The Screen Between Us: How Technology-Facilitated Abuse is Fueling a Mental Health Crisis

Content note: This article discusses the impacts of technology-facilitated abuse, including suicide. If you or someone know needs support, find help through the NO MORE Global Directory or call/text the National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 (U.S. only).

There is a particular kind of harm that leaves no bruises. It strikes through a screen in a darkened bedroom, in the feeds and notifications that we scroll throughout the day. It follows you to the places you are supposed to feel safe. It is relentless, targeted, and increasingly, it is fatal.

Technology-facilitated abuse—the use of digital tools to stalk, control, harass, humiliate, and coerce—has become one of the defining safeguarding crises of our time. Abuse that follows a person online cannot be escaped by leaving a relationship, moving home, or changing routines. 

We already know that feelings of entrapment, or the sense that there is no way out, is a predicator of suicidal ideation. Now, the inescapability of technology-facilitated abuse is manufacturing that feeling at scale.

A Crisis Hidden in Plain Sight

Earlier this month, a report from the U.K.’s National Police Chiefs’ Council revealed that suicide rates among survivors of abuse are on the rise, linking the trend to dangerous internet content. This study follows others, which indicate that women experiencing abuse are now more likely to die by suicide than homicide, and that the numbers being reported are almost certainly only a fraction of the true picture.

Research consistently links victimization to mental health outcomes including depression, anxiety, PTSD, self-harm, and suicidal ideation. When that victimization is technology-facilitated, and therefore inescapable, the path from abuse to mental health crisis becomes shorter and more difficult to interrupt.

If these trends are consistent beyond the U.K., the global scale of the crisis at hand may be even more urgent than current data suggests.

The Youngest Victims

Perhaps the most alarming dimension of this trend is its demographic. Young people between the ages of 15 and 19 are now among the highest-risk group for domestic violence. 

For this generation, the internet is not a space they retreat to from the real world. It is the real world. Social media, messaging apps, and online communities are where many relationships are built and maintained, where identity is formed, and where belonging is established and negotiated.

When abuse infiltrates these spaces, it infiltrates everything.

The Online Pipelines Fueling Abuse

Police forces in the U.K. and beyond have begun to connect the rise of abuse among young people to a specific cultural phenomenon: the manosphere, a loose but interconnected ecosystem of online communities promoting misogynistic ideologies. Together, these spaces construct a worldview where coercion, control, and dominance in relationships is normalized, and beyond that, celebrated.

What makes the manosphere particularly dangerous is not just its ideology, but its infrastructure. Harmful content is now algorithmically amplified, reaching young men who may genuinely be struggling and offering them a seductive explanation for their pain that places the blame firmly on women.

The cultures that enable abuse, both on and offline, do not emerge from nowhere. They are being magnified, platform by platform. As abuse rates among young people continue to rise, the distance between consuming harmful content and enacting it may be shorter than we would like to believe.

So What Next?

For those of us in the sector, the link between abuse and mental health deterioration is not new. Nor is our understanding of how technology amplifies harm, or how online misogyny fuels it. What is new is that these connections are now breaking through into mainstream public consciousness, creating an opening we cannot afford to miss.

The evidence base is there. The public attention is there. What comes next is up to us.

On June 9, NO MORE is partnering with UN Women to deliver the Global Summit on Tech-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence, a gathering of advocates, researchers, policymakers, technologists, and survivors from around the world, united by the recognition that this problem requires a coordinated, cross-sector response.

The work ahead spans platform accountability, legal reform, education, early intervention, and support infrastructure. No single organization or institution can do it alone. What this moment calls for is exactly what the Summit is designed to generate: genuine, sustained collaboration to build safer digital futures for everyone.

Finding This Content Helpful?

If you find this content helpful and believe in our mission to end domestic and sexual violence, please consider making a donation, which will allow us to continue to provide free resources, raise awareness, and drive change.

Join the Movement