A recent TikTok video that has been liked by almost half a million people encourages girls to record themselves putting one finger down for every time they have been sent unsolicited dick pics, begged for nudes, catcalled, repeatedly asked out after already saying no, and forced to do something sexual when they didn’t want to.
Similar videos about sexual assault posted by young women became popular in 2020. The new video is aimed at teens and focuses on sexual harassment. By calling attention to how common sexual harassment is for teen girls, the “Put a finger down: Sexual harassment edition” video has become the 2021 TikTok teen version of the #MeToo movement of 2017.
This trend brings together two nearly universal realities in the lives of teen girls: the ubiquitous presence of social media and the daily barrage of sexual harassment. As a developmental psychologist, I think this trend showcases how teens have developed a modern way of coping with a long-standing problem.
Lockdowns and remote learning are especially painful for teens, because they are at the developmental stage when the need to connect with peers is at an all-time high.
At the same time that teens are spending more hours of their day on social media, the content of what is getting posted has become increasingly focused on social issues and “real-life” challenges and worries.
Epidemic of teen sexual harassment
It only makes sense then that a popular post on social media addresses one of the biggest sources of stress in teen girls’ lives: sexual harassment. Research with middle school and high school girls has shown that in fifth grade one out of four adolescents have experienced sexual harassment in the form of sexual comments, jokes, gestures or looks. By eighth grade it is one in two. My colleagues and I have found that 90% of girls have experienced sexual harassment at least once by the end of high school.
It occurs so commonly, and in public spaces like hallways and cafeterias, that by middle school almost all students (96%) have witnessed sexual harassment happening at school. If it isn’t in the school building itself, it is on their phones: four out of five teen girls have had at least one friend who has been asked by a boy to send a “sexy or naked” picture.
These sexual harassment experiences don’t leave girls unscathed. Girls describe sexual harassment as making them feel “dirty – like a piece of trash,” “terrible,” “scared,” “angry and upset” and “like a second-class citizen.” Seventy-six percent of girls report feeling unsafe because they are girls at least once in a while.
Yet, despite the damage it is inflicting, girls rarely talk about their experiences. Even though they report feeling scared, angry, helpless and embarrassed, they rarely report the harassment to teachers or parents and rarely tell the harassers to stop – largely because of worries about the social consequences.
More than 60% of teen girls worry about retaliation, “that the other person would try to get back at” them if they confronted or reported the harasser. More than half of girls worry that people wouldn’t like them if they said something, or worry that people will think they are “trying to cause trouble” or “just being emotional.” Half think they won’t be believed.
So, instead of saying something, more than 60% of teen girls say they try to “forget about” or “ignore” the harassment, chalking it up to “just part of life” as a girl. The problem with trying to ignore sexual harassment is that it does not work. Decades of research on the most effective ways to cope with stressful events shows that seeking social support and confronting the source of the stress are much more effective coping strategies than trying to downplay or ignore the problem.
Virtual – but beneficial – connection
So, while the latest social media hashtag fad might seem trivial, talking about sexual harassment experiences in a TikTok video is likely profoundly beneficial. Teens use social media to connect with others. Research has shown that, although passively scrolling through others’ social media feeds can lead people to negatively compare themselves with others, which can contribute to feeling envious of others’ seemingly better lives, actively using social media – by posting their own thoughts – can increase a person’s sense of social connections.
Social connection, in turn, leads to greater psychological well-being. This social media effect seems especially true for girls: In studies in which girls used social media to honestly talk about themselves, they perceived greater social support, and their well-being and positive feelings got a boost.
This sense of honest social connection is particularly important for teens who have been sexually harassed. Our research has shown that teen girls are more likely to stand up for themselves and confront perpetrators of sexual harassment when they believe their peers support them. If honest disclosures on social media about their experiences help teen girls feel connected with others, they may feel empowered to say something in real life, too.
Putting a spotlight on sexual harassment
Beyond helping the girls who make the videos, this recent social media trend likely also benefits the people watching the videos. The 2017 #MeToo movement made more than half of teen girls feel that they could tell someone about what happened to them. It helped them feel less alone.
