It’s Not Love. It’s Abuse.

What Kendall was experiencing wasn’t love. It was what’s known as digital dating abuse, and it’s becoming troublingly common among teens, possibly partly because the Covid-19 pandemic has forced us to live so much of our lives online. According to a recent study, almost one-third of teens who’d been in a relationship in the previous year said they’d experienced this type of abuse.

So what is digital dating abuse? Just like physical and verbal abuse, it’s when someone you’re dating is aggressive or controlling—the abusive behavior just takes place online, explains Lauren Reed, Ph.D., an expert in teen dating violence. If a boyfriend or girlfriend demands your passwords, controls what you post and who you message with, tracks your location, posts hurtful or private information about you, or sends you threatening messages, these are all signs of a digital abuser.

But wait a minute, you might be thinking. I share my passwords with my best friend. My parents track my location with an app. We all do this stuff, so what’s the big deal?

While it’s true that we often sacrifice our privacy online for the sake of convenience or even safety (like sharing our locations so friends can easily find us and parents know where we are), dating abuse crosses the line from convenience to control, and it can have serious psychological consequences. Studies have shown that teens who’ve been victims of online dating abuse experience depression and feelings of anger and hostility—the same effects as being in other types of abusive relationships.

In situations like Kendall’s, where the couple was separated by hundreds of miles, the harassment took place purely online. But far too often, digital abuse is accompanied by physical and verbal abuse as well. In fact, a horrifying 81 percent of teens who had been targets of digital dating abuse also experienced other forms of abuse from the person they were dating.

That’s what happened to Carlie, 19. During her senior year, a star athlete from another school reached out to her on Instagram. “He was super charming,” she recalls—and super controlling. When the boyfriend was angry, he would send Carlie harassing messages. When she would block him on Instagram, he would create new accounts so he could still reach her. He physically hurt her as well, leaving visible bruises on her arms. A few times he even bit her.

At her boyfriend’s demand, Carlie let him control what she put on social media. She even deleted Snapchat when her boyfriend got jealous about a streak she had going with a boy who was a friend from elementary school. She was terrified of what her boyfriend would do to her both online and in person if she didn’t obey. “I was willing to do anything he said to avoid him getting angry,” she explains. “And I still thought that was what love meant, so I went along with it. Now all those memories, cute photos, and videos are gone forever because he made me delete them.”

For many teens like Carlie—especially ones who don’t have a lot of dating experience—it can be easy to confuse red flags with romance. An abuser’s requests often start out small—“Let’s text a bunch,” “Let’s share passwords”—and escalate over time. A picture you post of yourself with your arm around a best friend might be totally innocent, but it could trigger what Reed calls a “cycle of anxiety” for an abusive partner. “They’ll use monitoring and control to try to make themselves feel better,” she says, using technology to keep track of you 24/7. The person you’re dating then might justify the abusive behavior by saying it’s a sign of how much they love you.

But overly attentive behavior is creepy, not flattering. “Possession and ownership aren’t romantic,” says professor Emily Rothman, who specializes in domestic and sexual violence prevention. “Healthy relationships are not about power and control. Healthy relationships are about making the other person feel good.”

As more teens become aware of the dangers of dating abuse, past victims are coming forward to raise awareness of the problem. Some girls have even posted TikTok videos of themselves dancing to their former partners’ threatening phone messages. The videos are stark examples of how menacing the abuse can be, but they may inadvertently send the message that digital dating abuse is something that happens only to girls. In fact, studies suggest it happens nearly as often to boys—maybe even more often. The difference is, boys may be less likely to recognize the behavior as abusive or to feel comfortable asking for help.

One of those boys is Grady, 16, who used to date a girl who wanted to know his location at all times. “Once, I hadn’t told her where I was, and she used Snap maps to stalk me down. It was creepy,” he says.

Grady felt uncomfortable with the level of access his girlfriend had, but, he says, because of today’s share-it-all online culture, it was hard to know where the boundaries should be. “Things that used to be considered weird and stalker-like are now seen as normal,” Grady says.

Now Grady is less afraid to block people who bother him, but he still feels victimized by online rumor-spreading. “Girls will make up things about me and my friends,” he says, “like ‘He tried to make a move on me’—and post it on an anonymous gossip account for students at our school.”

Social media, location tracking, and messaging apps aren’t going away, but that doesn’t mean you have to ditch technology completely to have a healthy romance. The key is being able to communicate your digital boundaries and say no to requests that make you feel uncomfortable. “We’re trying to create a norm where you can have these conversations and it’s not stressful,” says Katie Hood, CEO of the One Love Foundation, an organization that educates people about relationship abuse. “It’s OK to tell someone you’re dating, ‘I know that everybody does it, but I need a little bit more space.’ Technology is supposed to help us, not hurt us.”

Today, Kendall follows this advice in her new relationship with a girl who goes to the same school. “We still contact each other every day, but she doesn’t feel the need to talk 24/7,” she says. “We can take a two-hour break to spend time with our family, and it’s OK.”

For Carlie, whose boyfriend was finally arrested for his abusive behavior, the trick is understanding what kind of behavior is appropriate for a romantic partner—and what kind isn’t: “As soon as someone you’re dating starts to sound like your parents,” she says, “saying things like, ‘Where are you? Who are you with? What time are you going to be doing this?’—it’s not right.”