This was one of the most depressing articles I’ve read online in a long time. As a middle-aged man who has never used Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Tik Tok or any other social media, I was shocked to find out this is what young women have to deal with. Reading this article upset me more than the Epstein revelations or any other bad news stories that have been in the press this year.Other than the one year I worked on a building site, I’ve been lucky that I only encountered mild sexism among male colleagues but never outright misogyny as described in this article. Same goes for my experience in an all-boys secondary school and my college experience in a mostly male engineering course during the 90s.
Until recently, I really thought things were getting better for women and that they would be valued and respected more for their accomplishments than their looks. I remember being a teenager in rural Ireland in the 80s with very little money (and very little exposure to the outside world) was difficult enough but now I think I was lucky to have been born at that time. My heart goes out to anyone who is trying to learn about and navigate the world when they are being constantly bombarded with such negative and hateful messaging. Also, to all parents out there who have to try and prepare their children to deal with this.
As an advocate of free speech, I’m now less certain of my opposition to laws that restrict such hateful speech and I would support a ban on social media usage for under-16s. I’d actually like to see such a ban extended to smart-phone devices. Fuck all those ad-tech companies that “hack” human psychology to make their money.