ABC listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more. Is it actually possible to stay safe online? This week on Download This Show, in the last 12 months alone, we've seen horrific cases of people taking their own lives after being extorted with intimate images. There's been a renewed focus on online bullying, radicalisation and abuse. How much should we be relying on tech companies, the government or the eSafety commission at it to keep you and your family safe?
And how much should we ourselves be doing? Let's find out. This is your guide to the world of safety online. My name is Mark Fonell and welcome to a very special episode of Download This Show. Yes, indeed, it is a brand new episode of Download This Show. And we have to very special guess. A lecture in social media at Monash University, Emily Van der Degel, welcome back to Download This Show. Thank you so much for having me.
And psychologist and founder of Digital Nutrition, Jocelyn Brewer, it's an honour to have you on the show in the studio as well. We are face to face once again, four years later. Let's not wait so long next time. We are talking specifically about safety online this week. It is a special and I guess to kind of set the scene for us, it's very broad, as a sort of an architecture to work within. If I was to ask you, Jocelyn, what were the biggest threats that we're not taking seriously enough?
Because there's a bit of big conversation around safety in general in the last couple of weeks. But specifically online, is there something that stands out as being the issues that we should just generally be paying more attention to for you? Yeah, because I think the focus has been on be kind and don't share your password and now it's more like your fridge is literally going to facilitate domestic violence. So there has been massive changes partly because of technology.
But I think, you know, to some degree, you know, how many seconds into the show can we go before we mention AI? That some of these technologies creating deep fakes, the fact that there's so much data available that doxing in those data breaches really do put people in a lot more danger, physical danger than some of the other safety issues which traditionally have been not being treated nicely in online spaces. I definitely think that is a record for how quickly we've mentioned AI and so.
If we have a small trophy, I will give it to you. Emily, for you, what are the big issues in online safety that you think aren't getting enough attention at the moment? Don't worry, we'll dig down into the minute. Don't worry. I mean, when I think about online safety in the broader sense, I always think about harms that involve having the wrong people reach you or the wrong content reach you.
And I think what we're hearing about a little bit more lately is the wrong content reaching you in terms of things like manipulation and especially radicalisation. I think that the idea that there are spaces on the internet that have a lot of pull and a really kind of seductive and interesting for a wide range of people, sometimes what that involves is coming across really dangerous ideas and getting really absorbed in them.
Is that something that you think has gotten worse or a trend that has shifted over the last couple years, Emily? I just think that we're talking about it more. It's been very interesting to hear about radicalisation, and rotate, manosphere, the in-cell movement. These things have been around for a long time, but they're reaching, I think, our news and our connections to violent incidents in a way that feels a little bit more new.
Yeah, absolutely. I think that what's going on too is this sense of belonging and our understanding of the psychological aspects of belonging and our need for men to have healthy ways to be men and to be embodied, to actually be able to... When we think about all the conversations around kids and technology, they're being banned off a lot of technological spaces, but we're in the, you know, in Vettercom as real world, do they go?
Where do you go to actually take risks in healthy ways and feel that sense of connection that a lot of these menosphere kind of spaces actually bond to you really quickly through that need? How do you never get that, right? So I see it all the time sort of you having a conversation with somebody, and then suddenly they say something and you realize that they've... Oh, you've really involved a bit of Andrew Tade or some other quite unquiet problematic person
on the internet. When you encounter those conversations, how do you navigate them? When I work with young people, it's often through a lens of curiosity, rather than judgment, and I think a lot of the research, and if you look at some of the stuff that Zack Sardler's doing through my Vemba, and talks about how to actually then get men back on track in terms of the conversation and listening, rather than feeling other levels of shame and disconnection, because of then the values that they hold.
You know, my approach has always been through education and having those conversations that are not necessarily about technology.
There's obviously, and we'll talk about this as space for regulatory approaches, but also it's about the socio-cultural influences that come through, when people don't have places to play and green spaces to hang out, and that overlaps with what we're talking about with development across most of our capital cities, and solving housing crisis, which then makes us live in boxes, where we are kind of forced online even more.
