Teenagers’ online and offline lives are closely connected, including their intimate relationships. Technology has changed how we connect and communicate, but it can also be used for control and abuse.
The Domestic Abuse 2021 defines domestic abuse as abusive behaviour between personally connected individuals aged 16 or over. This includes physical, sexual, violent, threatening, controlling, coercive, economic, psychological, emotional or other forms of abuse.
Lauren Seager-Smith from The For Baby’s Sake Trust explores what tech-facilitated abuse looks like in relationships and what we can do to help our teenagers understand and respond to abusive behaviour.
Summary
- No More Week takes place 2 – 8 March and encourages people to break the silence on abuse.
- Tech-facilitated abuse is where someone uses digital tools to harass, monitor, threaten or control someone.
- Because most teens’ lives are online, this form of abuse can be particularly invasive and distressing.
- Through reviewing account security and helping teens document abuse, parents can support young people.
- Tech-facilitated abuse thrives in secrecy, so it’s important to break the silence.
- Explore more resources to support young people online.
What is No More Week?
As part of No More Week 2025, we are breaking the silence on tech-facilitated abuse, with a focus on how these abusive behaviours can begin to manifest in teenage relationships, and as they grow older, be categorised as domestic abuse.
No More Week is a global campaign that raises awareness of domestic abuse and sexual violence, encouraging individuals, communities, and organisations to say No More to all forms of abuse. This year’s theme, No More Silence, calls on us to shed light on lesser-known methods of control—many of which are enabled by technology.
At The For Baby’s Sake Trust, we work with families affected by domestic abuse, helping them to break cycles of harm and build healthier futures for their children. We know that abuse can take many forms, including tech-facilitated abuse. As parents, we have a vital role to play in modelling healthy relationships, and in helping to educate our teenagers recognise and respond to tech-facilitated abuse.
What is tech-facilitated abuse?
Tech-facilitated abuse refers to the use of digital tools—such as smartphones, social media, online banking and smart home devices—to harass, monitor, threaten or control someone. It is often a form of coercive control, where a person seeks to restrict another person’s freedom and autonomy through digital means.
This form of abuse can happen in all kinds of interpersonal relationships, including with current or previous partners or with different family members.
Tech-facilitated abuse in teenage and adult relationships can often be subtle and difficult to detect. It can include:
- Constant surveillance: Using tracking apps, spyware or even AirTags to follow someone’s movements.
- Hacking or impersonation: Gaining access to emails, social media or online banking to monitor or manipulate another person.
- Social media monitoring: Demanding passwords, forcing someone to share their location or using ‘Find My Phone’ functions to control whereabouts; controlling who someone can ‘friend’ or ‘follow’.
- Financial control through technology: Forcing someone to make payments or cancel payments, accessing bank accounts, taking financial control and agency from another person.
- Misuse of smart home devices: Controlling security cameras, lighting or heating remotely to intimidate someone in their own home; monitoring someone’s location.
- Threats involving digital content: Using personal and private photos, videos or messages as blackmail or ‘revenge’, threatening to share them without consent.
These tactics are dangerous because they allow a person using abusive behaviour to exert control 24/7, often from a distance, making it harder for the person experiencing abuse to access help and seek safety.
How tech-facilitated abuse can impact teens
For teenagers and young people experiencing abuse in their relationships, tech-facilitated abuse is invasive and distressing. Digital communication is a huge part of young people’s lives—whether through social media, messaging apps, gaming platforms or shared devices. When these digital tools are misused, they can become powerful instruments of manipulation, isolation and control.
Technology can be used to intensify unhealthy relationship dynamics and to cause harm. A person using abusive behaviours might:
- Exert control through constant digital monitoring: Demanding passwords, checking messages or tracking location through apps like ‘Find My Friends’.
- Flood the other person with messages or calls: Expecting immediate replies and becoming angry if they don’t respond.
- Use social media as a tool for manipulation: Pressuring the other person to share passwords, remove certain friends or post content to prove their loyalty.
- Threaten to share private photos or messages: As a means of coercion, blackmail or revenge.
- Control online interactions: Restricting who the other person can follow, like or engage with on social media.
- Spy through shared or gifted devices: Installing tracking apps or spyware on a phone, laptop, in a car if the young people are old enough to drive or even a smartwatch.
This is dangerous behaviour, where young people can feel trapped in their relationship and unable to reach out for help. Many may not even realise they are experiencing abuse or even using potentially abusive behaviours, as some of these behaviours have become normalised in teenage relationships. For example, a teen might feel they have the right to track someone’s location because of their relationship status.
Understanding tech-facilitated abuse and breaking the silence is crucial; we need to empower teenagers to recognise harmful behaviours online and offline, including when control and coercion are disguised as love and care.
How to protect teens from tech-facilitated abuse
Educating ourselves as parents and supporting our teenagers to be aware and take protective steps, is the first step in breaking the silence on tech-facilitated abuse. Consider the following actions:
- If they are worried about someone controlling their accounts, help them change their passwords and enable two-factor authentication on social media, email and banking apps.
- Regularly check privacy settings on social media to limit who can see posts and location check-ins.
- Consider a separate, secure email address for important accounts that an abusive partner does not know about.
- Consider having a separate device, in a safe place, on mute and with location permissions turned off, that you use to access your support network, help and advice (e.g. a mobile phone with a Pay as you Go SIM card).
- Be aware that AirTags, smartwatches or shared accounts can be used to track locations.
- If you suspect spyware on your teen’s phone, reset the device or seek professional tech support.
- Check ‘Find My Phone’ and other location-sharing settings to ensure they are not being misused.
- Take screenshots of abusive messages, emails or online activity as evidence.
- Keep a record of incidents, including dates and times, in a safe, private location.
- Ask trusted friends who may also see potential evidence of coercive or controlling behaviour through online accounts to document this on your behalf.
- The Metropolitan Police provides guidance on digital domestic abuse: Met Police Advice.
- The National Domestic Abuse Helpline (0808 2000 247) offers confidential support.
- Organisations like Refuge’s Tech Abuse and Safety Service provide specialist advice on online safety.
- Let Me Know is an education charity working with young people to prevent relationship abuse, domestic violence and sexual assault.
The importance of breaking the silence
Tech-facilitated abuse thrives in secrecy. Many people experiencing it do not realise they are being controlled, and those who do may feel too ashamed or afraid to seek help.
As a society, we need to challenge the normalisation of digital control. Checking a partner’s phone without permission can be portrayed as justified if we believe we have reason not to trust them—but it is an invasion of privacy and can be a criminal offence.
While we may mutually consent to share our location with our family members, it is never okay for our teenagers to force someone to share their location without willing consent. There is a growing trend amongst younger people to insist on this within relationships and it is not okay. We must educate young people about healthy digital boundaries in relationships and empower parents with the knowledge to protect themselves and their children.
The role of For Baby’s Sake
At The For Baby’s Sake Trust, we are committed to breaking cycles of abuse and helping families build safer futures. Our programme supports parents to address trauma, develop healthy relationships and create secure, loving environments for their babies.
This No More Week, we urge everyone to say No More Silence on tech-facilitated abuse. By raising awareness, equipping ourselves and our teenagers with knowledge, and speaking up, we can prevent digital control from becoming an invisible threat in our communities.
If you are experiencing tech-facilitated abuse or need support, you are not alone. Help is available. Let’s break the silence together.
