5.1 Facts Under Analysis

Out of a total of 354 facts proved in a court hearing during the period under analysis, 92 (26%)⁴ of the cases indicated the use of social media authored by 56 young people (27.8% of the total): 30 boys (50 facts, 54.3%) and 26 girls (42 facts, 45.7%). The difference between the sexes is slight and does not align with the trend regarding a lower representativity of females in offline delinquency recorded by the courts (M. ^{Carvalho, 2019}).

In terms of age at the time of the facts, 15-year-olds (n = 36, 20 boys) and 13-year-olds (n = 31, 16 boys) are more represented, followed by 14-year-olds (n =20, 10 boys), while the youngest (12-year-olds) have little representation (n = 5, 4 boys). In terms of age distribution, there is no significant difference between the sexes.

The instances of the use of social media are more expressive in the case of unlawful acts against persons (79.3%), especially when involving girls (Table 1). Significantly behind are the facts against property (18.4%), in which boys stand out. Facts against life in society related to narcotic drugs (trafficking) are residual.

Table 1: Facts that include the use of social media, according to the type of crime, by sex 

It is possible to see a relationship between the use of social media and unlawful offline practices, especially in the case of bodily injury, which, across its different categories, amounts to more than a third of the total (35.8%), with girls being more represented than boys. Child pornography (18.5%), when “aggravated”, is exclusive to boys. Threats (8.7%), when “aggravated”, are exclusive to girls. By age, 15 and 13-year-olds are more represented in the category of facts against persons, while for 14-year-olds, in the category of the facts against property.

5.2 Planning and Organization

The planning/organization of unlawful acts through social media has a low representation in the proceedings analysed. However, when reported, it is associated with serious facts against persons and against property, especially aggravated bodily injury and aggravated robbery, that resulted in major personal damages.

The identification of closed groups on social media to prepare an assault on someone else joined intentionally and/or under pressure/threat from its users is relevant because of how the perpetration of violence is organized and, to a certain extent, normalized among young people (^{Mojares et al., 2015}; ^{Storrod & Desnley, 2017}).

I was informed by the child TA [girl, 14 years old] of the existence of an organized group on Instagram with the address or group name #XXXXX#, where young females ask each other to commit acts of assault so that their names will not be connected with those acts, that is, some female children offer to assault others or are coerced into assaulting others to whom they are in no way related.

These practices are exclusively associated with girls in different contexts, revealing their increasing involvement in forms of violence traditionally seen as masculine, and thus could be a reflection of the construction of new forms of femininity (M. ^{Carvalho et al., 2021}).

Currently, meetings between young people organized through social media (meet) are an element of the youth cultures. Given the power of communication on the internet, they have the potential to quickly reach a high number of young people and different audiences. Meets are spaces of socialization that are becoming increasingly important for constructing social relationships and personal identity, experimentation and discovery, which are essential to the development during adolescence (^{Goldsmith & Wall, 2019}; ^{Stern, 2008}).

Delinquent practices in a meet are the exception, and they do not represent the experience of most young people involved. However, the exploitation of some meets by rival groups of young people, mostly boys, frequently from territories in conflict, that come together to settle scores with each other is an occurrence that has been gaining visibility. That highlights the online-offline continuum (^{Donner et al., 2015}) and how social media transform the nature of communication within a group and within the interaction with those who are perceived as “enemies”, with the meet serving as a tool to assert power through threats, intimidation and violence, but also to recruit new members (^{Haut, 2014}).

LL [boy, 15 years old] went to the [local] MEET and found the boy victim who was part of a group of 10 individuals. LL knew a friend of the victim, and because of that, he went to meet them. LL was supposed to apologize to a friend of the victim. Since LL did not do so, the victim showed the tip of a knife and a glass bottle inside the backpack he was carrying. ( … ) Afterwards, things became peaceful, and when they were already outside, a group of boys came and said that LL and his friends could hit the victim. WL [boy, 15 years old] was hit on the head with the bottle, and LL kicked the victim in the belly because he had previously threatened him with a knife. He was not afraid of the victim, nor did he want the backpack. On that date, he was the subject of 4 pending educational guardianship proceedings. ( … ) The victim [boy, 17 years old] spent 9 days in the hospital for neurological monitoring.

