Prof. SilverComp. IIJuly 12, 2016Children Trafficking OnlineIn the twenty years, technology has grown enormously. Where information online is easy to be found and a person can go online to search information on someone.
So, how many of your children are online? According to Abolishing Child Sex Trafficking on the Internet, eighty-one percent of your children are online, talking to their friends or someone on Facebook, Snapchat, Kik, Instagram, etc. . . It makes it easy for human traffickers to find children that are lonely, hopeless, or sad on different apps by checking their profiles.
Parents believe that their child is safe online, not knowing that there is a sex trafficker online. Parents need to be aware of what is happening online. The child needs to be educated on how to be safe online. As a parent, I was not aware about what was happening with my child. Thinking that she was talking to her friends from school until her father went online to see exactly what she was doing. She was on three different apps that were connected to a third party and one was connected to backup.
com. I did not know what backup. com was, until I educated myself. Backup. com is a website used to post jobs and sell goods, but underneath the well-intentioned surface, prostitution and human trafficking are taking place.
I educated myself a little more about the different ways that a sex trafficker tries to lure a child. As a child in today’s world, it is hard to grow-up because you have to keep a good image to be that popular teenager. Technology made it much difficult for teenagers to be safe, with sex trafficking and bullying. The way a sex trafficker targets a child is by seeing who is lonely for attention, needing to talk to someone about how they feel or following what their friends are doing.
A sex trafficker makes a profile on the same apps as the child they want to lure in, so the child thinks they are talking to someone their age who is having the same problem at school or at home with their parents. Some sex traffickers have followed a child for years or months to gain their trusts, sometimes sex traffickers use a victim to talk to the future victims, because it make it much easier to lure the child in. a young girl named Hope was a victim of sex trafficking this is what she said. “It all started because I posted on a social medial site that I hated my mother.
A woman messaged me back telling me that I could go stay with her, and we’d go partying. She showed up within the next forty-five minutes. I was gone. I could never be Hope again that; I was never going to be the same girl” (Huffingtonpost. com, 2016)A child hat is educated on how to keep safe or anyone that wants to hurt someone is safer.
The way to keep your child safe from sex traffickers is to talk to them about sexual predators and explain about potential online dangers. Explain about the mentoring process and warn them about some of the tactics an online predator may use. Limit and monitor the amount of time your children spend on the Internet,and at what time of day. Then tell them to never download images from an unknown source, or upload sexually evocative images of themselves to the internet.
Then tell them to trust you or teacher, etc. that if anything happens online that make them tell uncomfortable or frightened to tell. Choose a gender-neutral screen name. Make sure the name they choose does not contain sexually words or reveal personal information.
Avoid putting your age, zip code or area code. Also avoid screen names that have school mascot or logos on it. Neverreveal personal information about yourself or about the family to anyoneonline do not fill out online personal profiles. Stop any e-mail communication, instant messaging conversation, or chats if someone starts to ask questions that are too personal or sexually suggestive. Never agreemeet someone in person that they met online.
With all my researcher, all articles repeat itself. Said the same thing over and over and over, to talk to your child. It also said to put a parent control app on any technology devices that your child is on to keep an eye on them, but it will not keep them hundred percent safe for any trafficker because some trafficker do know how to work around apps. United State is trying to keep your children safe from traffickers and other types of predators that are online or walking around our neighborhood.
Parents and their children need to educate themselves more about what is going on in the world and online to stay safe.
