Digital abuse: control through phones and social media

“It’s nothing serious, we just share our locations. So I know you’re safe.”

That is often how it begins. First a shared location, because it is practical. Then a question about why you spent half an hour in a shop ten minutes from home. Then a request for your password, “because there shouldn’t be any secrets between us”. Then a message at eleven at night: “I can see you were online at 22:47. Who were you talking to?” And one day you notice that before you reply to anyone, you first think about how it will look when your phone is checked.

When people think of violence in a relationship, they still tend to think of bruises first. But a great deal of abuse today happens on the device you carry in your pocket all day. In this post I write about digital abuse in an intimate relationship: what it looks like, why it is so hard to recognise, where the line lies between care and control, and what you can do without putting yourself in greater danger.

I want to say two things right at the start. This post is not a test you can use to assess on your own how dangerous your situation is — that is done in conversation with people trained to do it. And if you are afraid, safety comes before everything else you read here. Helpline numbers are at the end of the post and in the section on safety.

Control you cannot see

Digital abuse (in the research literature also called technology-facilitated abuse) is the use of phones, computers, apps and online services to monitor, intimidate, humiliate or isolate a partner. It is not a separate kind of violence that lives apart from the others. It is an old dynamic with new tools.

The sociologist Evan Stark named this dynamic coercive control: a pattern of behaviours through which one person gradually narrows the other’s world — where they may go, whom they may talk to, what they may wear, how they may spend money. Individual acts often look harmless. The harm lies in the pattern, and in the fact that the other person starts adapting before anything is even demanded. You can read about the wider picture in the knowledge base under violence in a relationship.

Technology adds something to this pattern that it did not have before: omnipresence. In her research with women who had experienced technology-facilitated abuse, the Australian researcher Delanie Woodlock described exactly this feeling — that the partner is with them even when he is not in the room. Because of the phone, the abuse does not end when you close the door. It follows you to work, to a friend’s house, into bed.

How widespread is it? A European survey by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) found that 11% of women in the European Union had experienced cyber harassment since the age of fifteen — unwanted offensive or sexually explicit messages, inappropriate advances on social networks. The survey was carried out more than a decade ago, when smartphones were less widespread, so the picture today is probably different, but I do not know of comparable recent data for Slovenia.

What it looks like

Because digital abuse is so woven into everyday life, it helps to divide it into a few recognisable forms. A single one of them does not tell the whole story; what matters is whether they repeat, whether you are afraid of them and whether they restrict your life.

It is worth stressing something shown by the research of Diana Freed and colleagues at Cornell University. They spoke with women who had experienced abuse and with professionals who work with them, and found that most digital control is not technically sophisticated. Abusers rarely “hack”. Usually they know the password because they found it out or forced it out of their partner, they have physical access to the phone, they own the phone contract or the family account, or they use features already built into devices — location sharing, photo syncing, shared calendars.

This matters because women often say: “I’m not even sure he’s really monitoring me, he doesn’t have any special software.” He does not need it. To control someone, it is enough to know what he knows.

Another research group, led by Rahul Chatterjee, examined apps sold for “monitoring children” or “finding a lost phone” and showed that many of them are easily used to spy on a partner — and that antivirus programs often fail to flag them as dangerous.

Why it is so hard to call it abuse

Digital control almost always presents itself as care or love. “I just want to know you got home.” “If you’ve got nothing to hide, why can’t I look at your phone?” That last sentence is one of the most powerful traps. It reverses responsibility: privacy becomes proof of guilt, and resisting control becomes a confession.

On top of that, control escalates slowly. No single demand is big enough to leave over. When you look back, you cannot find the moment it began, so you wonder whether you imagined the whole thing. That doubt is no accident — a partner often feeds it with explanations that you are exaggerating, that you are oversensitive or that you are remembering it wrong. This is called gaslighting.

Much of the shame also comes from how banal it all looks. It is hard to tell a friend that it hurts when your partner reads your messages. It sounds like jealousy, like something that happens in every couple. I wrote about where jealousy is still a signal and where it becomes a wound carried from the past in Jealousy in a relationship: when it is a signal and when it is an old wound. The difference between jealousy and control is not in the feeling but in what someone does with it — whether they carry it themselves and talk about it, or use it to narrow your life.