The findings of this first level of analysis also include the actions of a 15-year-old girl on social media used as tools to strengthen drug trafficking networks. Easy to use and far-reaching when it comes to organized crime, social media guarantee anonymity under the veil of cryptography, with many of its users drawing a sense of impunity from the fact that activities are hard to trace (^{Haut, 2014}; ^{Oliveira & Carvalho, 2022}), which calls for new approaches and means of criminal investigation in the context of youth justice.

5.3 Execution and Dissemination

For most children and young people, the distinction between online and offline makes no sense (^{Pereira et al., 2020}; ^{Ponte & Baptista, 2019}). The ways of life of today’s children and young people embody the concept of “onlife” (^{Floridi, 2017}), an everyday life marked by a continuous interweaving of physical and digital environments. This trend is evidenced by social media practices in the perpetration of unlawful acts, along two general lines: when they are committed on social media; and when they are the result of a prior interaction on those media, which is indicated as the reason for the facts.

New communication and social interaction patterns, including the ways of learning and expressing sexuality (^{Livingstone & Mason, 2015}), are present in the proceedings analysed. In most cases, young people and their family members/caretakers are unaware that some practices constitute facts defined as a crime by criminal law.

AC [boy, 14 years old] asked VV [girl, 12 years old], via Messenger and/or WhatsApp, to send him photos of herself. She sent the first one in her bra and knickers ( … ) a total of 31 photos and one video with music where she can be seen dancing until she is naked. ( … ) AC sends the video via WhatsApp to TP [boy, 14 years old], who, in turn, sends it via WhatsApp to NA [boy, 14 years old]. NA sends it to BJ [boy, 13 years old] (who was VV’s boyfriend), and BJ sends it via Messenger to ZI, WR and QM [boys, 13-14 years old].

The victims’ unawareness of the sharing and lack of consent to it, the minimization of the harm caused and the need for reparation are common features of these actions. As the investigation and/or the taking of evidence in the hearing progresses, the complexity of the social reality is revealed, and, in some cases, a reconfiguration of the roles of victim and aggressor emerges. At a certain point, the victim becomes/became the aggressor, and the aggressor becomes/became the victim. This overlap between victimization and aggression, a characteristic of the paths of many young people (M. ^{Carvalho, 2019}), expands due to the speed with which it unfolds on the internet (^{Ponte et al., 2021}).

Other dynamics reveal that young people bothered by the requests of their peers on social media end up not sending nudes of themselves in response; but, unwilling to admit to this refusal due to pressure, fear or another reason, end up exposing themselves even more by resorting to online pornography websites to search for images that they then send as their own.

KH [boy, 13 years old] was one of her best friends at the time. She recalls KH asking her to send intimate photographs of herself. Not wanting to send photographs of herself, she searched on Google for a photograph of that type and sent it. She regrets doing it, clarifying that she did not know that sending this kind of photograph to another person could be a crime and that had she known this at the time, she would not have done it [girl, 13 years old].

Not only does the suspect [boy, 14 years old] humiliate and harass the girl [12 years old] in person, but he also uses social media to do it, especially Facebook. He uses social media to send photographs of his genitals and to try to maintain a conversation of a sexual nature to lure her into performing the act with him. ( … ) The suspect tells the child to search for certain webpages allegedly of interest to her, sending her links to pornography sites and asking her to send him photos of “hot chicks”. The child said the suspect repeatedly asked her to take photographs of her vagina and send them to him, which she has always denied.

