News Excerpt:  

Digital technologies and algorithm-driven software - especially social media - present high risks of privacy invasion, cyberbullying, and distraction from learning to young girls, according to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) latest Global Education Monitoring (GEM) report.

Key highlights:

Social media negatively affects well-being and reinforces gender stereotypes:

• Exposure to social media can negatively affect self-esteem and body image, particularly for girls.
• Consequently, this can impact their mental health and well-being, both of which are essential for academic success.
• Facebook's own research found that 32% of teenage girls said Instagram made them feel worse when they felt bad about their bodies. 
• Girls suffer more cyberbullying than boys. 
• Across OECD countries with available data, 12% of 15-year-old girls reported being cyberbullied, compared to 8% of boys.
• The rise of image-based sexual content, AI-generated deepfakes, and 'self-generated' sexual imagery circulating online and in classrooms.
• The findings 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.

Negative gender stereotypes dampen girls’ STEM aspirations:

• There is a feedback loop in which girls are exposed to negative gender norms amplified by social media.
• Girls are steered away from studying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects that are considered male-oriented fields.
• Girls are deprived of the opportunity to shape the very tools that expose them to these stereotypes.
• According to UNESCO data, women make up only 35% of tertiary STEM graduates around the world, a figure that has not changed in the past 10 years.
• Persistent biases deter women from pursuing STEM careers, ultimately resulting in a lack of women in the technology workforce.
• Women hold less than 25% of jobs in science, engineering, information, and communication technologies fields across the world's leading economies.
• Evidence shows that the digital transformation is being led by men. 
• Although 68% of countries have policies in place to support STEM education, only half of these policies specifically support girls and women.
• Policy efforts should seek to promote role models, including on social media, to encourage career choices in STEM among young women. 
• Improving girls’ access to STEM studies is key to ensuring that women participate on equal terms in the digital transformation of our societies, and supporting the design of truly inclusive technology.