(composite, not a real person)
“I don’t get why you’re upset. I only asked who you were with.”
“You asked four times. And then you rang my sister.”
“Because you didn’t pick up. What am I supposed to think?”
“I was in a meeting. My phone was on silent.”
“See, that’s the problem. That your phone is on silent.”

Something typical happens in this short exchange. By the end the question is no longer whether four calls were too many, but whether she is allowed to have her phone on silent. The rule is invented on the spot, and it applies only to her.

Care or control: where is the line

Many couples share their location, passwords for joint accounts or a family calendar, and there is nothing wrong with that. Technology itself is neither good nor bad. So what matters is less what and more how. Four questions help.

Did you decide together? An agreement is reached in a conversation in which both of you have an equal say. Control is established through a demand the other person gives in to, because that is easier than a row.

Does it apply equally to both? If you must share your location while he “doesn’t need to”, this is not about trust but about power.

Can you say no? This is perhaps the most important question. If you could switch off location sharing tomorrow and it would only lead to a short conversation, that is an agreement. If it would lead to days of accusations, silence, threats or something worse, it is no longer your choice.

What do you feel when your phone rings? The body often knows before the head does. If you feel tension in your stomach at the sight of his name on the screen, before you have even read the message, that is information worth taking seriously.

What digital control does to you

People who live under constant monitoring often describe a similar inner shift. They begin to inspect themselves through the other person’s eyes. Before you post something, before you reply to someone, before you smile at a colleague, you can already hear how it will be interpreted. Your world narrows not only because someone forbids things, but because you start forbidding them yourself.

This brings an exhaustion that is hard to explain. You are on standby all the time. Sleep is worse because the phone lies next to the bed. Friendships thin out because it is easier not to reply than to explain afterwards. And slowly a belief can form that you are somehow to blame for all of it — that you should have been more open, less secretive, more compliant. I wrote about how this kind of guilt takes root and how it begins to loosen in Self-image after abuse: when you believe it was your fault.

It is also important to know that digital control rarely stays only digital. Professionals who work with people who have experienced abuse often observe that control through the phone is part of a wider pattern — alongside emotional pressure, control over money or isolation from loved ones. That is why it should not be treated as a “lesser” form of abuse that need not be taken seriously.

It can continue after a break-up

One peculiarity of digital abuse is that a break-up does not necessarily mean the end. A partner who had access to your accounts may still have it. They can create fake profiles, message your friends, post about you, follow your posts through mutual acquaintances or gather information about where you and your children go. The post Stalking and harassment after a break-up: when “no” does not stop the contact looks at how harassment can continue after a relationship ends and why it is so exhausting.

A particularly hard form is the threat to publish intimate photos or videos. This threat has power precisely because it provokes shame — and shame silences us. So I will say it plainly: if someone has published your intimate images or is threatening to, the shame is not yours. Such conduct may be a criminal offence, and it makes sense to consult the police about it. Keep the evidence, do not delete messages and do not respond to blackmail.

Where there are children, digital control can extend to them too: questions about where Mum was and whom she talked to, messages they carry between parents. The child becomes an extension of the control, which in itself is a burden for them.

Safety first

When someone recognises digital control, the first impulse is often to change all the passwords at once, switch off location sharing and block the partner. That is understandable. But organisations that help victims of abuse often warn that a sudden change can make the partner notice he has lost control — and that can be the moment the abuse escalates.

So the rule is: before you change anything, talk it through with someone who understands abuse. You can call the SOS helpline for women and children victims of violence on 080 11 55 (in Slovenia), where they can help you think through what is safe in your situation. If you are in immediate danger, call the police on 113 or 112 (in Slovenia). If distress overwhelms you, the crisis line Klic v duševni stiski is available at night on 01 520 99 00 (in Slovenia), from 19:00 to 07:00, and the Samaritans line on 116 123 (in Slovenia) around the clock. You can also turn to your local social work centre.

