The results demonstrate the importance of greater investment in education – including media and information literacy – and smarter regulation of digital platforms, in line with UNESCO’s Guidelines for the Governance of Digital Platforms, launched in November last year. Female students in several countries interviewed for the report said that they were exposed to pictures or videos they did not want to see. This situation is compounded by the rise of image-based sexual content, AI-generated deepfakes and ‘self-generated’ sexual imagery circulating on-line and in classrooms. On average, across OECD countries with available data, 12% of 15-year-old girls reported having been cyberbullied, compared to 8% of boys. Girls also suffer more cyberbullying than boys.

This instant-gratification model may affect attention spans and learning habits, making sustained concentration on educational and extracurricular tasks more challenging. It also underlines the addictive design of TikTok, characterized by short, engaging videos. The UNESCO report cites Facebook’s own research, which found that 32% of teenage girls said that, when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse. In turn, this impacts girls’ mental health and well-being, which are essential for academic success. This exposure can have particularly detrimental effects on girls’ self-esteem and body image. Social media negatively affects well-being and reinforces gender stereotypesĮntitled Technology on Her Terms, the report warns that algorithm-driven, image-based content, especially on social media, can expose girls to material ranging from sexual content to videos that glorify unhealthy behaviours or unrealistic body standards.

Office of International Standards and Legal Affairs.

Negative photo effects