There's a fairly lazy, and I'm going to court lazy, because I'm absolutely guilty of it myself, Emily, habit of sort of blaming social media as though it's a singular monolith that behaves as one, for a whole range of degenerative behaviors. How much do you think social media has genuinely made us less safe? Well, definitely, I agree with the idea that this stuff is not just tech as in. You know, social media is, I think, sometimes a stage where this,
where bigger issues play out. Of course, I find it reductive to blame social media for things like bullying and harassment and abuse. These are more like vectors in some ways, rather than things that make abuse and harassment happen. But I feel like there are kind of specific ways that social media helps people to either feel
safe or not feel safe. Of course, they have a lot more to do with the relationships involved than the technology involved, but, you know, especially in, yeah, context where we are driven more and more online and we take social media spaces very seriously. These can be the kinds of places that we go to to feel comfort and to feel safe. And when we can't get those feelings out of our social media spaces, I feel like there are real harms that can take place in that space.
Social media, I think, covers always being like a tool and tools can be used for positive or, you know, in a various purposes. And when we participate in those spaces, we actually need a
range of micro-skills to be able to work out how to behave. So depending on the context of, you know, me, for instance, posting in an In-A-West Mom's group about something versus a young person who is accidentally putting out a whole range of information quite publicly that then can be pieced together by somebody who is trying to scam them, dox them, create, you know, sex torsion kind of things that we see happening, especially at the moment with young boys.
But again, the education within, like, how do we participate in these spaces? It's not about restrict, and then when you're 16, you can jump into this massive digital ocean. It's actually about teaching those swimming lessons, you know, kind of like we do, I guess even she's another metaphor with driving, you know, to get your license these days, you have to demonstrate that
you can drive across a range of conditions. So I think we need to really give kids that, and even adults, like, you know, most of us have not had these lessons to be able to navigate and use micro-skills in a variety of contexts that you come across in online spaces. Can we talk about the sex torsion cases recently? Because it strikes me as firstly horrific, right? And we've seen awful stories of people taking their own lives. One of the things I'm curious
about here is there's never like a silver bullet to these problems, right? There's usually a suite of solutions and some of which can involve law enforcement and some of which can involve regulation of companies through which people being accessed. And then of course there's the digital literacy of kids and young people and actually adults as well. And their parents as well. Are we getting that balance right? Because I feel like when these cases come out, we jump straight
to talking about the literacy and how we as individuals behave online. And the whole issue of, like, how do we enforce and the role of tech companies sort of falls a little bit by the wayside. Do you think we're getting the balance right? Or is it a case of we can deal with the audience because the audience are listening right now? It's a really complex one because what happens is we talk about this and we talk about these needs and then awful things happen. They hit the news and
then there's re not even reactionary. I don't want to reduce it to, oh now we're going to do something because somebody died. We jump to doing usually a restrictive kind of make a difference theme that isn't addressing generally the fringes of the behaviour that are really where the problems lie. So most families do their best and you know the new stories that we hear about aren't you 90% of kids went on the internet today and nothing much happened. We do hear those stories. So it's so
complex because ultimately this type of education is deeply unsexy. Like it's it's only something that we do when the proverbial hits the fan and it's costly to do what the research shows in terms of some of these interventions is actually you know intensive. It's not a guest speaker flying in saying don't do this on in online spaces because that creates shame again for people who have already
done those things. When you say to parents don't let your kids on social media until they're 16 and you've got an eight year old who's using TikTok that automatically puts people on the back for it with they're not going to come forward and feel that they're being supported. For you Emily I mean in terms of the balance of how we talk about tackling these problems the balance of putting it on individuals or parents or the how we talk about law enforcement or regulation what's missing?
