I was in a stable relationship during covid, so I thought. I met my first boyfriend through a friend of a friend at school, at first it was going well, we were young and happy during Covid, then things took a spiral, I got asked to send nudes. I wasn’t comfortable at first but I did it anyways because I trusted him. Later on in the years I got told many stories about him, “he raped me” was a major thing i got told. At first I thought it was a lie, then I found out it was the truth. When I said no I got guilt tripped into “you don’t love me” it ruined me as a person now I still get flashbacks and worried even though I’m in a happy relationship now. He had phases of taking photos of us having sex or saving screenshots me

I thought this was a normal relationship. Every night i would get sent photo after photo of explicit images which I thought was a normal relationship, I got found out and it ruined my life and made me feel insecure.

To be quite candid, I used to be a misogynist loser incel internet kid, making shit memes about women being boring so I could get 40,000 likes on Reddit and a nice little dopamine hit. I understand the infrastructure though which a misogynistic ideology promulgates, and the reasons for which a young man might find that ideology appealing.

When I was younger, I quickly realized that going online and immersing myself in that world allowed me to escape the external issues in my life. Social media offered countless gateways to further distraction - pornography, for example, was so easily accessible that I could stumble upon it without even looking, just by scrolling through platforms like Instagram or Twitter. Unaware of the dangers of falling into these rabbit holes, I grew increasingly dependent on them, which ultimately made it difficult for me to focus and apply myself to anything. Over time, I developed a distorted view of sex, relationships, and even the world around me, as I became more disengaged from reality. It was such an effortless distraction that I failed to recognize the importance of creating real-life experiences to develop your mind, or appreciating the time of my childhood. If I could go back, I would seek to fully understand the lasting costs this has on my mental health, so that I would no longer rely on my phone, or any social media, to avoid depression and stress.

When I was around 13 years old the ‘Send Nudes’ craze began in my year group. It became the norm that girls phones would be overloaded with nightly messages from various boys in my year asking what underwear they were wearing, complimenting the way they looked around school and eventually inflating my ego so much that I felt like I owed them photos of me in my underwear. It was constant. Every evening, multiple different guys asking the same things.

Lucy

I first downloaded Instagram at 11 years old, we would chat to strangers online, post whatever we felt like, it was such an exciting time. I would often chat to a boy online called "Jake" who was American and 14 years old. I later found out he was 45 a woman and chatting to more than half the boys and girls in my class... Halfway through the school year our grade was told we had a "surprise" meeting in the auditorium. Our head of maths was holding this meeting. She was a loud and Strict American woman, She had the projector on with images of all of the grades social media profiles, mine included. We sat down shocked and silent. She then explained that she had made a fake profile "Jake" a 14 year old boy who liked to skateboard. Oops! She went through everyone who had accepted Jakes follow request on instagram the chats we had with him and all the information we had shared. She showed us from this information she knew where we lived and how to groom us online. We sat in this auditorium stunned and embarrassed. Although I don't know how ethical this whole project was this was over a decade ago and I still remember it to this day.

Sara