Digital tools now shape how people connect, date, work, and maintain relationships. Teens and adults rely on phones, apps, social media platforms, and messaging tools every day. Unfortunately, society’s dependence on technology makes these same tools a powerful resource for abusers to harm, control, or intimidate others. Digital abuse is a growing and often overlooked form of interpersonal violence that can leave lasting emotional, psychological, and even physical impacts.
Understanding what digital abuse looks like and how it affects people at different life stages is an important step toward prevention, recognition, and support.
What Is Digital Abuse?
Digital abuse (also known as technology-based abuse, connected devices abuse, or online abuse) refers to the use of technology to harass, threaten, monitor, control, or exploit another person. It often occurs within dating relationships, intimate partnerships, or family dynamics, but it can also involve acquaintances or former partners.
Digital abuse frequently overlaps with emotional, psychological, or physical abuse and may continue even after a relationship ends. It is a rapidly evolving frontline of gender-based violence, particularly as new tools make online stalking and harassment easier to carry out.
Below are common forms of digital abuse, including online sexual abuse:
- • Repeated threatening or degrading messages sent via text, email, or social media
- • Monitoring someone’s location, messages, or online activity without consent
- • Pressuring someone to share passwords or personal information
- • Using social media to embarrass, isolate, or spread rumors
- • Sharing or threatening to share private images or messages without consent, which is known as image-based sexual abuse
Digital abuse is often used to exert power and control and can make survivors feel constantly watched or unsafe, even when they are physically alone. It frequently escalates over time and may be difficult to recognize, particularly for young people, because abuse can be disguised as concern, jealousy, or affection.
Digital abuse can happen across multiple platforms simultaneously, making it harder for survivors to escape or seek relief. This phenomenon disproportionately affects women and marginalized groups and is increasingly linked to broader patterns of gender-based violence.
How Teens Experience Digital Abuse
Teens are particularly vulnerable to, and targets of, digital dating abuse because much of their social and romantic lives take place online. Digital communication often feels constant and unavoidable, which can intensify harmful behaviors within teen dating relationships.
Digital abuse among teens may include:
- • Grooming (love bombing and other manipulative conditioning tactics)
- • Excessive texting that demands immediate responses
- • Pressure to share passwords, photos, or private messages
- • Threats to expose personal information or images
- • Online harassment following breakups
- • Public shaming or humiliation through social media posts
Some warning signs from abusers include generally controlling behavior or jealousy expressed as a result of digital monitoring. For survivors, early signs may manifest as the fear of upsetting a partner by not responding quickly enough via text, email, or social media, as one example.
Impacts on Adolescent Wellness
Online abuse can significantly undermine young people’s sense of safety, self-esteem, and autonomy. Many teens internalize and normalize harmful digital behaviors, viewing constant monitoring or password sharing as signs of trust rather than red flags. In adolescents, digital abuse often leads to anxiety, depression, social withdrawal, and academic difficulties.
During periods of increased isolation, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers observed heightened risks of digital dating abuse, as teens spent more time online and had fewer opportunities to seek in-person support. Early exposure to digital abuse can shape unhealthy relationship norms that persist into adulthood.
How Adults Experience Digital Abuse
For adults, digital abuse is often intertwined with domestic violence, stalking, or coercive control. Abusers frequently use technology to constantly monitor survivors and retaliate quickly to perceived failings. Additionally, they often isolate survivors from support systems and monitor their communications with friends, family, or service providers who might help them. Technology can allow abuse to continue long after physical separation, creating ongoing fear and disruption in survivors’ lives.
Adult survivors may experience:
- • GPS tracking through phones, vehicles, or shared accounts
- • Harassment through repeated calls, messages, or emails
- • Impersonation or hacking of online accounts
- • Image-based abuse involving non-consensual sharing of intimate images
- • Having AI-generated sexual images or deepfake content in their likeness posted online
Impacts on Adult Wellness
Some common impacts of technology-facilitated abuse on adult survivors include:
- • Increased rates of trauma, depression, and post-traumatic stress
- • Survivors changing jobs, relocating, or withdrawing from online spaces to escape abuse, leading to adverse economic and social consequences
- • Shame, loss of control, and long-term reputational damage (particularly if real or fake sexual images are shared online without their consent)
Recognizing digital abuse as a serious form of domestic violence is critical to ensuring survivors seek out appropriate legal protections and support services. It’s equally important to support nonprofits like Connections for Abused Women and their Children (CAWC) that provide essential services to abuse survivors who might not otherwise be able to get help. Find out how you can help yourself or someone else stop digital abuse today.
Stop Digital Abuse With CAWC
At CAWC, we believe that everyone has a right to a life free from abuse and violence. Our mission to end domestic violence in all demographics is rooted in education, service, and advocacy. In addition to working toward broader social change, we provide empowerment-based and trauma-informed support in the form of shelter, counseling, and advocacy for individuals and their children affected by intimate partner violence.
If you or someone you know is actively experiencing the impacts of abuse or sexual violence, don’t hesitate to call our 24-hour crisis line at 773-278-4566. For nonemergency support, reach out through our contact form today.
Want to help us protect more survivors and children? You can impact the life of a domestic violence survivor or a child who witnessed domestic violence by donating to CAWC today or by supporting our work in other ways.