I feel like trying to un-pick some of the shame that comes with this is really important. I don't think that when a person, especially a young person, is involved in sex dorshin that it occurs to them to reach out to such formal channels because sex and nudity and taking nudes those
relationships and connections can be so personal that it feels kind of impossible to reach out to the law or regulation or formal channels or sometimes even parents or teachers when it's so intimate and it's so personal and I feel like some of the ways that we that we talk about nudes and images like that can be really sometimes unintentionally dangerous because it shuts down avenues for young people to actually reach out for help when they need it in these kinds of really
tricky situations. Is that changeable? Whenever one of these cases comes out there is a subsection of the the audience has just go well they never should have taken that photo in the first place, etc. Is that a changeable view or should it change? Emily? Oh I hope so. The idea that curious young people are never going to access porn, take pictures of themselves, take pictures of their bodies,
talk about sex. I feel like when we just lean into the fact that young people are curious about bodies and sex and they always have been and they always will be that you know trying to take some of that shame away from being a sexual person even you know a young person curious about sex
and sexuality. Once we have a healthier approach to those sorts of early conversations surely down the line that leads to young people feeling safer to approach a trusted person in their life about like, oh hey actually look I have been taking pictures of my body but I'm starting to feel
uncomfortable about where they're going. And then the research supports that so when we have better more inclusive sex ed where more kind of open again to the idea that young people will participate in these spaces whether we like it or not we generally see you know better outcomes and again
that's complex and it's not you know if you teach this then that will not happen but there's more of a comfort around young people feeling like they're not alone and that shame that drives you into that feeling like there are no other solutions but to end your life or to take drastic irreversible
actions people feel more supported. We are talking about online safety here on a very special episode of Download the Show you're listening to the various smart voices of Jocelyn Brewer, psychologist, a founder of digital nutrition and Emily Vanderedagel lecturer in social media at Monash University at Mark Fennel is my name and the federal government has given an online age verification pilot a green light. Emily this could have really big ramifications but what
me through it exactly what is the pilot? So when you're trying to work out is somebody old enough to view adult content on the internet there are very few ways of doing this accurately most of those ways involve trying to get at some personal information that a person has for example you know do you have proof of your birthday? Some technology has promised that it can simply detect somebody's age from doing an analysis of their face. This you know tricky it doesn't always work properly.
What the government is trying to work out at the moment is can we make the the whole you know verifying your identity or your age a bit safer by basically outsourcing it to a third party company who issues somebody a token that therefore when they go to a website like PornHub they can simply enter the token as in say hey a third party company has verified that I am over 18 and now I can enter this website without necessarily giving all the information that I have that proves that.
So there's two things here Jocelyn right I'm very sorry from the ESAFD commissioner found that 75% of Australian children aged 16 wait 10 had viewed Porn online nearly 40% had access to before there were 13 years old so that's obviously a thing that needs to be navigated right. But then the idea of a third party organization managing people's identity before they log on to Porn feels well I don't know like there could be some challenges there right that's right because to verify
your age you have to verify people's whole identity and what you're creating there is another database of people who you know in this case adults who choose to view that the other aspect to this is that while there are sites for Porn there are also available images that would fit into
that category in social media sites being shared in private groups being pulled off those Porn sites and then shared around the whole premise here is to put some friction between young people seeking that out when they it you know really we want to minimize their exposure to that because
of again what the research shows around accidental and intentional exposure to Porn and the frequency of that are there examples of this kind of adjeuification actually working anywhere in the world jostle I don't believe so in fact the UK in 2019 actually press pause on attempting to
move forward I mean really where this came from was the 2020 report around protecting the age of innocence which basically said the ESAFD office should work with the digital transformation agency and come up with a plan to age verify and towards the end of last year the federal government went
this is really immature technology it's it's potentially not feasible in their press pause last week they press umpours and gave the ESAFD office you know the green light I guess to progress this and really push ahead with innovative technologies that are going to try and create a
little bit more of a watertight way of not just harvesting people's data and creating a whole novel data breach problem but again putting that friction between young people accessing content which we know is just not good for their um development Emily as they embark upon this plan