The link between internet searches and participation in the world of pornography often occurs as a result of apparently innocent and unanticipated encounters that can lead to the consumption and production of pornography, given the ease of anonymous access to search engines like Google (^{Goldsmith & Wall, 2019}). Some young people realize, at an early age, that they can easily obtain material gains from the sexualized exploitation of contacts with adults, which they can easily establish on social media.

During the time they dated and until ( … ), SB [boy, 15 years old], under circumstances that could not be established, pointed a knife at CA [girl, 14 years old] and also punched and slapped her in the face, either out of jealousy - due to CA speaking to other boys - or because he wanted her to give him the money that her mother gave her for a meal, which she said she didn’t have, but he ended up finding out that she did. In [2 years before], knowing that this was possible, CA, who was 12 at the time, searched for websites and social media where, for a sum of money, she would kiss male individuals or perform acts of a sexual nature to them. To that effect, she established contact with someone who asked her if she wanted to ( … ) and told her that he would give her money according to the type of acts she was willing to undergo. For an unspecified period, on her own initiative, CA used her mobile phone to arrange encounters ( … ) with that man and other males, kissing them, being groped and consenting to take photographs half-naked, without SB knowing. For those activities, she was never paid less than 50 euros, which she gave him and which he spent “on neighbourhood business, with his partners”, or buying hashish (from his grandmother) and tobacco, which they both consumed.

This case highlights how within a framework of supposed autonomy - associated with the dissolution of social ties and with intimate relationships marked by an escalation of violence - “business” on social media can become a source of income.

Some of the proceedings show how easy it is for young people of both sexes to circumvent the minimum age limits established for the creation of pages/profiles on certain social media and how, when a page is blocked, they simply and immediately create another one under a different name/nickname. The modification of the date of birth is usually complemented by manipulating the profile photo using special effects and/or accessories to hide the real age.

FV [girl, 15 years old] is the girlfriend of PM [boy, 15 years old]. She clarified that she had a Facebook page ( … ) that Facebook itself cancelled/blocked this page. ( … ) On her old page, she indicated XX.XX.1996 as the date of birth, in which the day and month were correct, but the year was changed from 2003 to 1996, thus allowing her to portray a 20-year-old girl/woman when at the time of the facts she was only 13 years old. At the time, she told her mother she couldn’t understand why her page had been blocked and created a new page she currently uses. That the cancellation of her old page occurred on XX 2018, which she believes was when her boyfriend sent her a photograph with the exposed genitals of a girl. At the time of the facts, PM explained to her that the photograph mentioned above had been sent to him by a girl known by the name RT who, during the year 2015, had been a student at the ( … ) school where FV had studied ( … ). Before her boyfriend sent her this photo, RT herself had already sent it to her via Skype, saying that the photograph was hers, though she doesn’t know whether that is true. In the previous 3 or 4 days, she had spoken with RT herself on Instagram, telling her that she was no longer sure whether she had sent the photo via Skype or Facebook.

Since the discovery of sexuality is a developmental task of adolescence, these actions are, in most cases, described by young people as “it was all just a children’s game because, at the time the facts occurred, everyone was under 13 years old” (boy, 15 years old) or “without realizing that this fact could be associated with the crime of child pornography” (girl, 15 years old). Given the criminal nature of some of the images shared, the educational guardianship proceedings may stem from reports from supranational bodies, such as the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, within the framework of international cooperation to combat networks of sexual abuse of children and child pornography. These actions have various consequences, and in light of the extent to which criminal investigation authorities intervene in the contexts in which young people live, such is the case of the girl “that due to the facts reported, the house of her maternal grandmother was subject to a house search in connection with the crime of child pornography, as shown by the copy of the search warrant”.

Prior interactions on social media are common in the case of facts against persons carried out offline. Thus, there is a transposition into virtual environments of interactions that, before the internet existed, were confined to physical territories.

