The allegations against Ryan Adams show that cyberbullying is rarely just a kids’ game

At school, they taught us about cyberbullying. Barely a week went by when there wasn’t an assembly or a PSHE lesson discussing the ways in which other children might try to torment you through virtual communication.

But there was never any suggestion that adults might also be capable of exploiting this digital connectedness.

The allegations against singer-songwriter Ryan Adams reflect how digital harassment and cyberabuse are a means through which to exert sexual and emotional control over others.

Adams has been accused of using virtual communications to dictate the movements, behaviours and psychological states of various women he’s engaged with. His accusers have expressed the various ways in which texts, calls and social media might be manipulated for abusive purposes.

The artist has been accused of exposing himself during a video call with an underage girl and sending her a message reading, “I never see pics of you anymore.” Fellow musician Phoebe Bridgers has accused Adams of asking her to leave social situations to engage in phone sex with him, and of threatening suicide if she didn’t respond to messages.

This kind of sexual cajoling is particularly complicated: it masks abuse in a shroud of flattery.

Adams has also been accused of inundating his ex-fiancée Megan Butterworth with “hundreds of text messages, phone calls and emails, oscillating between emotional pleas and vitriol”, after she left him in 2018. According to The New York Times, Adams also took to Instagram after this breakup, tagging Butterworth’s friends and a family member in posts that read, “Get it while it’s hot folks,” and “[Butterworth] IS SINGLE.”

This kind of manipulative behaviour – the persistence, the emotional inconsistency, the guilt trips – will feel familiar for so many people.

Whether it’s a video call that becomes uncomfortable, a text message that crosses the boundaries of a professional relationship, a disconcerting and controlling string of communications from a romantic partner – the digital landscape feels largely unpoliced.

Generally, we don’t pay enough attention to the role of cyberabuse within the context of domestic violence.

The private and virtual nature of digital communications means that they are not given the same scrutiny as physical ones, and the plight of victims is undermined, with suggestions like “just turn your phone off” being given as solutions to people whose lives are being made a living hell.

We need to have a better awareness and understanding of the seriously detrimental effects of this particular kind of harassment. We need to think about how trapped and anxious victims can feel, knowing that abuse can pop up in their pocket at any moment.

We need to understand that harassers operate in different ways. It’s easy to think that abuse is synonymous with physical and sexual violence, and relegate non-physical – yet similarly insidious – and emotionally distressing or coercive behaviours into another category.

But the allegations against Ryan Adams should prompt us all to increase our understanding of digital harassment. Cyberbullying is not just a kids’ game: there are fully-grown adults who are using modern communication methods to abuse victims relentlessly and secretly.