(Newswise) — While extensive research has documented strong associations among alcohol use, sexual assault victimization, and sexual aggression, much less is known about how these risk factors transfer to online situations. A new study has found that college students who drank more were more likely to perpetrate cyber sexual aggression, and among those who did perpetrate, they did so more frequently.
These results and others will be shared at the 49th annual scientific meeting of the Research Society on Alcohol (RSA) in San Antonio, Texas.
“Most college students use social networking sites and texting for their social and dating life,” said Nishantika Neeher, a Ph.D. student in health promotion and behavior at Georgia State University. “As digital communication has become central to their social and sexual interactions, cyber sexual aggression has emerged as a significant and growing concern on college campuses.”
Neeher described cyber sexual aggression as the act of using phones, social media, texting, emails, dating sites, gaming, or other digital tools to pressure, harass, threaten, or exploit someone sexually. It can include sending unwanted sexual messages; asking for sexual images after someone has said no; sharing intimate images without permission; sending gender/sexual orientation-based offensive and/or degrading messages, comments, or other content to someone; or threatening to expose private sexual content.
“One might initially assume that alcohol is less relevant to cyber sexual aggression since sending an unsolicited explicit image or sending a coercive message doesn’t require physical proximity or the social context of a party,” Neeher explained. “But the major question here is, what does alcohol actually do to a person? It lowers inhibitions. It makes one more impulsive. It impairs their judgment. It makes one less likely to stop and think about whether what they are about to do is okay.”
The researchers asked 2,160 college students aged 18 to 25 years to self-report their alcohol use (typical drinks per week), cyber sexual victimization experiences, sexual aggression victimization history, and cyber sexual aggression perpetration in an online survey. “Our study revealed that among the college students, 22.92 percent reported perpetrating any sort of cyber sexual aggression,” said Neeher. “It also revealed that among perpetrators, more alcohol use, sexual assault victimization history, and identifying as a man were significantly associated with more frequent cyber sexual aggression perpetration.”
Sadly, she added, the sexual violence that campuses have worked for decades to prevent has moved into digital spaces, and most policies and programs have not fully caught up. “Treating cyber sexual aggression as a marginal or emerging concern understates the need for active prevention efforts now, Neeher said. “Campus prevention programs, such as alcohol prevention, sexual violence prevention, and mental health support, should be connected rather than siloed. An integrated approach would be most beneficial for a better prevention approach.”
Neeher added that colleges and universities can benefit from this information because if schools understand how cyber sexual aggression works, they can build better education campaigns, reporting systems, and intervention programs that address both online and in-person harm. Likewise, for student safety planning; campuses can better train staff, support survivors, and educate students about what consent means in digital spaces, including image sharing, messaging, and online coercion.
