THOUSANDS of parents are deeply worried that their children are being influenced by bad actors on social media that are far beyond their understanding or control. They cannot control what their children are viewing or who they are chatting with.
They should be very worried because thousands of children are being brainwashed and groomed into participating in sex-based chat rooms on the internet, viewing child pornography and damaging their lives.
Many children are being exposed to child pornography online as part of a grooming process to persuade them to show themselves naked while they are secretly recorded. The predators, posing as young boyfriends, persuade girls, some as young as 11 years old, to undress and pose naked.
Unknown to them, they are videotaped. The predators then blackmail these girls by threatening to send the video to their parents and schoolmates, as well as post it on social media platforms.
Some boys as young as 13 make these threats to intimidate and gain control of a girl and force her to have sex with them. In one case, these are the tactics used by two boys, ages 13 and 15, who raped an 11-year-old girl after they blackmailed her.
They learned about this on the internet, where they frequently watched child pornography. The same uncontrolled internet that is cheap and easily available in the Philippines, to which millions of Filipino children have access to. It is uncontrolled despite laws requiring internet service providers (ISPs) owned by the huge telecommunications corporations (telcos) — like PLDT, DITO and Globe — to install blocking and filtering software driven by artificial intelligence (AI).
Approximately 96 percent of the population between ages 13 and 17 are internet users. Data also show that a large number of young Filipinos use social media weekly, with 92 percent of those ages 12 to 15 and 97 percent of those ages 16 and 17 using it at least once a week.
As I have previously written in this space, the many postings and communications on major social media platforms, accessed through ISPs, are leading to serious sins and crimes against children. These include “sextortion”, suicides, drug overdoses, blackmail, grooming leading to child rape, excessive gambling, scams and other fraudulent activities. These platforms are like crime scenes, but no one is held accountable.
The Philippines is now regarded, at least by some, as the center of online child sexual abuse, where relatives or even parents of young children expose them and make them perform sexual acts online in real time, enabled by the internet connection provided by our country’s major telcos. They allow the transmission of these live sex shows to paying customers in foreign countries. (To be continued)/PN
