This article was produced by Anahit Harutyunyan from Armenia through the Digital Spark granting scheme, as part of the Regional Support Mechanism EECA project, implemented by the Metamorphosis Foundation and TechSoup, in partnership with CIVICUS and under the Digital Democracy Initiative (DDI) that covers the Global South. It is being published on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.
For years, while reporting from Armenia’s regions, I documented migration, conflict, violence, and social inequality. Yet some of the most difficult stories never appeared in public spaces. They unfolded quietly in private chats, disappearing messages, social media accounts, and locked phone screens. Digital violence rarely leaves visible traces, but it changes relationships, confidence, participation, and the way people understand trust. While reporting on digital violence, I realized that awareness alone was not enough. Communities needed practical tools. That realization became the foundation of the Shirak Digital Resilience Lab: Youth-Led Action Against Digital Violence.
People often imagine digital violence as hacking or anonymous attacks. But while working on investigative and analytical stories in Armenia, I repeatedly encountered something more complex. A civically active woman stopped posting online because someone monitored her activity. Teenagers described pressure to constantly share passwords as proof of trust. Parents worried about online risks but had no vocabulary to discuss them. Many people experienced digital harm without recognizing it as harm at all.
One of the strongest realizations during my reporting was that digital violence often enters daily life disguised as normal behavior: Control becomes attention, surveillance becomes care, pressure becomes love.
This became especially visible while researching digital relationships and forms of online control. People described situations where requests for constant location sharing, account access, message monitoring, or emotional pressure became normalized rather than questioned. That’s why I think that these stories did not begin with technology — they began with unequal knowledge.
Digital exclusion is not only about access
Many families in Shirak Province, in northeastern Armenia, depend on migration and maintain relationships across the Turkish and Georgian borders, exposing them to multiple information environments. Young people move daily between local realities and global platforms. They consume enormous amounts of information but rarely receive structured education about digital rights, misinformation, privacy, or online manipulation.
The result is a paradox. Young people are digitally connected but not always digitally protected. And when communities lack language for discussing online harm, silence becomes part of the problem. The Shirak Digital Resilience Lab brings together 60 young people from three border towns in Shirak: Akhurik, Voskehask, and Haykavan.
The process starts with interactive workshops where participants explore digital literacy, online rights, ethical technology use, and ways to recognize harmful online behavior. Young women were specifically prioritized when forming the project, as they are often the targets of digital violence.
When digital violence becomes a business
In public discussions, digital violence is often reduced to offensive comments or online bullying. But while reporting and speaking with experts and affected individuals, I repeatedly encountered another dimension of the problem: Digital violence as an underground economy.
It may begin with trust: A private conversation, a photograph, a video call, access to an account, or personal information shared in what appears to be a close relationship. Then the conditions change.
Requests begin: Money for silence, obedience, continued communication, or simply control. The fear is rarely only about exposure. It is a fear of social consequences.
In conservative environments, especially in smaller communities, women and girls often carry a disproportionate burden of shame. Even when they are targets of manipulation or coercion, many hesitate to seek help because they fear judgment more than the perpetrator.
Several specialists I interviewed while working on digital violence described this as one of the reasons incidents remain underreported: People do not trust that reporting will protect them faster than exposure could harm them.
Law enforcement and legislation often face practical challenges in identifying perpetrators, preserving evidence, and responding quickly enough to prevent further harm. That delay creates space for informal underground practices to grow.
Digital extortion depends on silence. And silence grows where people do not know their rights, where communities attach stigma to victims, and where digital literacy develops more slowly than digital risks. Young people are particularly vulnerable. Not because they use technology more, but because trust, identity, and social belonging increasingly happen online.
Digital violence is no longer only about control. It has become a business model built on fear, shame, and silence. This is why digital violence should not be treated as an individual problem or private mistake. Rather, it is a social issue — one connected to education, rights, digital awareness, and access to support.
Beyond awareness: Building digital resilience
Digital resilience is not about teaching people to fear technology — it is about helping them understand power inside digital spaces. This means recognizing manipulation and questioning control before normalizing it. Understanding that online participation is also a civic skill. For rural youth, especially in communities with limited educational opportunities, these skills increasingly shape future participation in society.
The challenge is no longer whether young people use digital tools. They already do. The challenge is whether they can use them critically, safely, and confidently. After years of listening to stories of silence, withdrawal, confusion, and adaptation, I no longer see digital literacy as a technical issue.
Turning awareness into stories young people will actually watch
Young people rarely engage with long explanations about digital rights or online safety; they engage with content created by people who speak their language and understand their reality.
That is why an important part of this initiative is not only discussing digital violence but also translating difficult conversations into short visual stories.
Participants will be invited to create short videos and reels that explore situations many young people recognize but rarely discuss openly: Pressure to share passwords, emotional manipulation online, image-based threats, misinformation, digital control disguised as care, and fear of speaking publicly.
The process itself matters as much as the final video.
Participants will use tools they already know: Smartphones, editing applications, and artificial intelligence (AI) supported creative tools for visual production, scripting, idea development, and verification. But technology use is not the primary goal here.
Through mentorship, participants receive support in transforming ideas into short, ethical, and responsible visual narratives. They learn how to structure a story, edit for short-form formats, and communicate difficult topics without sensationalism.
There is also another effect that matters. Young people do not merely consume content — they also share it. A reel created by one participant may reach classmates, friends, siblings, and entire peer networks. Conversations that once remained private can begin publicly, creating space for recognition, discussion, and support. Sometimes it starts with a 60-second video that makes someone stop scrolling and think.
Technology itself is not the enemy
Working on this topic changed the way I think about journalism. I no longer see reporting only as documenting consequences. Sometimes journalism can also open conversations before harm becomes irreversible.
That is why I wanted to move beyond publishing articles and create space for young people to think, question, create, and speak in their own voices. Perhaps digital resilience does not begin with complicated policies or expensive technologies.
Perhaps it begins much earlier with a conversation in a classroom, a question asked without fear, a short video shared between friends, or a young person recognizing that pressure, control, and silence are not normal parts of being online.
If digital violence has learned to adapt to every new platform, our response must adapt too. And maybe the first step is simple: To make visible what has remained invisible for too long.