Published August 01, 2026
The Dual Role of Technology in Coercive Control
Technology occupies a paradoxical position in the landscape of domestic violence. The National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) notes that technology is often misused by abusive partners and perpetrators against victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, and trafficking, yet it also offers essential tools victims can use to access help, strategically maintain safety and privacy, and remain connected to family and friends. Researchers have given this dynamic a formal name. In a 2018 article in Feminist Media Studies, Dragiewicz, Burgess, Matamoros-Fernandez, and colleagues proposed the term “technology facilitated coercive control” (TFCC) to encompass the technological and relational aspects of patterns of abuse against intimate partners, grounding the definition in the understanding of domestic violence as coercive, controlling, and deeply contextualised in relationship dynamics and structural inequality.
Due to the unrelenting nature of coercive control, technology may provide additional opportunities for the perpetrator to abuse and control a victim without temporal or spatial limitations. Against this backdrop, a growing ecosystem of safety planning technology has emerged to help survivors and the professionals who support them reclaim privacy and security in a digital environment.
Why Digital Safety Planning Matters
The research evidence underscores the urgency of the issue. Refuge, a UK domestic abuse charity, documented a 97% increase in complex tech abuse cases requiring specialist support between April 2020 and May 2021, compared with the first quarter of 2020. In Australia, WESNET has noted that for women escaping violence, a new phone can be a life-saving tool; between 2015 and 2025, over 50,000 new smartphones with prepaid credit were distributed to women experiencing violence through the Telstra Safe Connections program.
Safety planning is considered the cornerstone of intimate partner violence interventions and is ideally an individualized process, yet the vast majority of abuse survivors report never accessing these services, representing missed opportunities to reduce violence and its negative consequences. Safety planning technology and domestic violence technology resources attempt to close that gap by reaching survivors who may not contact a hotline or shelter.
Institutional Frameworks for Survivor Digital Safety
Several major organizations have built dedicated programs addressing survivor digital safety and the intersection of technology with abuse.
In the United States, NNEDV’s Safety Net Project focuses on the intersection of technology and domestic and sexual violence. Building on more than twenty years of experience, Safety Net provides expert training and technical assistance, creates and disseminates resources, and develops educational toolkits and apps for survivors and professionals. To date, Safety Net has trained over 100,000 people on technology safety related issues. NNEDV estimates that these resources have served nearly 600,000 survivors since the start of its partnership with Gen Digital (formerly NortonLifeLock). In 2025, Safety Net developed new resources on how AI can impact survivors and published documentation tips for survivors of technology abuse and stalking.
In Australia, the WESNET Safety Net Australia project was established in 2011 to examine the intersection of technology and violence against women and works closely with the US Safety Net Project run by NNEDV. Australia’s National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022 to 2032 includes specific mention of technology-facilitated abuse in the context of domestic and family violence as a key priority area.
In the United Kingdom, Refuge and Avast (now part of Gen Digital) launched a Digital Break-Up Kit designed to help women identify potential tech-based vulnerabilities and re-establish privacy and security across devices and platforms. A survey of 2,000 people in the UK commissioned by Avast and Refuge found that sharing devices, passwords, online tools, bank accounts, and locations with partners often went unchecked both within a relationship and after relationships ended.
Evidence-Based Tools for Safety Planning
Among the most rigorously studied digital safety planning interventions is the myPlan app, developed at Johns Hopkins University. It was the first domestic violence app to be effectiveness tested in a randomized controlled trial, drawing on a model of practice that treats survivors as the experts in their own lives. Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, along with colleagues across the country, conducted two longitudinal research trials to test the effectiveness of using myPlan compared to a standard online safety plan, with over 1,000 survivors participating. The app is free and offered in English and Spanish to assist with safety decisions for individuals or someone they care about who may be experiencing abuse.
Internationally, the myPlan framework has been adapted. A clinical trial registered with ClinicalTrials.gov tested a web-based version, myPlan Kenya, as a personalized safety planning tool for women at risk for intimate partner violence in Nairobi.
Gaps Identified by Research
Despite advances in safety planning technology, research has identified significant gaps. A 2024 study published by the Australian Institute of Criminology (Flynn, Wheildon, Powell, and colleagues) found a lack of understanding of technology-facilitated coercive control among frontline workers, including police. This means that survivors do not always recognize what is happening to them as domestic and family violence, and when they do, police frequently view their reports as isolated incidents rather than as patterns of behavior.
The same study identified a lack of funding for specialist suppliers to conduct technology safety scans, with some services relying on local telecommunications stores or students to check devices, and called for urgent funding to enable domestic and family violence services to provide technology safety scans and wraparound support.
The IoT (Internet of Things) landscape presents emerging challenges. Research by Brown, Harkin, and Tanczer (2024) found that smart, internet-connected devices pose significant threats to victim-survivors of domestic and family violence, with IoT systems being used to abuse, harass, monitor, intimidate, and gaslight victim-survivors. The authors argued that IoT manufacturers must be encouraged to factor in the implications of domestic and family violence in the design of their products, and that technology-facilitated abuse must feature in industry and government safety-by-design approaches.
AI tools present a newer frontier. A 2026 study presented at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems found that although AI tools successfully refuse straightforward requests for potentially harmful content, their guardrails can be easily circumvented, raising questions about how AI tools can add friction in abusive use cases while enabling legitimate purposes.
Enduring Questions
Several analytical tensions remain unresolved. First, the same technology platforms that enable survivor digital safety also serve as tools of surveillance and control, placing the burden on survivors and service providers to stay ahead of rapidly evolving threats. Second, the research consistently shows that many survivors never access formal services, which underscores the value of accessible digital tools but also raises questions about their reach among populations with limited digital literacy or restricted access to devices. Third, the relationship between technology companies, safety-by-design principles, and the domestic violence sector remains in development, with scholars such as Dragiewicz and colleagues calling for deeper platform accountability.
Individuals seeking information about safety planning technology and domestic violence technology resources may consult the NNEDV Safety Net Project, Refuge Tech Safety in the UK, WESNET Technology Safety Australia, or the myPlan app. This article is educational content and does not constitute legal advice.
Sources
- NNEDV Safety Net Project, TechSafety.org
- myPlan App, Johns Hopkins University
- Flynn et al., “Technology-facilitated coercive control: Mapping women’s diverse pathways to safety and justice,” Australian Institute of Criminology, 2024
- Brown, Harkin, and Tanczer, “Safeguarding the Internet of Things for Victim-Survivors of Domestic and Family Violence,” Violence Against Women, 2024
- Dragiewicz et al., “Technology Facilitated Coercive Control,” Feminist Media Studies, 2018
- WESNET Technology Safety Australia
- Gen Digital and NNEDV, “Fighting Back Against Tech-Related Abuse,” January 2026
Disclaimer
Coercive control law moves fast. Jurisdictions are actively criminalizing it, amending definitions, and changing the scope of litigation. This article is current as of its date of publication and may not reflect subsequent changes. It is provided for general educational purposes and is not legal advice.