This can look like an older teen asking to webcam and slowly prodding a child or teen to do inappropriate things such as spin around for them or change clothes to something “cuter,” or a digital “friend” pressuring someone to engage in cybersex. An individual grooms to build trust and emotional connection with a child or teen so they can manipulate, exploit and abuse them. Grooming is subtle, and for a teen unfamiliar with it, undetectable. I didn’t know I was being groomed - I had never heard the word used until I started doing gender-based violence work myself. Of course, I didn’t talk about any of this, mostly out of shame. At one point, I began a “relationship” with a 17-year-old boy when I was just 12 years old. As my online world expanded, I encountered old men pretending to be preteens. Soon, I was posting thoughts and communicating with other users on Myspace and Tumblr. I started on gaming platforms like Neopets and Gaia Online. Reports of online predators are on the rise, but predatory behavior online is as old as Netscape. Online enticement reports - which detail when someone is communicating with a child via the internet with the intent to exploit them - increased by more than 97% from the year before. In 2020, there were over 21.7 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation made to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s CyberTipline. It’s estimated that there are over 500,000 sexual predators active on the internet each day. These statistics, however, are only one part of the bigger picture when it comes to the general safety of teenagers online. Kathryn Kosmides is a survivor of gender-based violence and the founder of nonprofit background check Garbo.įacebook whistleblower Frances Haugen’s message about Instagram’s impact on teenage girls was unequivocal: Facebook’s studies found that 13% of British teens said Instagram prompted thoughts of suicide, and 17% of teen girls say Instagram makes eating disorders worse.
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