The internet should be a place of opportunity. It should allow young people to learn, to connect, to speak up, to create and to participate in public life with confidence. For many girls and women, however, the digital space is too often a place of humiliation, intimidation and fear.
This is one of the defining rights issues of our time. Violence against women does not stop at the front door, on the street, or in the workplace. It extends into the online world, where abuse can spread faster, travel further and remain visible longer. A threatening message can be sent in seconds. An intimate image can be shared without consent in minutes. A lie, a deepfake or a coordinated campaign of harassment can destroy a reputation overnight.
And behind every figure stands a person. A teenage girl who no longer wants to go to school after being targeted online. A journalist who stops writing because the threats become unbearable. A young activist who withdraws from public debate because every post brings a new wave of hatred. When women are pushed out of digital spaces, society loses voices, talent and leadership. That is why Europe has to act decisively.
In 2024, the European Union adopted its first-ever directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence. It is a big step forward because it recognises that online abuse is real abuse. It criminalises, across the EU, serious forms of cyberviolence such as cyberstalking, cyberharassment, the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, and incitement to hatred or violence on the basis of gender. This matters enormously. Rights cannot depend on a postcode. A woman in one Member State deserves the same protection of her dignity as a woman in another.
But passing a law is only the beginning. Member States now have to implement this directive quickly and properly. That means training police and prosecutors, strengthening victim support services, financing hotlines and counselling, and ensuring that illegal content is removed swiftly. Justice delayed online is often justice denied, because the damage multiplies every hour abusive material stays online.
Recent cases involving AI-generated sexualised images have shown how urgently we need enforcement. New technologies can be used to innovate, educate and empower. But they can also be used to degrade and exploit. A normal photograph taken from social media can now be manipulated in seconds into fake sexualised content and spread without the victim ever knowing who created it first. The violation is digital, but the harm is deeply human. Shame, anxiety, fear, self-censorship and professional retreat are not virtual consequences. They are real.
Europe is not powerless in the face of this. Alongside the directive, we already have tools that must be used seriously. The Digital Services Act creates responsibilities for major platforms when it comes to illegal content and systemic risks. The AI Act introduces transparency obligations so that AI-generated content, including deepfakes, can be identified clearly. These rules matter. But rules alone will not protect anyone if platforms continue to react only after public outrage, instead of designing their systems to prevent foreseeable harm.
This is also a question of democracy. When female journalists, politicians, entrepreneurs or activists are targeted with misogynistic abuse, the aim is often not only to insult them, but to silence them. Recent research by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) for UN Women in partnership with UNESCO found that 75% of women journalists and media workers experienced online violence while doing their jobs in 2025, up from 73% in 2020. We should be under no illusion: online abuse is being used as a weapon to narrow the public space and to push women out of leadership and visibility. A democracy in which women participate under threat is not fully free.
That is why the response must be broader than punishment alone. We need prevention, digital literacy, faster reporting tools, clearer accountability for platforms, and a culture that refuses to normalise humiliation as “just part of being online”. We must teach boys and girls alike that consent, dignity and respect do not disappear once a screen lights up. And we must be clear that anonymity can never become a shield for hatred and abuse.
For YEPP, this also means keeping the issue high on the political agenda. Young women must not be told to be less visible, less outspoken or less ambitious in order to stay safe. The burden must shift from potential victims to perpetrators and to the systems that enable them. Safety cannot depend on silence. Europe can and should set that standard.
As young centre-right Europeans, we should be ambitious here. We believe in innovation, but innovation without responsibility will never earn trust. We believe in freedom, but freedom online cannot mean impunity for those who threaten, stalk, exploit or degrade others. And we believe in human dignity, which applies just as much in digital spaces as it does offline.
Making the internet safer for girls and women is not a niche issue. It is about rights, security, democracy and the kind of digital future we want to build in Europe. The choice is clear: either we allow technology to amplify old forms of violence in new ways, or we shape it around our values. Europe must choose. And it must choose now.
By Sophia Kircher,
YEPP President
