According to UNICEF, Bangladesh ranks fourth globally in terms of the number of child marriages. Poverty, cultural and religious beliefs, and lack of education are a few reasons for child marriage in Bangladesh. Additionally, issues such as sexual harassment of unmarried girls and dowry for young girls make child marriage a regular occurrence in some communities.

Bangladesh is also a disaster-prone country that frequently suffers flooding and other natural disasters. Floods, cyclones and river erosion exacerbate child marriage by pushing families into greater poverty. Finally, COVID-19 has elevated issues such as school closures, economic stress, service disruptions and parental death. As a result, an additional 10 million child marriages might take place in the country before the end of the decade.

Search and social media data were analysed for this research to understand the discourse around child marriage existing on digital platforms. Search data was collected from the Google search engine and social media data was collected from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The search data was collected from April 2021 to March 2022, and the social media data was collected from January 2018 to April 2022.