Youth Dating Violence Prevention 101

What Everyone Needs to Know

What is Youth Dating Violence (YDV)?

Youth Dating Violence at a Glance

Youth dating violence, or YDV for short, is aggressive, violent, threatening, and/or manipulative behaviour from a partner in a romantic or sexual relationship. YDV puts adolescents at risk for a wide number of physical, mental, and social health problems.
The effects of YDV may be both immediate and long-lasting throughout development.
Involvement in YDV during adolescence puts individuals at risk of involvement in future relationship violence.
Very few adolescents who experience YDV reach out to teachers, health care practitioners, or other adults who can help.
Youth may be more likely to communicate with adults about their dating relationships if those adults have received training about YDV.

The Types and Presentation of Youth Dating Violence

Relationships are on a continuum from healthy to unhealthy to abusive. Unhealthy relationship behaviours may not directly harm or infringe on a partner’s rights, while abusive behaviours tend to involve aggression, threats, manipulation, and coercion.
Considerations about adolescent relationships:
- Romantic dating relationships generally increase during adolescence, becoming common by age 15.
  - Dating relationships (and dating violence) can start as early as 6^th grade.
- Adolescent dating relationships have unique characteristics compared to adult ones.
  - For example, non-monogamous partnerships, casual relationships, and high use of social media for relationships are more common among adolescent relationships.
- Over the course of adolescence, there are many changes in attitudes, beliefs, norms, and overall identity that influence relationships.
Recap: Dating violence is aggressive, violent, threatening, and/or manipulative behaviour from a partner.
These are the types:
- Physical: Use or threat of physical force
  - Examples: Hitting, kicking, shoving, attacking with a weapon
- Sexual: Limiting individual’s sexual agency
  - Examples: Unwanted sexual contact (kissing, touching), forced sex, sexual coercion, restricting access to birth control (removes agency from own sexual health)
- Emotional & Psychological: Manipulation, controlling partner’s behaviour & agency, and undermining/belittling
  - Examples: Insulting, threatening, monitoring, isolating, restricting access to friends, and stalking
- Cyber: Using technology to engage in dating violence
  - Examples: Monitoring (e.g. using social media), threatening or harassing online, sexting coercion
Some acts of violence may be confusing to classify, such as using technology to sexually abuse — the types are a guideline to understand the many ways in which dating violence can occur.
When violence is used to control a partner, this is called coercive control and is especially harmful.
Individuals may and often do perpetrate more than one type of dating violence within an abusive relationship.

Dating violence is aggressive, violent, threatening, and/or manipulative behaviour from a partner.

Cyber Dating Violence

Almost all adolescents use social media and the internet. While this has many positives, it also presents a new context for bullying and dating violence.
- A national survey conducted in 2013 estimated that nearly every youth aged 15 to 24 uses the internet daily.
- Over one quarter of students in Grade 4 have a personal phone, with this number growing up to 85% in Grade 11.
Examples of cyber dating violence include:
- Controlling and monitoring social media presence, including friends and content
- Using social media (e.g., insulting public posts, exclusion), texts, or messages online to insult or belittle
- Sending unwanted explicit pictures and videos and/or demanding partner to send them (this is often illegal)
- Stealing or insisting on password access
- Constantly texting and demanding to know where partner is/what partner is doing
- Looking through partner’s phone frequently and checking on activity
- Using any kind of technology to monitor activity or location without consent
Both youth and the adults in their lives need to be aware of cyber dating violence and to emphasize the importance of safe practices when using technology.

Next: Youth Dating Violence by the Numbers

PREVNet is located at the University of Calgary, located in the heart of Southern Alberta. We acknowledge and pay tribute to the traditional territories of the peoples of Treaty 7, which include the Blackfoot Confederacy (comprised of the Siksika, the Piikani, and the Kainai First Nations), the Tsuut’ina First Nation, and the Stoney Nakoda (including Chiniki, Bearspaw, and Goodstoney First Nations). The City of Calgary is also home to the Métis Nation of Alberta (Districts 5 and 6).

PREVNet works to eliminate violence and promote healthy relationships for youth and is dedicated to working toward addressing the systemic racism and the impacts of colonization that puts marginalized groups at higher risks of violence. PREVNet believes it is our collective responsibility to listen, learn, and act to ensure the rights of Indigenous people are recognized and implemented.