America's growing trend of children being enticed into sharing explicit material online

news.msn.com...

he alleged U.S. victims, who have been identified and contacted by authorities, were from 39 U.S. states. The majority were between 13 and 15 years old and all but a handful were boys. Authorities said 23 of the 251 victims were identified in Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Belgium.

"Never before in the history of this agency have we identified and located this many minor victims in the course of a single child-exploitation investigation"

The website had more than 27,000 subscribers, many of whom have been charged in individual cases

Why is the demand for child abuse growing? Why is the audience so vast??

Is the plethora of entertainment already available throughout the web to blame for desensitizing children into increasingly contributing to the smut; are children becoming addicted to this stuff at younger and younger ages; are the audience expecting newer more extreme content that they are already accustomed too?

reply to post by gardener


Enticed to do it? I was made aware of just one single site where young children-11-12-13-to 15 and on up...are voluntarily posing for nude "selfies" with their friends including some sex posings, thinking it cool for their little school crushes and that they are not as permanent as these photos really will be.

I was shocked, saddened and finally mad as heck. How can these kids do this and think there is nothing wrong with it?

And parents? If you think thats not your kid...I'd monitor whats going on in that "sleepover" your kid's having when they say they are just "online talking".

And this "blocking" stuff so your kid's not exposed to trash? Give me a break. You had better get with it. There are everyday, simple, plain and normal words that when put in a search for images...will pop up the most awful porn you can imagine.

And your kid knows it, has seen it...and in a lot of cases....have posted some "selfies" of their own to these sites because all their friends are. They think its cool and fun...and "so what"?

If I knew who I could complain to I would...but the best I can do here is to get the word out because of your thread here. Thanks for that....

Some of us have seen the blatant sexing up of the music industry over the last decade or so. And a decade or so later, what do we have.................kids that would of normally been out playing with other kids, now taking naked selfies for attention. Hey if Miley Cyrus does it, then it MUST be cool. At that age, its all about being seen as "cool". Nothing else matters until they get older and realise how overrated being "cool" really is.
Some of us have also seen how younger girls in particular, are now dressing way above there age, but then the parents carry on when their kid becomes a victim. The more "sexualized" teens become, the more it disrupts the family home. The more disrupted the family home is, the more chaotic society in general becomes. The more chaotic society becomes, the more need for TPTB to bring in more law and order. It's all been planned, and it has a clear goal at the end. Create chaos to bring in self-styled order.
Has anyone else noticed how there now seems to be a concentrated effort through TV media to basically say that paedophilia is something to joke about, and a light-hearted issue. Shows like Family Guy, American Dad, South Park etc all seem to have a constant theme of paedophilia, and dismiss it as a joke. Now I love a good laugh as much as the next person, but when you look at it from an overall point of view, rather than from a single episode point of view, you start to see the bigger picture, and agenda.
Just look how popular being "bisexual" has become in recent years. Yet when I was growing up, I think I knew of ONE person that admitted to being bisexual. These days its almost a standard thing to see on profiles.
People might say that the times change, but those people seem to forget that there are those that are controlling the times, and are many steps ahead of any of us. You can "change the times" by manipulating peoples thinking. Social engineering at its finest !

Growing up in inner-city NYC, I witnessed some very shocking, disturbing activities in 'precocious' toddlers, and I'm talking fellow 5 and 6 year olds, thru to early teenagers enging in really shocking stuff that makes 'nude selfies' and 's-x positions' sounds and look like childs' play.

I always wondered if its something in the air, or what. And still do. I can understand teenagers with hormones racing as they approach and hit 18.

But elementary school age kids with hormones apparently racing?! Im not sure why these kids did what they were doing together afterschool, at camp, in urinal stalls etc etc and apparently its gotten worse- that was almost 2 decades ago; back then we didnt even had computers in school until junior high and computers at home until high school.

Now kids have computers at home plugged into the net 24/7 as early as preschool; no doubt it starts with being exposed to nudity accidentally on computers at a tender PRE-K age and out of curiosity/sneakiness for 'forbidden fruit' get addicted to glimsing nudity then sex pics then porn then ultimately uploading videos of themselves to adult versions of youtube

example..



Note the above is a clip from a news channel, apparently.

reply to post by gardener


Some of it has to do with degenerate parents...some has to do with kids learning it from other kids due to their degenerate parents...most of it if not all of it starts at home with a lack of supervision...

I can assure you I am not looking forward to my kids getting older...it frightens me..sadly this is normal for them just as the 80's was normal for me growing up however my parents thought the 80's were rife with sexual images...

Each generations has a different idea of what is risqué and to most if not all kids growing up the 70' and 80's were tame and boring...

reply to post by gardener


This thread title made my heart sink, then the truth made it sink further. This and animal cruelty are 2 things that really do my head in :-(

reply to post by gardener


So strange.

I mean, teenagers showing themselves their private parts has ALWAYS been happening. Had there been cell phones in my teen days we'd have been sexting too, so that's not abnormal. Nor is it unhealthy for Teenagers to be sexually activate in a responsible manner either.

What is wrong are these bloody evil human beings to who exploit and ruin that important part of a young person's life. I'm certainly glad they've been able to take this thing down.

Although it kind of sickens me that the only reason they got caught at all is because somebody said something USPS. How many more of these exist?

Sad.

~Tenth

I tell you, back in my day, I slapped a boy for trying to kiss me in the 6th grade. These days, based on what my daughter tells me every day when she gets home, 6th grade is a whole lot different. Just the other day she was telling me about a pretty girl that was new to the school and she thought about befriending til the end of the day, the same girl was talking about how she had 20 boyfriends. My daughter was pretty grossed out. I'm lucky that she feels comfortable to talk to me about what goes on in school and know she's telling me the truth because much of it I wish I didn't know.