what are the I guess to borrow a master's share phrase what are the pressure points what are the things they need to get right firstly there there needs to be a little bit more maybe unpicking or or scrutiny around the idea that Porn is always bad and always harmful for young people also I
think that whenever there's issues of trying to you know prevent people from accessing certain kinds of content it's really important to remember that there are so many channels that people are accessing Porn on and there are so many different things that Porn can include I guess like when
when we understand that more young people are seeing Porn on Twitter that dedicated pornography sites then all of a sudden what we understand is Porn how it gets to young people what they're doing with it there's a lot in that that's quite complicated there is also I guess a bit of a
disconnect between you know the laws around young people accessing adult material and the kinds of stipulations like you know to to go into a website like PornHub you should be over 18 and then the sort of ways that these access points actually work can be yeah quite disconnected download
the shows what you're listening to it is your guide to the week in media technology and culture we are talking about online safety there's the term that I know you both love the Ili that is that is sort of one of the most ill-defined terms in the world of online safety that that is
cyber bullying because if you add the word cyber in front of it it becomes special it is undeniable that bullying takes on a different shape when technology is involved just how different is it though I believe like it and how should we treat bullying in a digital environment
differently according to the method in which it's meeting victims well firstly yeah I'd you know it's a it's a tricky term because cyber bullying is bullying and I feel like we understand that when especially when we're talking about bullying as in this is a child making another child
feel bad right that there's a lot going on here and usually what happens or you know how we can understand this better is that we can understand that not only the victim of bullying but also if there's a child who's bullying another child both of those children need a bit of help and a
bit of support right and that doesn't necessarily change if the bullying is done from one adult to another there are various forms in which cyber bullying can feel really relentless because for example it doesn't stop when you're you know out of the presence of that person yeah and cyber
bullying I guess takes on so many different forms because sometimes it's not somebody who's been mean to you in the playground then using you know what's our poor snapchat to then pylon and get other people to pylon sometimes it's just somebody on the internet who you haven't met who
doesn't like your particular take on a subject that will go to all sorts of extremes and it's again a very nebulous sociocultural kind of thing that comes from the perspective of psychology and the way that humans work in groups and need to be dominant and all of those sorts of things
in general terms if a young person was in front of you who you knew that they were being bullied in some fashion online what are the steps you go I mean I know obviously every client is different and I don't want to get too kind of down details but like what are the kind of the
broad steps that you would you would walk through with a client like that yeah so we would follow the protocol set up by the e-safety officer around reporting cyber bullying of young people and you can do this with adults as well so generally it's about making a request that the information
is taken down or the posts are taken down at the social media company which usually facilitates this stuff it has 48 hours to respond after which you can make that report to the e-safety officer which then will act on your behalf and they do thousands and thousands of these requests but
generally then there's the psychological support to help them deal with whatever's going on so if you then have to go and sit in a geography class with this person what do you do so that that victim can can feel safe and generally it's work with the trusted adults so is there a parent is
there a person at the school is there somebody that we can put into place a way that you can feel safe and that we're addressing this without making it feel worse and creating more pylons without having that you know snitches get stitches kind of approach which sometimes happens in high schools
and sometimes you actually see parents making it worse and parents then bullying one another quite publicly on Facebook as well so fun yeah there's a community isn't cooked no no no no um but you know it's again case by case and looking really at the capacity and capability of people to
like do you have to face this person where is it happening it's not as simple as saying I'll just block them us social media companies responsive in most cases yes as far as I understand the e-safety commission has really only applied that high level fines in three different ways of three different
times and they've never had to do things like take down an app so they have the power to actually say remove that app and they haven't had to to do that in terms of how we're tackling cyber bullying in particular what's most important it's interesting because cyber bullying is it's
something that can be so difficult to you know you can't just screen it out there are already rules in place on any social media site that say you know you're not allowed to harass and cause harm to others so with those rules in place people are still mean to each other and
you know what really hits home to one person can be you know so so kind of subtle at times and so difficult to just present as one isolated you know piece of content to raise to a social media platform and say you know hey we should get rid of this or or this is against the rules or like
