Young people increasingly reporting coercive control by friends

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Support service Kids Helpline says its received more than a thousand calls from young people saying they've experienced coercive control by people their own age. The data, collected between January 2024 and July this year and obtained by Triple J's Hack program, found teenage girls are the most likely to report such behaviour from peers, including friends.

Transcript

00:00Around a thousand people contacted Kids Helpline aged between 5 and 25 from January last year

00:11and July this year, reporting coercive control behaviours in their peer groups, including

00:17friendships. A lot of the terms that were used most commonly in those reports include

00:22things like controlling behaviour, gaslighting, toxic friendships and isolation. Most of the

00:29reports came from girls and women, about three quarters of those reports in fact, so young

00:34men still not necessarily experiencing or identifying those behaviours for what they

00:40are. And the most common age group of all was around 15 to 18 in terms of people who had

00:47said they had experienced this behaviour. It is important to note here, Gemma, that it

00:51is a very small proportion of the overall contacts that Kids Helpline received over that period,

00:57but as they tell us, it is a growing and emergent issue. So something to keep an eye on for

01:03sure.

01:04And I know you spoke to a number of young people for this story. What were they telling

01:07you about abusive friendships?

01:09Yeah, well we did a shout out on Triple J to ask people what their experiences of this kind

01:15of behaviour had been. And we got dozens and dozens of responses back. Most of them were

01:21from women and a lot of them were really troubling accusations or experiences. Things like being

01:28isolated from a friendship group. Iced out was I think some of the terminology that was

01:33used. A lot of verbal abuse when friends started maybe broadening their horizon, inviting other

01:38friends to things. Control around tracking devices and surveilling friends through location sharing

01:46services was really, really common. And we had also experiences where people became verbally

01:51and sometimes physically abusive to their friends. So it was a range of experiences, some of which

01:57were really quite troubling. And do we know why this kind of behaviour in friendship groups

02:01is becoming more common? So I guess like other relationships, a lot of what we determine

02:08as normal comes from community attitudes. So research out of the ANU has found that young

02:14people actually are the least likely to recognise stalking and surveillance behaviour as troubling

02:21compared to other age groups. And that's because they have grown up with that kind of technology.

02:27Often their parents will use it and use it on them as a way of saying, we're just doing

02:32this to look out for you. It's because we love you. The eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman-Grant,

02:37has told Hack that sometimes that surveilling behaviour can be disrespectful and can potentially

02:43lead to dangerous situations in relationships going forward if young people don't recognise

02:49that they're in an infringement of their own boundaries. But it's also important to note

02:53that this isn't all doom and gloom here. Kids Helpline says that part of the reason that

02:58young people are using this terminology is because they're becoming more aware of what's a healthy

03:03relationship and what's an unhealthy relationship. They've become quite adept at identifying behaviour

03:11that's problematic and calling it out as well. So there is a silver lining to all of this.

03:15ians.

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