A few general, safe steps worth discussing with an adviser:

• When looking for help, use a device your partner has no access to — a friend’s phone, or a computer at work or in a library.
• Keep evidence: screenshots of messages, dates and times of calls. Store them somewhere your partner cannot reach.
• Think about which accounts are shared — the phone contract, a family cloud account, shared photos — and who manages them.
• Make a plan before you act. What such a plan contains is described in A safety plan for abuse: what it is and how to put one together.

For general information about safe internet use, Slovenia has the Safer Internet Centre (safe.si).

Exercise: a map of your digital ties

This exercise is not a danger assessment. It is a way to see in one place how your digital life is intertwined with someone else’s. Do it on paper or on a device that is yours alone. If you fear your partner might find it, do not write it down — think it through in your head or do it together with an adviser.

1. Write down all the devices and accounts you use every day: phone, email, social networks, photo cloud, banking app.
2. Next to each, note who has access. Who knows the password? Who owns the contract or the account? Where else are you logged in on another device?
3. For each access, ask yourself: did I decide this myself? Did I agree because I wanted to, or because otherwise there would be a row?
4. Notice where you feel tension. Which account makes you feel tight inside? That is where your boundary has been worn down most.
5. Choose one person you will tell about this. Not so that you change anything straight away, but so that you are no longer the only one who knows.

If, while doing the exercise, you notice that you would not dare decide anything on your own, that is already an important finding. You do not have to resolve it today.

Where this thinking does not apply

I want to be careful not to declare every glance at a phone or every shared location to be abuse. Not all of it is.

Some couples agree to a great deal of openness and it suits them both. If you both happily share your locations because it makes it easier to coordinate with the children, and either of you can switch it off at any time, that is not control.

Someone who goes through a partner’s phone is not automatically abusive. Sometimes it is done by a person who has been cheated on, who fears abandonment and who does not approve of their own behaviour. That too damages trust and is worth talking about, but it is a different picture from a systematic pattern of control accompanied by fear and punishment. The difference lies in the pattern, in power, and in whether one of you is afraid of the other.

On the other hand, openness on equal terms does not solve everything either. In couples where there is abuse, couples therapy is not an appropriate form of help. Joint sessions can put the victim in danger, because what they say in the room can become a reason for punishment at home. Help then comes first individually, from people with specialist knowledge of abuse.

And technology is not the cause. If every phone disappeared tomorrow, someone who wants to control a partner would find other ways. The phone reveals and amplifies a pattern that was already in the relationship. That is why help lies not only in technical measures, but in restoring your own space to make decisions.

What therapy can offer

As a therapist in training under supervision in marriage and family therapy, I am not a specialist in working with abuse, and I do not replace the services that focus on it. If you are currently in an abusive relationship, your first port of call is where they help you with safety.

Individual therapy can help later or alongside: when you are trying to understand why it was so hard to recognise the control, when the feeling that it was your own fault keeps returning, or when in a new relationship you notice that every message throws you off balance. In relational family therapy we also look at which patterns from your family of origin made control feel familiar — perhaps even like a sign of love. Not to find someone to blame, but so that in future you notice sooner when someone is narrowing your world. I also work with English-speaking clients in Ljubljana.

It helps to tell control apart from other patterns we meet around phones. Sometimes the difficulty lies in ourselves — in constant checking, comparing, looking for validation. That is the subject of Phone and screen addiction: habit or problem? And sometimes what we experience as pressure is in fact manipulation that needs to be named.

What to remember

• Digital abuse is the use of phones, apps and networks to monitor, intimidate, humiliate or isolate a partner — an old dynamic with new tools.
• Most digital control is not technically sophisticated: it relies on known passwords, physical access and built-in features.
• The line between an agreement and control lies in whether you decided together, whether it applies to both and whether you can say no without consequences.
• Before you change anything, seek advice — a sudden change can escalate the abuse. SOS helpline in Slovenia: 080 11 55; in danger, 113 or 112.
• Couples therapy is not an appropriate form of help where there is abuse; your safety comes first.