It also helps label these pervasive everyday behaviors as problematic. It is good for girls to recognize this doesn’t have to be just a “part of life.”
It is also good for boys to see that girls are not flattered by these behaviors. Our research shows boys sexually harass girls largely because their friends do it and because it becomes the norm. They often think this is how boys are supposed to express romantic interest. Boys are rarely taught what sexual harassment is, and they often don’t realize how upsetting it is to girls.
Maybe these 45-second videos, instead of being just a fad, can be the public service announcement all teens need.
Christia Spears Brown does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
BUFFALO, NY- March 11, 2024 – Impact Journals publishes scholarly journals in the biomedical sciences with a focus on all areas of cancer and aging research. Aging is one of the most prominent journals published by Impact Journals.
Credit: Impact Journals
BUFFALO, NY- March 11, 2024 – Impact Journals publishes scholarly journals in the biomedical sciences with a focus on all areas of cancer and aging research. Aging is one of the most prominent journals published by Impact Journals.
Impact Journals will be participating as an exhibitor at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2024 from April 5-10 at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California. This year, the AACR meeting theme is “Inspiring Science • Fueling Progress • Revolutionizing Care.”
Visit booth #4159 at the AACR Annual Meeting 2024 to connect with members of the Agingteam.
About Aging-US:
Agingpublishes research papers in all fields of aging research including but not limited, aging from yeast to mammals, cellular senescence, age-related diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s diseases and their prevention and treatment, anti-aging strategies and drug development and especially the role of signal transduction pathways such as mTOR in aging and potential approaches to modulate these signaling pathways to extend lifespan. The journal aims to promote treatment of age-related diseases by slowing down aging, validation of anti-aging drugs by treating age-related diseases, prevention of cancer by inhibiting aging. Cancer and COVID-19 are age-related diseases.
Agingis indexed and archived byPubMed/Medline (abbreviated as “Aging (Albany NY)”), PubMed Central, Web of Science: Science Citation Index Expanded (abbreviated as “Aging‐US” and listed in the Cell Biology and Geriatrics & Gerontology categories), Scopus (abbreviated as “Aging” and listed in the Cell Biology and Aging categories), Biological Abstracts, BIOSIS Previews, EMBASE, META (Chan Zuckerberg Initiative) (2018-2022), and Dimensions (Digital Science).
Please visit our website at www.Aging-US.com and connect with us:
Mathematicians use AI to identify emerging COVID-19 variants
Scientists at The Universities of Manchester and Oxford have developed an AI framework that can identify and track new and concerning COVID-19 variants…
Scientists at The Universities of Manchester and Oxford have developed an AI framework that can identify and track new and concerning COVID-19 variants and could help with other infections in the future.
Scientists at The Universities of Manchester and Oxford have developed an AI framework that can identify and track new and concerning COVID-19 variants and could help with other infections in the future.
The framework combines dimension reduction techniques and a new explainable clustering algorithm called CLASSIX, developed by mathematicians at The University of Manchester. This enables the quick identification of groups of viral genomes that might present a risk in the future from huge volumes of data.
The study, presented this week in the journal PNAS, could support traditional methods of tracking viral evolution, such as phylogenetic analysis, which currently require extensive manual curation.
Roberto Cahuantzi, a researcher at The University of Manchester and first and corresponding author of the paper, said: “Since the emergence of COVID-19, we have seen multiple waves of new variants, heightened transmissibility, evasion of immune responses, and increased severity of illness.
“Scientists are now intensifying efforts to pinpoint these worrying new variants, such as alpha, delta and omicron, at the earliest stages of their emergence. If we can find a way to do this quickly and efficiently, it will enable us to be more proactive in our response, such as tailored vaccine development and may even enable us to eliminate the variants before they become established.”
Like many other RNA viruses, COVID-19 has a high mutation rate and short time between generations meaning it evolves extremely rapidly. This means identifying new strains that are likely to be problematic in the future requires considerable effort.
Currently, there are almost 16 million sequences available on the GISAID database (the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data), which provides access to genomic data of influenza viruses.
