Daniela’s Instagram username (15) has several extra vowels and some icons. In its feed there is no post, however it does save some featured stories. One is called “Me”, and in it there are photos and videos of herself: in front of the mirror in her underwear, on top of the bed or from the front sticking out her tongue. This last image is accompanied by the following song by the ragman Young Darhi: “I had told you, we are abnormal, I want to break all your channels. Bitch I come just to mock, bitch treat me with anal sex ”.
During the pandemic, social networks became the only space for interaction for thousands of adolescents. According to the consulting firm Criteria, as a result of the confinement, the average weekly use of these platforms grew from 18 to 22 hours among Chileans. This is confirmed by the study prepared by Statista, where it is detailed that the number of publications made on social networks in the country grew by 53% in March 2020 compared to the same month last year and that the country ranked first in the use of social networks in Latin America.
This abrupt growth makes it inevitable to consider the adolescent population, which is just in the crucial stage of seeking identity, for which it is essential that they share with their peers. “Social networks and new technologies are here to stay, and with each time developing faster. This is difficult for adults to follow, but not for children and adolescents. They were born with this modality installed and now in a pandemic, this has been the only way to engage with peers”Says Carolina Carrera, a psychologist at Corporación Humanas. “This is when a paradox occurs, especially among female adolescents, who, from feminism they defend their right to the autonomy of the body; there is overexposure of the body in networks, which can sometimes be very complex in terms of mental health. All this to say ‘this is feminism’, when it is not necessarily. Feminism is not only exposed through the networks, it has to do with the things that one believes, with political action and with much deeper social transformations. This paradox ends up returning us to the beginning: the woman’s body appears from a model imposed by the patriarchy, objectified by being a woman”, He adds.
Belén Fonseca is a fourth grade teacher at a private subsidized school in Quilicura. Although she has repeatedly expressed her concern about this issue among her peers and the institution’s authorities, little has been heard from her. “I see this among my fourth-grade students, but I also worked with Seventh and Eighth Basics and the same thing happened. They shared content beyond the suggestive, in many cases very explicit. This is typical of adolescence because it is when one begins to be sexually active, but the complex thing is that, from teaching, I do not know from where we affirm ourselves to educate if there is no feminist sexual education in schools. I have proposed workshops, but they have not been well received. Recently there was a student who became pregnant, but it was treated as an isolated case. My students have been sexually active since they were very young and there is no concern about that, neither the use of the networks, nor the hypersexualization of adolescents“, bill.
In mid-December, Carolina Muga graduated from fourth grade. On November 3, he turned 18, but has had social networks since he was eight. “It is very common to see photos of girls in underwear, semi naked or showing parts of the body. It happens in all groups of friends. Many publications are bordering on child pornography and I think we are not aware of the dangers that come with the fact that all that content remains on the network, ”he says.
Along the same lines, Carrera points out that “what young women don’t realize is that social networks are like a public square. Many times, there is neither sisterhood among themselves or it falls into the boys’ discourse and into the very game they want to get out of. So, building identity from social networks is very complicated. You should not be against them because you cannot, they are part of everyday life. But, you have to teach how to use them and provide tools ”.
It was in October of this year that the Chamber of Deputies rejected the Comprehensive Sex Education bill that sought a deepening of the teaching of sex education depending on the stage of the and the minor, thus amending the gap that currently exists in the system. On the other hand, in 2015, the Ministry of Education launched a “Education for gender equality”, which contemplated the promotion of equality and the integral development of men and women in the educational system in a period of three years, establishing mechanisms and competencies for proposals for the inclusion of the gender perspective in educational reform.
However, as detailed in the Annual Report on Human Rights in Chile, prepared by the UDP in 2018, Although inequality in access to education between women and men has been overcome in the country, “patterns continue to operate that reproduce traditional gender representations and thus inequality and inequity. This is evident in the educational trajectories of the students, their results, the vocational options marked by stereotypes associated with female and male roles, gender violence, discrimination and teenage pregnancy, among other aspects ”.
It is urgent to address issues of sexuality and gender in the educational system. Moreover, in times when social platforms have completely permeated the lives of children and adolescents. At present, Of 4.5 billion Internet users in the world, 3.8 are on social networks. This is almost 50% of the global population, according to data revealed by Hootsuite in 2020. The study indicates that, on average, the internet user spends six hours and 43 minutes online a day. The equivalent of 100 days a year of connection. If we subtract the eight hours on average that we spend sleeping, it means that we currently spend more than 40% of our working day using the internet. Likewise, it points out that, within the most used social networks, Facebook continues to lead, followed by WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram. The latter has more than 1,000 million active users, of which 6.1% are in the range of 13 to 17 years, which is equivalent to 56.6 million users.
Below are two other new apps, both created in 2016, TikTok and OnlyFans. The first is an App that was born in China and that became the most downloaded in the United States in 2018. Due to its popularity, since it was the focus of a trade war between China and the United States, this platform has been called the “network pandemic ”, a period in which it reached 2,000 million downloads. OnlyFans, meanwhile, has 50 million registered users and 700,000 content creators. This digital platform is an attractive business model, in which the company keeps a 20% commission for each subscription, and where users must pay to view the content that is shared. That is why it has become the biggest competition for companies that distribute pornographic material.
“They only sell you the false empowerment and objectification of female bodies. We continue with the dynamic that women are objects of desire to please a man. There is an idea of self-love that is false, it is almost a romanticization of pornography, which becomes even more serious when they are minors ”, says Fonseca. “I have conversations with my students and they complain because sometimes they receive “degenerate” comments, but they are constantly in this logic of needing to be validated, and that does nothing more than perpetuate patriarchal ideas. The difficult thing is how to approach the problem, because we know that the school is a space for the reproduction of discourse and power relations. There is no feminist pedagogy, nor a clear comprehensive sexual education ”, she explains.
“There is talk of censorship, but feminism does not want to censor anyone. It is questioning what can sometimes be disguised as empowerment and how we continue to fall into the objectification of our own bodies. Although there is freedom in what we do and do not do with them, in the end we are still contributing to the capitalist system and patriarchy, ”says Muga. “Social networks also create a delicate space for mental health, due to competition, due to comparisons, due to the use of filters. This creates self-esteem problems ”, he adds.
For his part, Carrera points out that the failure is in the entire system. “You have to teach what the dangers are and how to take care of yourself. Remember that this is like a public square, where you can upload a semi-nude or even nude photo, but you don’t know how far that photo can go, because there is no control. They think they are in control because we think we know who we accept and who we don’t, but that’s not the case. Then later come all the effects that could cause the fact that these photos circulate or generate mockery, bullying or funas. Even do it and then repent. But there, control was lost. This context has to be given by the school, by families and by adults. We also have to lead by example. In the end, the State and private companies are also responsible, because we delivered a technology, we made it available, but without taking into account the scope it could have on adolescents”.
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