotes are from Body Safety Australia respectful relationships educators who participated in the focus groups.