As a Masters student passionate about gender equality and diversity, Angelica Ojinnaka spends a lot of time on social media and she's come to anticipate the worst.

Key points: Plan International surveyed 14,000 girls and young women, including 1,000 Australians

Plan International surveyed 14,000 girls and young women, including 1,000 Australians In Australia, 65 per cent of girls and young women reported being harassed or abused online

In Australia, 65 per cent of girls and young women reported being harassed or abused online The global average for reporting online harassment was 58 per cent

"Often when you're someone like me who is a black woman, who is sharing things in the area that they are passionate about, the types of comments that can come through are about my features or about my identity as a woman," she said.

"They can be very racist in nature, you just have to come with an expectation that that's going to happen."

For Ms Ojinnaka, social media is an essential tool for research and advocacy — she's active on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.

"I love to make sure that I'm engaged with what's happening in the academic world online, as well as areas of social justice that I'm passionate about, too," she said.

But she has plenty of experience that shows being online has a cost, like the time she shared some research on how Australia was moving forward with racial justice.

"I got a comment under that piece that was calling me obscene things like an ape, monkey," she said.

"As a black woman, that's the type of thing that we encounter."

Angelica Ojinnaka uses social media for research and advocacy. ( ABC News: Tom Hancock )

She is far from alone. A new report from the charity Plan International found online harassment and abuse is a common experience for girls and young women.

Plan surveyed 14,000 girls and young women aged 15-25 in 22 countries around the world. Of those surveyed, 1,000 were in Australia.

In the report, Free To Be Online, the charity found 58 per cent reported being exposed to harassment online, including insulting language, body shaming, and threats of sexual violence.

In Australia, the results were worse than the global average — 65 per cent of girls and young women reported being harassed or abused online.

"This shows you that misogyny is alive and well, particularly in the Australian context," eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said.

Ms Inman Grant said her office was concerned online abuse had become an even bigger problem during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We've seen things like a 245 per cent increase in image-based abuse … the non-consensual sharing of intimate images and videos," Ms Inman Grant said.

The Plan survey found the impacts of online harassment and abuse are severe — 53 per cent of Australian girls and young women who responded said they had lower self-esteem, while 51 per cent had experienced mental or emotional stress.

The eSafety Commissioner website has an online guide with links to many social media sites, to help people get abusive material removed from the internet.

If that doesn't work, sometimes the office does step in.

"We're not going to go to war with the internet," Ms Inman Grant said.

"The buck does have to stop with the social media sites first, but where they fail or where things fall through the cracks, that's when we will be there to hopefully pick up the pieces."

'People aren't taking it very seriously'

Alongside the Plan International report, the charity is launching a campaign to support an open letter to social media companies Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok.

The letter asking the companies to work with girls and young women to create stronger reporting mechanisms will be delivered on the International Day of the Girl on October 11.

Maya Ghassali, 19, from Melbourne is one of those who'd like to see social media companies do more to stop online harassment.

Maya Ghassali says social media has allowed her to connect with friends and family during Melbourne's COVID-19 lockdown. ( ABC News: Patrick Stone )

"A lot of people aren't taking it very seriously," she said.

"I would tell them to definitely have a look at their reporting arrangements and see if they're actually helping the victims of harassment.

The university student said social media is a big part of her life, even more so in lockdown when it's the only way she can connect with friends and family.

"I spend like three to four hours every day and that takes in phone calls, Facebook scrolls, TikTok, you know, the usual teenage apps that you use," she said.

Facebook, which also owns Instagram, said they were listening to what Plan International had to say.

"We invest billions in staff and technology to keep abuse off our platforms and work with more than 200 safety organisations globally to help protect women from online harassment, offensive comments and unwanted attention," said Instagram's head of policy programs Kira Wong O'Connor in a statement.

"Over the past few years, we've partnered with Plan International on workshops for young women to safely share their experience online."

TikTok said the company "deeply understood" the distress abuse content could have on users.

"We do not tolerate such content or behaviour on our platform," the company said in a statement.

"If we become aware of content that violates our [terms and conditions] we will quickly work to remove content and terminate accounts as appropriate."

Twitter did not respond to the ABC before deadline.

Giving young women a voice

Two years ago, Ms Ghassali was excited when an older man she'd met at a professional event wanted to connect on Instagram.

She thought it would help her with her activism on refugee rights and other issues.

"As a young person, I felt that was a really cool experience because he works at a place that I want to be at in the future," she said.

"He ended up sending me some inappropriate personal messages that I didn't expect and that made me feel really uncomfortable."

Eventually she deleted him off all of her social media.

"Ever since then, I've always been a bit hesitant on what I post … on my public account, because I always think about who will decide to text me after I post these things," she said.

"I feel like I'm being judged before I even send."

Ms Inman Grant said that reaction represents another serious consequence of online harassment and abuse — that girls and young women are forced to self-censor themselves online.

"I do worry about the societal impacts of women who want to go into journalism or to politics where being on social media is a professional imperative," Ms Inman Grant said.

"If they're going to continue experiencing this horrendous abuse, it's already serving as an inhibitor in terms of going into some of these professions.

Ms Inman Grant said social media was meant to be great leveller "giving people equal voice".

"It's one thing to promote women's and girls' voices, but if you're not protecting them, then you're suppressing their voices at the same time," she said.

Source: ABC News (AU)

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