These three children [NE, VQ and KJ, boys, 13 years old], now with the collaboration of child GB [boy, 13 years old], ( … ) acting jointly inside the school ( … ), assaulted with slaps, punches and kicks to several parts of the body their schoolmates and children MA and ME [boys, 13 and 14 years old], under the pretext that they had made comments on Facebook that they had not liked.

JH [boy, 15 years old] informed that initially MO [boy, 15 years old] had grabbed him by the neck, kneeing him in the belly and kicking him in the left shoulder and that afterwards, while he was being grabbed by the neck, LP [boy, 15 years old] had slapped him in the face. About 10 minutes later, GF [boy, 14 years old] approached him and slapped him on the neck. It should be noted that, on that same day, LP, via Instagram, threatened him ( … ). The victim informed that he plays football in a team MO has played in the past and that MO has a rivalry with JH.

Still, within this context, there are also unlawful acts that arise from challenges among peers on social media, as noted in the case of the “PZ [boy, 12 years old] who confesses having graffitied a car following an exchange of videos and messages on social media in which he was challenged to do it”.

The potential of social media for communication shows that school extends beyond its walls and is present day and night in young people’s lives, in contrast to what happened when the internet did not exist and contacts after school hours were very limited. Therefore, it is not surprising that most of the facts under analysis involve young people who met in school and can contact each other through social media anytime.

She has known DF [girl, 14 years old] since she was 4-5 years old, since pre-school, and they always attended the same schools and in 7th grade were in the same class. She thought of herself as DF’s friend and older sister, which is no longer the case. It all began with a fight that happened at school, on the last school day, because her schoolmates JH and DF grabbed EV’s drawing folder [girls, both 14 years old], and JH ran away with it, even throwing it at the ground and they both stepped on it. She had no patience to chase them, and she was upset. On ( … ), between 1.18 am. and 2.49 am., EV and the victim [DF] chatted on WhatsApp [aggravated threats, death threats, from EV to DF]. What she said was also based on a story created on the internet (Creepypasta) about Jeff the Killer.

A particularly relevant aspect of this study is the predominance of girls and their groups, most of which bring together female children and young adults, though some of these girls also lead groups of boys. For most of them, social media are a locus of construction of identity and fight for power, and they do not shy away from resorting to violence in various forms. The phenomenon of fight compilations (^{Cantor, 2000}; ^{Haut, 2014}), traditionally masculine, has a significant presence in girls’ social media, and the victims are mainly other girls.

There had been a serious assault inside the school. This assault by EM [girl, 13 years old] on FI [girl, 13 years old] had supposedly been filmed with the mobile phone of another student (LU) [girl, 14 years old] ( … ). During a conversation with LU, she first declared that she had not filmed the fight. However, after being told that there were already shares on Snapchat and Instagram, viewed by the assaulted girl’s mother, she finally said that she had filmed it but not shared it. EM could have shared it, as she had asked her for a copy of the video, and she had shared it in a chat on social media. ( … ) It can be concluded that LU did not film the assault by chance because even before the assault began, the image shows the aggressor addressing the victim, and there was even a pause for the recording.

The two female children [CE, 15 years old; CB, 13 years old] envisaged and intended, with at least eight other girls with ages close to theirs, to deprive the victims of their freedom to move by forcing them - using psychological violence - to walk with them for about 300 metres to lead them into an alley. There, they intended to assault AN and AS [girls, both 13 years old] physically and, to increase their humiliation, shame and embarrassment, allow others to record the assault and disseminate it among AN’s friends and acquaintances, which they did.

