The AFLW star Tayla Harris has told a parliamentary inquiry that continued cyber abuse she has suffered since the infamous photo of her kicking a goal went viral has had a negative impact on her mental health.
The 24-year-old gave evidence at the parliamentary inquiry into social media and online safety on Tuesday where she spoke about being attacked when she moved from Carlton to Melbourne last year.
Here’s a pic of me at work... think about this before your derogatory comments, animals. pic.twitter.com/68aBVVbTTj
— Tayla Harris (@tayla_harris7) March 19, 2019
Harris said when she switched teams from Carlton to Melbourne in 2021, she began to receive “some pretty nasty and hurtful comments” from people in private messages or post tags after, she claimed, a narrative was created that she wanted much more money.
“Which wasn’t true, which was the most frustrating part,” she said. “So my responsibility after speaking with my team was I just needed to just go about my business and get on with it, I guess, on the footy field.
“So that was the concerning thing, that people, obviously particularly men, are just so obsessed with the idea that women do not deserve anything near what the men deserve.”
She said it was an attack on her character and left her in a worse mental state than when the photo incident happened.
Harris said she would love to delete all social media and had retreated from posting.
“I’ve very consciously not been using it and not been active recently, which is disappointing because I love to share positive messaging, I love to inspire people, but at what cost?” she said. “Anything I put [up] is a platform for someone to come back with more hurtful things, and I don’t have the energy to continue to delete [them].
“And the reason I would delete is because I don’t want a 15-year-old girl who’s aspiring to be a footy player to see what she might be exposed to … I am so conflicted, because I want to inspire people, I don’t want them to be exposed to the kind of people that think it’s acceptable to pile on.”
The inquiry is part of the federal government’s push to introduce laws that would force social media platforms to take down offending posts and, in some circumstances, reveal the identity of anonymous posters.
A Hawthorn Indigenous player, Chad Wingard, said the online bullying of players around the time they are traded from one club to another is damaging.
“I know a lot of people will say that it comes with being an AFL player but … being bullied or being discriminated against isn’t a job description,” he said.
He said the AFL gives players training on the pros and cons of social media, but does not prepare players for the toll it can take.
Wingard called for people to need to be identifiable on social media, pointing to an incident on Instagram where a “burner account” with one follower commented a monkey emoji on a photo of 10 AFL players.
“It’s taken him five minutes to really ruin 10 people’s days, weeks, months, it could be years to get over that kind of stuff, and that’s how easy it is for someone to really make an impact,” he said.
“And it’s not the one comment. It’s the thousands, it’s the daily, it’s the weekly struggles – people don’t understand that.”
Wingard said while he initially let it slide, he has decided to call abuse out every single time now.
Tanya Hosch, executive general manager of inclusion and diversity at the AFL, told the committee she knows some players keep a minimum presence on social media as a result of the abuse.
“We wouldn’t have any data on that, but I certainly anecdotally know that there are some players who just have a minimum presence as a result of direct abuse themselves or through watching other teammates, friends, family members going through a terrible amount of abuse,” she said.
