The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has warned in a new report about the impact of social media on well-being, learning and career choices girls.
“A new UNESCO report warns that although digital technologies can improve teaching and learning, they also pose significant risks such as violation of privacy, lack of concentration in class and cyberharassment,” said a press release from the Paris-based UN Organization on Thursday.
The report particularly highlights how social media reinforces gender stereotypes, leading to harmful impacts on girls’ well-being, learning and career choices.
“Children’s social interactions are increasingly played out on social networks. But too often, platforms driven by algorithms amplify exposure to negative gender norms,” underlined the Director General of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay, quoted in the press release.
“Ethical considerations must be taken into account in the design of these platforms. Social media should not confine women and girls to roles that limit their educational and professional aspirations,” she added.
Titled “Technology on Her Terms,” the report warns against algorithm-generated and image-based content, particularly on social media, that exposes girls to to content of a sexual nature or promoting unhealthy behaviors or unrealistic beauty standards.
This exposure can have harmful effects on self-esteem and body perception and impact girls’ mental health and well-being, which are essential to their academic success, according to the same Source.
The UNESCO report refers to research conducted by Facebook which found that 32% of adolescent girls say that when they feel bad about their body, Instagram exacerbates their discomfort. It also highlights the very design of TikTok which makes the application addictive through short and captivating videos. This pattern of instant gratification can impact concentration and learning habits by making it more difficult to concentrate in studies or extracurricular activities.
Girls also suffer more from cyberbullying than boys, UNESCO further emphasizes. On average, in OECD countries with data on the subject, 12% of 15-year-old girls, compared to 8% of boys, reported having been victims of cyberbullying.
This situation is worsening with the proliferation of image-based sexual content, artificial intelligence-generated “deepfakes” (falsified photos or videos) and self-generated sexual images circulating online and in the classrooms. In several countries analyzed for the report, female students reported being exposed to images or videos without their knowledge.
The report highlights that it is essential to invest more in education, notably in media and information literacy, and to better regulate digital platforms, in line with the UNESCO principles for governance digital platforms published in November 2023.
“All of these elements form a vicious cycle: girls face negative gender stereotypes, amplified by social media, which distract them from the study of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) , disciplines considered to be reserved for men, thus depriving them of the possibility of contributing to the design of the tools that generate these stereotypes,” the press release further notes.
According to UNESCO data, across the world, women represent only 35% of STEM graduates in higher education, a figure that has not changed over the last 10 years. The report shows that persistent bias deters women from pursuing careers in STEM, resulting in an absence of women in the tech world.
Women occupy less than 25% of positions in the fields of science, engineering, information and communication technologies. They represent only 26% of the workforce in disciplines linked to data and artificial intelligence, 15% in engineering and 12% in the field of “cloud computing” within the main world economies. Only 17% of patent applications are filed by women globally.
According to the report, digital transformation is primarily driven by men. Although 68% of countries have implemented policies supporting education in STEM disciplines, only half of these policies specifically support girls and women. Policy measures should seek to promote models of success, including on social media, to encourage the career guidance of young women in STEM disciplines, according to UNESCO.
This approach is essential to ensure that women participate, on an equal footing, in the digital transformation of our societies and in the design of technologies that are truly inclusive, the press release concludes.
