At a high-level conference under the Cyprus Presidency of the Council of the European Union in Nicosia on 18 May 2026, Director Carlien Scheele participates in an opening fireside chat to discuss how to prevent and combat all forms of gender-based online violence against girls.
Good morning colleagues, first off, I’d like to thank the Cypriot Presidency for this privileged invitation to talk about the alarming state and rate of cyber violence faced by young girls.
My Agency’s role is to provide the EU‑wide evidence that helps all of us align our actions and measure what’s changing for girls in practice.
To set the scene for you, I’ll begin by sharing a common morning ritual that many girls are likely to experience in the EU.
Before even getting out of bed, she checks her phone in a panic. She has to know what’s been said and spread about her overnight – before facing the consequences at school.
What a girl can potentially discover is chilling and deeply sinister. Humiliating and degrading content in which she herself is placed at the centre.
This can include non-consensual creation, sharing, or manipulation of intimate images is – these are some of the most devastating forms of cyber violence. And the rise of deepfakes makes it faster, easier, and harder to undo.
We know this because my Agency’s report: Combatting cyber violence against girls, is based on focus groups with over 130 young women aged 13 to 18 across ten Member States.
A girl in our research shared this story: “She didn’t want to date him. And he literally made a deep fake of her. And he started sending it around school.”
This is not some ‘teenage drama’. It’s harm.
Harm that spreads and adapts to the technical features of one app to another – our evidence shows that it ranges from volatile and hostile direct messages on Instagram, inappropriate content disguised as child-friendly videos on YouTube Kids, unsolicited nudes on Snapchat and grooming on TikTok.
You don’t have to be a parent to feel sick about what young girls are experiencing.
Because for many girls, this isn’t a one-off threat – it’s a persistent feature of daily life online which peaks at the age of 13 across most EU countries and regions, ends up shaping how safe they feel to participate online.
Further down the road in life many women limit their online presence, self-censor, or avoid public participation altogether because of the abuse they anticipate.
With the rise of misogynist attitudes that spread like wildfire online, who can blame them?
But who can tame those misogynistic attitudes? Boys and young men. They are not just part of the audience here – they can be key allies. We need them to step in. Call it out.
But sadly, research on cyberbullying from about 10 years ago reveals that approximately 50-90% of adolescents – boys and girls - have, at some stage, been a passive bystander to cyberbullying, failing to intervene in response to this type of abuse.
Oftentimes that stems from peer pressure – but not stepping up rewards misogyny and silence.
If we don’t take these experiences seriously right now, the problem will only get even more serious.
It goes without saying that platforms have among the most significant parts to play in taking control of this phenomenon and mitigating risk and harm, but it also requires a whole system response: governments, support services and platforms – each doing their own part.
Which also extends to us here in this room – we all come with our respective expertise and levels of power to prevent and protect girls from the nefarious corners of the internet.
The speed, reach and permanence of the content I mentioned earlier only intensify the harms of cyber violence.
I want to mention here that at the European Summit on Artificial Intelligence and Children in Copenhagen just last week, President von der Leyen warned us “with the rapid advance of artificial intelligence, these risks are multiplying fast” – this reality sits firmly behind her recent proposal for EU-wide social media protection measures for children.
Which is a very reasonable move because our evidence shows girls are already living that acceleration through deepfakes and image-based abuse that can circulate in seconds.
Which is why, as a first port of call, we need to start earlier: put age‑appropriate, gender‑responsive digital literacy and bystander skills into schools, so girls and boys can recognise abuse (including deepfakes) and know what to do when it happens.
Secondly, we need to make help both easy to access and a very real outcome: that means setting up anonymous, child‑friendly reporting pathways linked to fast takedown and follow‑up, backed by specialised, trauma‑informed support.
One thing I want to emphasise about the general approach to protection…
We often put the onus of responsibility on the victims to hide away or to change their behaviour.
Remember what Gisele Pelicot said – “shame must switch sides.”
Which means that protection should be about having clear and undisputed consequences to those who cause harm; so that girls do not carry the cost of other people’s abuse – not in their minds, not in their bodies and not in their lives.
