Saudi Arabia: Leap in online harassment among young people
On March 26th it was reported that the rate of online harassment in Saudi Arabia among those aged 13-26 had grown by 70%. The increase was the result of both content found on the internet, and inadequate monitoring by parents of their children’s online activity.
Mohammed Azib, family psychologist and consultant who conducted the study, said the findings reveal that online harassment, sexual or other, has become especially popular on social networks like Snapchat, where users adopt fake names in order to harass others in this virtual space.
According to Azib this phenomenon lies in the lack of communication between young people and their parents, which leads to emotional immaturity and therefore the use of the internet to release repressed emotions. A local attorney added that many young people are unaware that online harassment or exploitation is considered a crime under cyber law in Saudi Arabia, which was approved more than eight years ago, and which includes punishment of up to 12 years in prison and a fine of up to half a million Real.
Relatedly, in November 2014 it was reported that Saudi Arabia intended to limit the upload of content which shares photos and videos, since many young people are unaware that they need permission “to produce content on YouTube and similar sites” and that “multiple clips include violations of moral and religious norms; so far there has been no governmental entity to oversee and regulate such channels or generate certificates”.
Alongside this declaration, there was a call to Saudi clerics in October 2014 regarding Twitter saying that “if uses of Twitter were all true, it would be truly beneficial, but unfortunately it is utilized only for trivial matters, and therefore it has become a source of evil and destruction, since people refer to it thinking it is a reliable source of information, but it is a source of lies and falsehoods “. There was a following call in January 2015 for self-censorship on Twitter.
