ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Glob. Women’s Health
Sec. Quality of Life
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fgwh.2025.1546901
This article is part of the Research TopicSexual and Gender-Based Violence among Adolescents and Young Women: New Evidence and Call for ActionView all 7 articles
Prevalence of technology facilitated and other gender-based violence among adolescent girls in Gqeberha, South Africa and its association with probable common mental disorders
Provisionally accepted
Miriam Aviva Hartmann1,2*
Erica Browne1Shepherd Mutangabende3Patience Mungwari4Danielle Stotesbury4
Nataly Woollett5
Anna Kågesten2
Sarah T. Roberts1Abbey Hatcher6- 1RTI International, Durham, United States
- 2Karolinska Institutet (KI), Solna, Stockholm, Sweden
- 3No Means No South Africa, Gqeberha, South Africa
- 4No Means No Worldwide, McLean, United States
- 5University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
- 6University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States
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Background: Emerging evidence is raising alarms that technology facilitated gender-based violence (TF-GBV) is a growing public health concern with impacts on child wellbeing, yet little research on the topic has been conducted in middle-income country settings. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of TF-GBV, other GBV, and their association with common mental disorder (CMD) symptoms among adolescent girls in South Africa. Methods: Trained enumerators facilitated surveys on exposure to physical and sexual violence with adolescent girls aged 10-19 from 14 low-income primary and secondary public schools. An index of TF-GBV assessed past-year exposure to acts such as public posting of sexual photos. CMD screening used Patient Health Questionnaire-2 and Generalized Anxiety Disorder-2 tools. Generalized estimating equations assessed associations between violence (TF-GBV, other GBV, or both) and CMD. Results: A total of 1540 adolescent girls participated in the study. Most participants identified as Black (84%). CMD symptoms were more prevalent among girls in secondary school (37%) than primary school (10%). All forms of past-year GBV were more prevalent among secondary school girls, including TF-GBV (43% vs. 11% in primary school girls). Exposure to both TF-GBV and other forms of GBV were significantly associated with a 3.68 times higher risk of CMD (aRR = 3.68, 95% CI 2.42-5.62) after adjusting for demographics and partnership status. Conclusion: These findings underscore the need for targeted content to address TF-GBV within existing GBV programs, and its impact on mental health among adolescent girls in similar contexts.
Keywords: Technology-facilitated violence, gender-based violence, Adolescent Health, Mental Health, South Africa
Received: 17 Dec 2024; Accepted: 25 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hartmann, Browne, Mutangabende, Mungwari, Stotesbury, Woollett, Kågesten, Roberts and Hatcher. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Miriam Aviva Hartmann, RTI International, Durham, United States
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