hey took a picture of this person without their consent and you're spreading that publicly on a social media platform you can isolate that content you can get rid of that content I feel like any sort of bullying that really hurts another person is not just because of one post that they've
made it's a relationship that involves kind of power dynamics going wrong and one person feeling victimized and hurt and piled upon by another person or people both of you have talked about staying safe online not as a singular thing but as a series of tools different techniques that we
need to employ and obviously there's regulation and law enforcement that's off there but at the end of the day you'll listen to this right now and you're probably thinking are what can I do what can I impart to my kids and my family bear in mind also that you know scams are attacking you know people
of all ages as well what are the most important tools to start thinking about now jostlen look I think they're all about how humans interact with one another right they're actually about those social and personal kind of skills and we put the lens of how that then shows up in digital spaces
I think that when it comes to these examples we need to be able to sort the one off that person's being mean what drives them to do that how can you take agency over addressing that versus long term intentional targeted behaviours that seek to cause harm and that's that's generally what the
you know e safety office would look at it has to be a combination of factors that are looked at in that way again like it's about the humans in that digital space and understanding things like the digital dissinhibition effect when we're online and we're not looking at one another we behave
in really different ways to if I have I'm sitting here looking at you I nodding along and having all of those complex nonverbal cues happening yeah you haven't abused me once no no where is your mind my god yeah bang bang bang bang on out on the keyboard so yeah like just the psycho
air I guess is what I'm saying in a very long-winded way no it's good Emily we talk about this as a series of tools what are the sorts of tools you'd like people to think about now I mean look the e safety commissioner has basic online safety tip that makes sense in terms of what an individual
can do checking settings logging out of sites updating devices backing up files clearing cookies strong passwords like all of those things make sense and I certainly think that that people's individuals trying to have a life both on and off the internet of course all of those kinds of
digital hygiene and digital housekeeping kind of things do tend to help but you know when we're thinking about online safety to something that has has really made me think about it differently recently is is talking to my my own students I teach you know media and communication students at
Monash something that they raise increasingly for me in class is the idea that basically feeling safe on the internet and on social media is getting so rare that students in my classes at least increasingly kind of backing off and backing down from these bases and I actually feel like
it's worth asking what does it feel like when you are safe and what does that safety enable you to do you know it's one thing to say oh there are so many things that make you unsafe there are so many threats to you on the internet you should just not use it you know you should just get off Twitter
you should not post anything about yourself publicly to some degree those kinds of measures might make you feel safer but I also really do feel like it's worth asking what gets lost if you lock yourself down and switch yourself off and don't ever put yourself out there in in terms of
online spaces because you know there are all kinds of facets of this issue and one of those things is that you know there are so many great things that you can get to on the internet when you do feel safe and when you do feel like you've used some tools and you've gotten to a stage where you're
comfortable putting yourself yourself out there on your own terms and in the safest way you can you can actually get to like wonderful fascinating interesting like you know communications and connections with people and interest in your life and the eSafety office basically says something
very similar which is when they're not seeking to stifle free speech but actually make sure that people who have perspectives are not pushed off the internet and told to just block and don't show up and don't participate because that then takes away their freedom to have that opinion and they're not having that or sharing that out of fear and that's one of the the consequences.
I mean we literally teach social media self-defense that is a course at the eSafety office now teaches women especially journalists how to deal with online harms and abuse. This is a disturbingly upbeat ending to this show because normally we just end on dystopian outlook so this is all of the resources we talked about you can a lot of it you can find on the
eSafety commission. Huge thank you to our guest this week psychologist and founder of digital nutrition joss on brewer a pleasure thank you and Emily Vatternayga lecturer in social media at Monash University thank you so much Emily. Thanks for having me and with that I shall leave you if you enjoyed the show make sure you leave a review on whichever podcasting app you happen to prefer and as always download this show and all of your favorite ABC podcasts are available on ABC
listen. Mark Fonell and I'll catch you next week for another episode download this show. You've been listening to an ABC podcast discover more great ABC podcasts live radio and exclusives on the ABC Listen app.