Mapping the evolution and history of all COVID-19 genomes from this data is currently done using extremely large amounts of computer and human time.
The described method allows automation of such tasks. The researchers processed 5.7 million high-coverage sequences in only one to two days on a standard modern laptop; this would not be possible for existing methods, putting identification of concerning pathogen strains in the hands of more researchers due to reduced resource needs.
Thomas House, Professor of Mathematical Sciences at The University of Manchester, said: “The unprecedented amount of genetic data generated during the pandemic demands improvements to our methods to analyse it thoroughly. The data is continuing to grow rapidly but without showing a benefit to curating this data, there is a risk that it will be removed or deleted.
“We know that human expert time is limited, so our approach should not replace the work of humans all together but work alongside them to enable the job to be done much quicker and free our experts for other vital developments.”
The proposed method works by breaking down genetic sequences of the COVID-19 virus into smaller “words” (called 3-mers) represented as numbers by counting them. Then, it groups similar sequences together based on their word patterns using machine learning techniques.
Stefan Güttel, Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Manchester, said: “The clustering algorithm CLASSIX we developed is much less computationally demanding than traditional methods and is fully explainable, meaning that it provides textual and visual explanations of the computed clusters.”
Roberto Cahuantzi added: “Our analysis serves as a proof of concept, demonstrating the potential use of machine learning methods as an alert tool for the early discovery of emerging major variants without relying on the need to generate phylogenies.
“Whilst phylogenetics remains the ‘gold standard’ for understanding the viral ancestry, these machine learning methods can accommodate several orders of magnitude more sequences than the current phylogenetic methods and at a low computational cost.”
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
DOI
10.1073/pnas.2317284121
Article Title
Unsupervised identification of significant lineages of SARS-CoV-2 through scalable machine learning methods
While the size of the United States makes it hard for it to compete with the inter-city train access available in places like Japan and many European countries, Amtrak trains are a very popular transportation option in certain pockets of the country — so much so that the country’s national railway company is expanding its Northeast Corridor by more than one million seats.
Running from Boston all the way south to Washington, D.C., the route is one of the most popular as it passes through the most densely populated part of the country and serves as a commuter train for those who need to go between East Coast cities such as New York and Philadelphia for business.
Amtrak launches new routes, promises travelers ‘additional travel options’
Earlier this month, Amtrak announced that it was adding four additional Northeastern routes to its schedule — two more routes between New York’s Penn Station and Union Station in Washington, D.C. on the weekend, a new early-morning weekday route between New York and Philadelphia’s William H. Gray III 30th Street Station and a weekend route between Philadelphia and Boston’s South Station.
According to Amtrak, these additions will increase Northeast Corridor’s service by 20% on the weekdays and 10% on the weekends for a total of one million additional seats when counted by how many will ride the corridor over the year.
“More people are taking the train than ever before and we’re proud to offer our customers additional travel options when they ride with us on the Northeast Regional,” Amtrak Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Eliot Hamlisch said in a statement on the new routes. “The Northeast Regional gets you where you want to go comfortably, conveniently and sustainably as you breeze past traffic on I-95 for a more enjoyable travel experience.”
Here are some of the other Amtrak changes you can expect to see
Amtrak also said that, in the 2023 financial year, the Northeast Corridor had nearly 9.2 million riders — 8% more than it had pre-pandemic and a 29% increase from 2022. The higher demand, particularly during both off-peak hours and the time when many business travelers use to get to work, is pushing Amtrak to invest into this corridor in particular.
To reach more customers, Amtrak has also made several changes to both its routes and pricing system. In the fall of 2023, it introduced a type of new “Night Owl Fare” — if traveling during very late or very early hours, one can go between cities like New York and Philadelphia or Philadelphia and Washington. D.C. for $5 to $15.
As travel on the same routes during peak hours can reach as much as $300, this was a deliberate move to reach those who have the flexibility of time and might have otherwise preferred more affordable methods of transportation such as the bus. After seeing strong uptake, Amtrak added this type of fare to more Boston routes.
The largest distances, such as the ones between Boston and New York or New York and Washington, are available at the lowest rate for $20.
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