The rights of girls in the digital environment

On the occasion of International Girls in ICT Day, our EU Advocacy Officer, Francesca Pisanu, shares with us some reflections on challenges girls face in digital spaces.

As I lead Eurochild’s work on children’s rights in the digital environment, on this day, I want to focus on the challenges girls face online. While gender-based issues do not only affect girls, girls’ experiences are often shaped by their gender, both online and offline. These challenges are often heightened by harmful algorithms and platform design.

In recent decades, progress has been made towards gender equality. However, this cannot be taken for granted, as we observe increasing polarisation and backlash against equality. One of the most serious consequences is the scale of online child sexual abuse, in which girls are particularly vulnerable. The Internet Watch Foundation found that girls comprised 97% of illegal AI-generated child sexual abuse material assessed in 2025.

Recommender systems in online platforms can intensify this by amplifying discriminatory content, as content is optimised for engagement and systematically favours content that triggers strong emotional responses and keeps users scrolling. The rise of the manosphere contributes to the spread and normalisation of misogynistic ideas, which can shape attitudes and also lead to violence. Research has shown that boys tend to encounter toxic and manosphere content within the first 26 minutes of scrolling on social media. This happens in a context in which we observe a widening gender gap among younger cohorts on gender equality and related attitudes in several countries.

Some trends are more subtle, but still reinforce restrictive and regressive ideas about the role of girls. The “tradwife” trend, for instance, promotes an idealised, heteronormative and narrow vision of femininity, and, depending on the creator ecosystem, can be pulled into broader anti-feminist narratives.

Girls are also often disproportionately affected by appearance-based pressures. While unattainable beauty standards can affect everybody, girls are especially exposed to content that encourages obsession with physical appearance, extreme dieting, and constant self-surveillance.

Discriminatory content and behaviours targeting girls are often closely linked with other forms of discrimination, including racism, ableism, and xenophobia, and many girls face intersecting forms of exclusion and violence.

While the online environment may not be the original source of gender-based inequalities, it can reproduce, intensify, and sometimes create new barriers to the equal enjoyment of rights, thereby violating the right to non-discrimination under Article 2 of the UNCRC, as well as related rights such as protection from violence, privacy, participation, development, and access to information.

On this International Girls in ICT Day, we need to remind ourselves that gender equality is an ongoing struggle that must be fought both offline and online. Those who design digital services shape how experiences and harms are recognised and addressed. Governments and tech companies have both legal and moral responsibilities to create digital environments that uphold the rights of girls and promote equality. Increasing the participation of girls and women in these fields is a question of equality, but is also essential to ensuring that digital services are designed, governed and moderated with greater awareness.