Those who have experienced slut shaming have been subject to feelings of humiliation, degradation, and harassment, and these horrible impacts have strengthened with the rise of social media. Social media gives users the power to share and spread media content, such as pictures and videos, as well as commentary and opinions with other users. This interaction lacks direct contact with others, thus strongly affects the way people use it. Many people gain a sort of confidence when posting on social media, and say things they wouldn’t necessarily say in real life. Its increasing popularity and ability to spread content quickly allows for the growth of social media to enhance slut shaming and it’s humiliating, degrading, and harassing effects on society.
According to CNN journalist Kelly Wallace, “the average teen spends one third of their day on social media”. Wallace studied the statistics of social media use among teens alongside Common Sense Media, the non profit organization dedicating to educating society about the use of media. This generation is constantly bombarded with pictures, videos, and reports of the lives of other people. Facebook, along with many other social media sites, provides an easy route for bullying and harassment because of how easily social media content can be spread due to its popularity among current day society. Mean and humiliating rumors can be started and spread through social media, whether they are true or false. When a college student named Sienna was a victim of social media slut shaming, a video of her dancing with another girl’s boyfriend was spread to both the girlfriend and social media in a blink of an eye. An article written from online journalist Kat Ascharya about the incident describes Sienna’s experience and feelings. Sienna, along with many others in society, was a victim to the fast spreading nature of social media and slut shaming. Ascharya notes that Sienna “found herself being glared at while sitting in class or passing through the main quad. She felt hunted and humiliated, and she wasn’t sure if she could make it through the rest of the semester” Sienna became victimized, and was constantly self-conscious and uncomfortable, knowing many of the girls around her were either talking about her or judging her.
Social media also creates the ability to openly share uncensored content without directly interacting with people. Many gain a sense of confidence to say or post things while hiding behind a screen, creating an an easy route to cyberbullying. In a recent NPR article, a sixteen year old girl, Temitayo Fagbenle, talks about the social media slut shaming experiences she’s witnessed in her high school, writing about a girl who was a victim to her own boyfriend’s slut shaming. Fagbenle writes that the girl’s “boyfriend put an intimate video of them up on the Internet, and suddenly everyone was talking about it. ‘He was going around holding his head high’, the girl says. ‘He gave me a bad name.’” The girl in the article thus had been deemed a reputation throughout school, and felt exposed and humiliated that something so private had been open to the public with the click of a button. The ability to share uncensored content has also created a competitive atmosphere on social media. Many people strive to appear as if they live the “ideal” life via social media posts. However, this can lead people to posting desperate things to show off. There have been many instances of people, particularly boys, posting intimate pictures or videos of others, particularly girls, to brag about their sexual experiences, without the other person’s knowledge. However, in almost every case, the victim is the one who faces repercussions for it, as opposed to the person who posted it. The NPR article also discusses a girl who was tagged in a half naked photo of herself, posted by a boy, and taken without her knowledge. Fagbenle writes that “the boy who posted it tagged the picture so that everyone could see it and go to the girl’s page. Within less than an hour, the photo had about 443 likes and 261 comments. Comments like “your life is officially shot LMAO,” and “I think she gonna cut her veins when she see this.” Without even thinking about how horrible of an action this boy committed, people went straight to attacking the girl. Fagbenle quoted some of the girls from her school who had a lot to say about the occurrence, writing that “talking to a group of girls at my school about this online slut shaming, some of them say they often feel the need to shame other girls for their improper behavior. “They do it to themselves,” one girls says. “Half the time we can’t even blame the guys.” The girl in the post faced the devastation of being exposed on the internet on top of harassment and bullying from fellow classmates. Robert Thornberg, in the department of Behavioral Sciences and Learning at Linköping University in Sweeden, wrote an EBSCOhost article on the processes and psychology of bullying. Thornberg concludes that when a person is singled out and victimized, “a negative reputation of the victim is constructed and spread further within the community. Even those who do not actively participate in bullying do not want to socialise with the victim because of social pressure”. Social media facilitates bullying and slut shaming, and degrades victims with a cruel reputation throughout their community.
Social Media has grown at an incredible rate from just a decade ago to current day. This rapid growth has had many different impacts on society as a whole. One of these major impacts has been the growth of slut shaming in a community. From teenagers to women, and even some men, slut shaming has become a large issue with the development of social media. We have gone deeper into this concept, exploring sources in which young teens discuss the amount of slut shaming they have experienced and witnessed via social media. Slut shaming brings humiliating, degrading, and harassing feelings to those victimized, and the rise of social media has enhanced these impacts by creating an easy route to shame targets.