No safe place: ending adolescent digital intimate partner violence

As technology transforms how adolescents initiate and sustain romantic relationships, digital intimate partner violence (IPV) has become a pervasive yet under-recognized threat to healthy adolescent development. Digital IPV, defined as the use of technology to perpetrate coercion, harm, threats, and controlling behaviors between romantic partners, occurs wherever adolescents date, given the widespread global internet access among youth.¹ Global prevalence remains unclear due to inconsistent definitions and measurement, but a recent meta-analysis reported rates ranging from 5.8% to 92% across 17 studies.² Digital IPV is likely even more common than in-person IPV, which 24% of ever-partnered girls have experienced.³

Although digital IPV lacks the visibility of physical violence, the unique affordances of digital platforms may exacerbate its impact on adolescent mental health, contributing to depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation.^1,4,5 The constant connectivity, surveillance capacity, and permanence of digital communication intensify both intimacy and insecurity in relationships. Technology normalizes continuous interaction and monitoring, enabling closeness but also allowing abuse to occur anywhere and anytime. The permanence of online content permits the indefinite re-experience of harm, even after a relationship ends.⁵ The absence of non-verbal cues combined with adolescents’ heightened emotional reactivity, limited self-regulation, and romantic inexperience, further creates conditions in which misunderstandings and conflict escalate quickly. Emerging evidence suggests that digital IPV rarely occurs in isolation and may precede or co-occur with in-person IPV.⁴ Understanding how these forms of violence interact is critical for developing effective prevention that reflects adolescents’ developmental and relational contexts.

The behaviors involved in digital IPV often overlap with those seen in in-person IPV, online child sexual exploitation and abuse, and cyberbullying (Panel 1).^1,6 Yet none of these frameworks capture the reality of digital harm within adolescent romantic relationships. This gap limits understanding of prevalence and hinders coordinated prevention and policy. Harm between peers or between adults and children is widely recognized as abuse, whereas harm within adolescent relationships is often minimized as a “normal” part of teen love. A threatening message may be paired with a loving emoji, and location-sharing done out of care may quickly turn into surveillance and control. Growing up with parents regularly posting and tracking their children’s lives online can normalize constant digital visibility, making intrusive behaviors in later relationships harder to recognize as harmful. Technology’s accessibility means adolescents can both experience and perpetrate harmful behaviors, often without realizing how efforts to stay connected can evolve into abuse. These blurred boundaries make digital IPV particularly difficult to recognize and address.⁷ Consequently, when digital IPV is subsumed under broader categories of online abuse, it is often overlooked in policy and practice. Developing a clear and specific taxonomy for digital IPV is therefore essential to legitimize the issue, clarify its scope, guide screening tools, and foster international collaboration on prevention.

Panel 1.

Overlapping frameworks related to digital IPV.^I

Term	Associated Terms	Definition	Examples of associated behaviors	Classification Gap
Digital Intimate Partner violence	Digital dating violence/abuse Technology -facilitated dating violence/abuse Technology-facilitated intimate partner violence Cyber dating violence Cyber intimate partner violence	The use of technology to perpetrate sexual coercion, psychological harm, threats of physical aggression, or controlling behaviors within an intimate relationship.	Nonconsensual sharing of intimate photos/videos Excessive or threatening texting/calling Harassing social media posts Violations of online privacy Controlling surveillance through apps	--
Intimate Partner Violence	Dating violence/abuse Relationship violence/abuse	Behaviors within an intimate relationship that cause physical, sexual or psychological harm, including acts of physical aggression, sexual coercion, psychological abuse and controlling behaviors.	Sexual coercion Psychological violence and threats Stalking and surveillance Physical violence	Omits the use of technology; omits harm perpetrated remotely
Online child sexual exploitation and abuse	Technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation and abuse	The use of digital platforms to record, view, or distribute sexual material of a child who has not reached the legal age of consent or when a second party monetarily benefits from the distribution of sexual content involving a child.	Taking sexual pictures/videos of a child Viewing or distribution recorded sexual materials of a child	Omits psychological violence and threats of harm; omits romantic contexts; focuses on adult-to-child abuse
Cyberbullying	Online harassment	The use of digital platforms to scare, anger, or shame individuals.	Sexual harassment Sending threatening messages Posting embarrassing photos/videos on social media	Omits romantic contexts; treated as peer aggression

^I.Frameworks described in reviews by Lokkeberg et al. (2024) and Fry et al. (2025).

Although international attention to digital IPV is increasing through initiatives such as UN Women and the Global Partnership for Action on Gender-Based Online Harassment and Abuse, most efforts focus on adults and apply gender frameworks that overlook adolescents’ developmental contexts.^7–9 Adolescence is a sensitive period of social and neural plasticity with lasting effects on mental health and future relationships.¹⁰ Viewing digital IPV through a developmental lens highlights adolescence as a formative stage for learning relational and digital competence, including the capacity to communicate, manage emotions, and set boundaries in both online and offline relationship contexts. Without adolescent-specific guidance, governments and health systems lack standards to prevent, identify, and respond to digital IPV among adolescents.

Age restrictions on social media reflect the tension between adult efforts to protect young people from digital harm and adolescents’ developmental need to participate online. In 2024, for example, Australia passed legislation prohibiting adolescents under age 16 from holding accounts on major social media platforms, requiring parental consent and age verification. Yet there is little evidence that age restrictions reduce digital IPV or related harms. Restricting access can also limit opportunities for adolescents to develop the relational and digital competence needed to safely navigate online relationships. Recognizing digital behaviors such as surveillance, manipulation, threats, and humiliation as forms of IPV would strengthen global prevention and improve understanding of how adolescents use technology in relationships.

Progress will ultimately depend on policies that promote developmentally appropriate digital spaces and education systems grounded in trust, privacy, and consent that help adolescents practice empathy and accountability online. The urgency is amplified by rapid technological innovation. Tools like OpenAI’s Sora, which generates realistic videos, Meta’s Edits, which enables AI-assisted video manipulation, and generative AI chatbots, which mimic emotional reciprocity and romantic engagement, are transforming adolescents’ digital lives. These innovations obscure the boundary between authentic and fabricated relationship experiences and amplify forms of control and relational uncertainty among adolescents who are still developing social-emotional skills.

Adolescents often harm the ones they love most, not out of cruelty, but because of the vulnerability that love exposes. In this formative stage of social-emotional development, they need support to build healthier models of connection and care. Yet digital IPV spreads faster than researchers, providers, and policymakers can keep pace with. Meaningful progress requires co-creating solutions with adolescents, whose lived experiences are essential for designing digital spaces and prevention strategies that reflect their realities. Integrating healthy adolescent digital relationships into global anti-violence and digital governance frameworks is urgent. Global commitment is needed to ensure that the technologies connecting adolescents also teach them how to love, and to love without violence.