Shocker…not: This social media site is toxic for women, study confirms

It's long been known that social media sites are not the healthiest place for your mind.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram – they all take their toll on a person's mental and therefore physical health.  

Abusive comments, sly digs, and outright mean rants are all part and parcel – but more so on Twitter, according to Amnesty International. 

It has reported that there have been repeated requests from Twitter for comprehensive data about the abuse on the platform, saying "such data will be invaluable for anyone seeking to understand and combat this barrier to women’s human rights online."

Twitter has failed to report information that matches Amnesty International's standards, so that means that the organisation has had to take matters into their own hands and launch an interactive website titled "Troll Patrol Findings."

This website shows what they found as the result of a project Amnesty International did in partnership with Element AI, an artificial intelligence company.

The project investigated the violence and abuse against women on Twitter. 

The study looked into tweets sent to 778 female journalists and politicians from both the UK and the US.

It was found that 7.1 percent of the tweets sent were abusive or problematic – as well as the fact that women of colour were targeted more often than white women.

Women of colour were 34 percent more likely to be mentioned in an abusive tweet than a white woman, which is extremely worrying. 

The findings found overall that out of the 14.5 million tweets directed at these women, 1.1 million were problematic, which amounts to abusive tweets occurring every 30 seconds. 

Social media is great for so many things but like everything, it works best in moderation.