The victim [boy, 13 years old] was walking along a path to leave the school when a group of schoolmates appeared, surrounded him and cornered him: RA [boy, 11 years old], TA and CA [boys, 13 years old], JA [girl, 14 years old] and GA [girl, 13 years old]. JA grabbed the victim’s sweater and told him 3 times, “come on, hit me”. At the same time, RA and CA used their mobile phones to record what was happening, in particular, the image of the victim. Simultaneously, RA called the victim ( … ), and the child TA told him, “JA, beat him up!” and CA hysterically shouted ( … ). Afterwards, JA assaulted the victim by punching and slapping him several times in the face and all over his body as he covered his face with both hands while JA punched his ears several times. The female child also punched him in the stomach. The assault stopped when the child JA wanted it to stop. The assault was filmed by RA and by the children TA and CA, who intended to record the moment of public humiliation and shaming of their schoolmate and classmate to disseminate it on social media. Under these circumstances, the victim would never have consented to his image being recorded, and the children knew this.

Despite being frightened, GR [girl, 13 years old] and SJ [girl, 14 years old], as described in the report, pointed out the suspects identified in the report as perpetrators of an attempt to enter their home, fulfilling, as mentioned therein, the threats that they had been receiving from the suspects, and they even had a video of an assault that XL [girl, 15 years old] had sent showing a fight between girls. This video was sent via WhatsApp by XL to SJ and understood as a form of threat/coercion aimed at GR.

The third level of analysis identified in the judicial proceedings reveals the potential of social media for - public, semi-public or private - dissemination of the facts by young people, mainly to humiliate the victims, an action that can constitute a new unlawful act. The perpetration of the facts and their dissemination on social media go almost hand in hand.

She also saw CE [girl, 14 years old] upload the photographs on Snapchat, after which she copied them to her mobile phone and uploaded them on Twitter. Since she had not taken the photographs herself nor had been the first to publish them, she thought her responsibility would not be relevant.

When confronted with the video in the case file, she said she recognized herself in it as the person who was hitting NA [girl, 13 years old]. She also recognizes the reference at the top of the video as her own. The reference ( … ) is her handle in one of the Instagram accounts, as she has two accounts on that social media platform [girl, 15 years old].

The teacher informed: that the parent of student ND, duly identified as the victim, had addressed the school board to report that her son had been the target of threats made on a social media platform by students BL [13 years old] and GP [14 years old], both identified as suspects, in the context of which BL had stated that he would stab her son with a knife. Her son believes BL can act on that threat, and he is thus afraid for his own physical well-being and hesitant to go to school. That she made a #print screen# of her son’s mobile phone, as attached, in which BL calls himself ( … ).

In this context, special attention should be paid to the secondary victimization experienced by some young people as their family members reproduce the videos of their assaults on (other) social media, with unpredictable results.

Feeling angry about what had happened to her daughter, and to make sure that her aggressors would be quickly identified and that this type of situation would not happen to other young females, she decided to post the videos on Facebook and ask for help to identify the aggressors. To that effect, she asked her daughter RM [16 years old, sister of the victim] to do it, and she was the one who posted them on the sites ( … ) and ( … ). Before disclosing the videos, she contacted [the media] by telephone. She also gave an interview to [the media]. After these events, her daughter did not return to school.

Other limitations arise from the growing number of views, the failure to promptly remove the videos and the impossibility of controlling sharing on social media. The unlawful acts are not restricted to interactions among peers, and some of the videos posted on social media reveal the victimization of adults, especially teachers.

Several of her female students, identified as the suspects, used a mobile phone inside the classroom to make videos and photographs of her, which they then posted on social media (Facebook and Twitter), adding as a caption to those photos and videos, expressions that attacked her honour.

Even though the Statute on Students and School Ethics only permits the use of smartphones within school premises for educational purposes and subject to prior authorization (^{Lei n.º 51/2012, 2012}), Portugal was one of the European countries where young people least mentioned having rules at school to prevent their use (^{Simões et al., 2014}).

The analysed proceedings show the complexity of taking evidence of the facts through digital technologies in the context of youth justice, and most young people end up cooperating with the authorities. In certain cases, social media play an important role in identifying the suspects/aggressors, making it possible to identify victims and family members who provide the authorities with information that proves decisive for the outcome of the investigation.