Abuse Is Not Love: Failure to Recognize Technology-Facilitated Intimate Partner Violence

Abstract

Technology-facilitated intimate partner violence (TFIPV) refers to the use of digital technologies, including smartphones, social media, messaging applications, location tracking services, and artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tools, to monitor, coerce, harass, or control a current or former intimate partner. Across 10 countries, nongovernmental organization (NGO) partners of the YSL Beauty Abuse Is Not Love program consistently find that young people aged 16 to 24 do not recognize TFIPV. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 10 NGO experts working in domestic violence prevention and survivor support, this commentary suggests that surveillance may have become normalized to a degree that makes it difficult for many young people to distinguish love from abuse. The analysis identifies four thematic areas of recognition failure: normalization, parent/caregiver modeling, a language gap in naming abuse, and legal enforcement failures. A fifth emerging theme, AI-generated harms, is also discussed. The commentary presents the nine warning signs of abuse adapted to TFIPV as a practical heuristic for making digital control visible. A surveilled relationship is not a safe relationship. Ending TFIPV requires shifting the social, legal, and technological structures that have erased the distinction between love and abuse.