An Overwhelming Majority of Dating App Users Experience Sexual Harassment

Almost three-quarters of dating app users in Australia have been subjected to some form of online sexual harassment in the last five years, with the majority of those victims either women or people who identify as part of the LGBT+ community. 

The harrowing (yet unsurprising) findings come from a first-of-its-kind, national-level study conducted by the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC). 

“Use of mobile dating apps has increased exponentially in the last 10 years, and to date, there have been very few primary studies exploring the prevalence and nature of technology-facilitated sexual violence,” said AIC Deputy Director Dr. Rick Brown, in a statement.

“This study aims to address these gaps in knowledge and provide valuable information that can assist in the development of policies and practices to prevent this kind of violence from occurring.”

Within the broad category of dating app-facilitated sexual violence (DAFSV) were behaviours such as abusive or threatening language, image-based sexual abuse (such as dick pics) and stalking.

The most common behaviour reported was sexual harassment (69 percent) which included being contacted again despite rejection (47.3 percent), being sent sexual images the participant didn’t ask for (40.9 percent) and being victim to threatening language (45 percent). 27 percent of participants had also been stalked online. 

Of the participants, one in three respondents told researchers that online behaviours moved to the real world, experiencing DAFSV in the last five years by someone they’d met on a dating app. Over a quarter said they’s been subjected to sexual coercion or assault, including 22 percent that had been pressured verbally to perform unwanted sexual acts and 10 percent that had their drinks spiked or were physically coerced. 

Worryingly, almost 11 percent had had an image taken of them without their consent, and 14 percent had experienced in-person stalking.

Gender and sexuality broke out the findings even further.

LGBT+ women (42 percent) and men (36 percent) reported the highest amount of abuse and victimisation, while heterosexual men had the lowest (21 percent). 28 percent of heterosexual women reported abuse. 

The reasons for increased sexual violence perpetrated against those in the LGBT+ community are still unclear, but researchers observed a differentiation in the way LGBT+ identifying people used dating apps, with a larger portion of respondents using three or more dating apps concurrently and reporting that they started using the apps at a younger age, and before they were 18-years-old. The report also said that sexually diverse individuals likely have higher subjection due to an increased exposure to perpetrators.

With their findings, researchers hope to find solutions to sexual harassment experienced by Australians online.

“We discussed the findings with industry in a recent roundtable in Canberra,” said Brown.

“While it was encouraging to hear about what dating app companies are doing to embed safety into their products, the high levels of online and in-person DAFSV in this report demonstrate the need to embed Safety by Design principles in their development processes.”

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