Insurmountable challenge
Laws may be important words on paper, but changing a culture of child abuse is an almost insurmountable challenge. It continues in homes, communities, and churches. The sex industry in the country had been active for so long, partly due to the presence of US military bases until they were kicked out in 1992.
Back then, sex bars and brothels were the marketplaces where children were sold for sex to foreign tourists and military personnel. This disturbing trade later moved to the internet, with telecommunications companies (telcos) allowing it to proliferate.
The result?
Children are being groomed for online abuse. The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) once said in a report that in the Philippines, 20 percent — or one in five — of internet-using Filipino children aged 12 to 17 are subjected to online child sexual abuse and exploitation. This translates to roughly 2 million abused over the internet every year.
A new law introduced in 2009 aimed to eliminate this crime, but the abuse persisted. “[M]inor victims are subjected to online grooming, receiving financial or material offers in exchange for sexual acts, and direct sextortion or blackmail,” the report added.
hild rights organizations and dedicated politicians have campaigned against this evil online practice, but to no avail. The law mandates that telcos like PLDT, Globe and Dito install state-of-the-art blocking software on their servers to stop the proliferation of child abuse images and videos. But they ignore it, as state regulators have failed to implement it.
Clearly, the love of money is greater than the love of our children. Abusive materials on the internet can encourage 13-year-old boys to sexually assault six-year-old girls — or worse.
In 2026 alone, the internet’s influence has pushed teenagers to commit extreme violence in the Philippines and elsewhere. The Department of Education (DepEd) said there were as many as 15 incidents of school-based acts of extreme violence by teenagers against their classmates and teachers.
In 2025 and 2026 so far, six people — five students and one teacher — were killed; two teenage perpetrators died by suicide, and over two dozen people were wounded. Researchers have found that students were deeply influenced by internet sites promoting violence.
This past week in the United States — widely viewed as leading in school violence and online child abuse — 52 attorneys general who took a case against Meta, which owns and operates social media platforms Facebook and Instagram, won an out-of-court settlement worth between $17 billion and $18 billion because of the harm these sites were inflicting on millions of their young users.
Meta earns about $5.28 billion in net profit a month. These sites have “psychologically manipulative” features designed to keep young people glued online so as to sell more advertising time and earn $5 billion dollars a month. Social media companies are addicted to making money.
The content on these sites causes children to have severe self- and body-image problems, causing psychological distortion and making them compare themselves to others in an unhealthy way. This leads to self-harm and even suicide; it’s also linked to online child sexual abuse.
Who says the internet, and Facebook in particular, are here to help us? They are severely hurting our children./PN
