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| Photo by Adem AY on Unsplash |
Ever heard the saying “evil evolves”? It is painfully true. No matter how far humanity travels, no matter how many breakthroughs we celebrate or hard-won agreements we reach, those determined to harm always find new terrain. The internet and the smartphone — two of the most transformative inventions of our age — should have been pure gifts, widening opportunity, shrinking distance, expanding possibility. Yet in the hands of the worst among us, they have become megaphones for the kind of venom that used to hide in locker rooms, dim parlors, and back-alley whispers.
For thirty years, the world has repeated the same warning: gender-based violence is not confined to dark streets or distant conflict zones. It evolves. It mutates. It follows women and girls into every space we build, including the bright, chaotic, seemingly limitless universe of the internet.
This year, as the world marks the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, the global theme cuts through the noise: we cannot end violence if we ignore the digital frontlines. And in a world where half our lives unfold through screens, DMs, and comment sections, pretending digital harm is an afterthought is like locking your front door while leaving every window wide open.
Online safety is women’s safety. It really is that simple.
The Violence We Pretend Is Not Violence
I cannot count how many times I have logged onto Instagram or X, seen a simple, harmless photo of a young woman posing alone or smiling beside a man, and then watched a random man dive into the comments to claim he has done lewd, vulgar things with her, punctuating the lie by calling her an ‘ashawo’.
It does not take a genius to recognise these comments for what they are: deliberate lies meant to humiliate and dehumanise. But the part that breaks me every time is how many men find it funny. How quickly others join in. How normalized cruelty has become. And the data shows exactly what that attitude grows into when it spills off the screen.
UNESCO reports that 58% of girls and young women globally have experienced online harassment. Across Africa, the picture is even darker: 54% of African girls face harassment on social media. Nigeria mirrors this crisis. Studies show that about half of internet users — including children — face abuse online, and Gatefield’s 2023 findings reveal that 58% of online harms in Nigeria target women.
These are not abstract figures. They are girls muted in group chats, women silenced in newsrooms, and activists bullied out of public life. They are dreams abandoned out of fear, confidence chipped away by exhaustion. Amnesty International reports that 41% of women who face online abuse fear for their physical safety — a terror that lingers long after the harassment ends.
This is not “just the internet.”
This is violence, structural, targeted, and relentlessly gendered.
UNESCO’s survey of women journalists confirms the scale of the assault: 73% have faced online violence, and one in four received threats of physical or sexual harm because of it.
And the consequences do not stay behind the screen.
The girl who is doxxed withdraws from public life.
The woman who wakes up to rape threats walks differently the next day.
The journalist who is attacked in her DMs starts censoring herself, word by word.
Digital misogyny is not simply hateful noise. It is a theft of women’s voices, of their agency, and ultimately, of our collective future.
Amid Conflict and Crisis: Digital Violence in Context
This digital siege overlaps with real-world crises. UN studies warn that over 676 million women and girls now live in or near conflict zones, a record high, making them vulnerable not only to bombs but also to rampant abuse in the cramped, chaotic digital spaces of war-torn societies. Conflict breeds fear and instability offline, and it opens space for misogynistic ideologies online.
In Nigeria, for example, women in regions torn by Boko Haram or separatist violence face threats on the ground and on their phones. Such environments turbocharge patterns of violence: misinformation and hatred spread faster than ever, often targeting women with vengeance. In this context, digital violence is not an isolated phenomenon but part of a broader pattern of gendered violence, one that spans borders and wars. It threatens women’s participation in society by chilling their voices.
When a woman learns that outspoken journalists are harassed or even attacked, she may reasonably stay silent.
Accountability in the 16 Days of Activism
Each year from Nov 25 to Dec 10, the world marks 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence. This year’s theme – “UNiTE to End Digital Violence Against All Women and Girls” – explicitly links our online lives to the fight for women’s rights. The message is clear: social media and the internet cannot be safe havens for abusers. Governments, tech companies, and civil society must take responsibility. Legally, nations should strengthen and harmonize their laws.
In Nigeria, activists are pushing to update the Cybercrimes Act of 2015 and pass comprehensive online safety legislation that explicitly forbids gender-based digital abuse. Globally, as the World Bank notes, legal gaps abound: fewer than 40% of countries have robust cyber-harassment laws, and even where laws exist, they rarely address the specific needs of women and girls. We must close those gaps.
Culturally, we must confront the normalization of misogyny head-on. Hating women is not normal. Abusing them does not make any man stronger, sharper, or more “alpha”; it only strips away his humanity. Misogyny is not innate; it is taught. It is woven into how boys are raised, socialised to see women as “the other,” heirs to rigid, inherited ideas that have done nothing but wound women and limit men for generations.
This is why the 16 Days of Activism matter. Advocates across the world are calling out abusive hashtags, coordinated trolling, and the online vultures who feed on women’s fear. We push for education, digital literacy, and real bystander intervention, urging communities to challenge hate when they see it, just as they would if it unfolded on the street.
And beyond culture, power must shift. Tech companies cannot continue to shrug helplessly. They must be held accountable.
What Online Safety Looks Like — And Why It Matters to Us
At Shades of Us, we say it often: Storytelling is public safety.
Every film we shoot, every narrative we craft, every screening we host insists that African women, online, offline, everywhere, deserve dignity. When a survivor hears her pain reflected with compassion, shame begins to loosen its grip. Gender-based violence online is not “cyber drama.” It is patriarchy redesigned for 5G and fibre optic cables. It is cultural. It is political. It is systemic.
And if African women cannot be safe online, they cannot be safe anywhere.
This is why digital rights matter to us. Because representation is not charity, it is power. Because silence is not safety, it is defeat. Because for millions of girls, the internet is their first classroom, their first job market, their first political arena.
If that arena is hostile, their futures shrink.
A Vision of a Safer Digital Africa
Imagine a world where:
A Nigerian woman tweets her opinion without calculating the cost.
A Kenyan girl posts her poetry without bracing for slurs.
A South African journalist writes boldly without fearing for her life.
This is not a fantasy. It is a future worth fighting for.
It looks like:
Laws that explicitly criminalize digital violence.
Platforms held accountable for the harm they enable.
Communities that intervene rather than spectate.
Education that empowers women instead of blaming them.
Stories that refuse to let misogyny go unchallenged.
During these 16 Days and every day after, we commit to telling those stories. To amplify the voices pushed to the margins. To insist that African women deserve safety in every space they occupy: homes, streets, parliaments, and yes, on the internet.
Because this is what online safety looks like.
This is what dignity looks like.
And this is the fight we refuse to abandon.
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