As for her, she has no cell phone and she's not allowed on the net without supervision at home. I tell you though, online predators hit fast. My daughter downloaded skype to be like her brother and I with her age and gender listed and by the end of the day, she had some super creep adding her from Japan. So nope, no net for her. No facebook and no twitter. May seem harsh to many but I'd ask those same people this--would you dump your child alone in the middle of a city at night? No?

The net is no different.

Ah, the nature of the beasts huh, from whence do they come?

reply to post by gardener


The article said that some of the victims were three years old. What are three-year-olds doing surfing the net in the first place?


As for the older kids taking nude selfies and posting them, it sounds like they are budding perverts themselves. I really can't imagine normal teenagers -- let alone younger kids -- doing this sort of thing. If I ever find any whippersnappers taking nude selfies on my lawn, I'm kicking them off post haste.

It does seem like schools desperately need to teach some internet safety basics as apparently parents aren't doing it.

Am glad the government is putting resources towards tracking down and prosecuting the adults involved. It's a much better use of tax payer dollars than killing children overseas or handcuffing and tasering children here. The guy who ran this one pedophile site is up for 20 years to life, and I think those will be "hard" years.

And yes, pop culture is partly responsible too. It seems like a lot of videos and MTV award shows can legitimately be classified as pornography because they cater to the prurient interest and have no redeeming social value, which is the classic definition of pornography.

They say that fluoride in the water can cause premature sexuality. US has the highest fluoridation rate in the world.

Thanks for the heads up.

Its sick and disgusting as a parent i think there needs to be alot more done to prevent it and to show parents every single way to prevent it, this is a new issue for parents and i think alot are ignorant and dont really know how to deal with it or prevent it and they seriously need to look in to what their kids are doing online and have parental controls on their devices, but if they are going to do it they will generally find a way to do it if not on their device usually with a friends. The people that view this material are twisted sick freaks and there needs to be harsh punishment & rehabilitation especially, worldwide for it because its not normal!!! & in most cases will escalate from picture viewing to god knows what else. Bunch of scum makes me so so angry. My children aren't old enough to go online yet but there will be strict control and no facebook etc but other than talking to my kids and teaching them self respect and to respect their body not do do that and monitoring them very closely online i don't know what else to do to prevent this when the time comes. That might make me sound like a bad mum but its so scary i want to do everything i can to prevent everything, because i was a teen not too long ago and became a mum at 16, i know that the things teens are doing now are just terrible and the age their starting up is getting lower & lower its so sad.

I can tell you from experience that this is going nowhere. The media will have nothing to do with the big 'C' word and like politicians will run from it at warp speed.

There was thought of creating a PAC to highlight the problem politically however no one-republican-democrat or other would even risk issuing a charter and backing their own political death by being even remotely associated with the big 'C'.

Amazing what the two political party's in America can agree on-the big 'C' means the poor house.

I would still support any origination that tries to bring this to light.

I'm not optimistic about that happening-ever in America.

Sad

reply to post by Shana91aus


Shana, that's not being a bad mom. That's being a wise parent. I removed a RAT from the laptop of one of my youngest's friends and as I showed her mom all the affected files including the webcam, she was horror struck. She had no idea such things existed and all she could think about was how her daughter had gotten out of the tub, loosely wrapped herself in a blanket and plopped down before that laptop the night before. Worse yet, the girl, herself, had been downloading tons of player made mods for a very popular game so you can bet that that is exactly how the RAT got on there. She thought she was really smart about computers and that's a problem, too. Kids use computers a lot more than most adults and that imbalance of use can lead a kid to think they "know more than their parents" out of pure naivety. To put it into perspective, that's two girls being potentially hit by online pervs in two different ways. It's a problem and honestly, all a parent can do is either guard and watch what the child is doing online or to shut it down entirely. I ended up doing the latter.

The internet is not a good place for children. We sit there and think that they need to be using a computer and that it is somehow beneficial to their future. However, they do get exposed in a much more extremely controlled way at the schools. They don't need it at home and if they need to look something up, they can ask. Other parents thought I was a little overboard when I dropped all net access for my daughter but not only did it assure that she wasn't going to be hit by a perv again, it actually changed her behavior and attitudes. She wasn't going to any sites or viewing things she shouldn't. She was looking at news sites to look for news for current events, hitting up videos of animals doing silly things and playing a few closed games with her peers online. She went from a nice kid to one that was unbelievably rude (trollish). She was displaying signs of stress and getting really snappy. As an experiment, I shut down net access and lo and behold, her behavior improved in a major. Gave her access again, it all reduced down again. So the second time I shut it down, I waited one week and talked to her about it.

All those interactions online, because of that anonymity thing, were getting to her. She was adopting online behaviors as if that were the norm because that was how her friends were behaving. The normative behavior that they were watching online was, well, everything that you and I can see online on a frequent and daily basis online. If we look critically at online interactions amongst strangers and even peers, a lot of is, at the least, rude and sometimes downright deplorable. Kids read that stuff and emulate it. Period. My daughter said that she was happier off the net. She made that choice.

It's not just pervs that make the net a bad place for children. It's everything about it. Kids, as they grow up, learn appropriate social behaviors from their environment. I've run into kids that I know personally through my children and who I thought were really smart and good kids only to see them do the most abominable things. I was a gaming champion and so a lot of kids flocked to me like knowing me was some sort of street cred. Gave me pretty an unfettered view of their behavior online because they routinely forgot that I was both an adult and parent. It's bad. Kids don't belong on the net.

reply to post by WhiteAlice


Wow!! That is so scary! My daughter has an ipad which i have gone through and put restrictions on she cant use it for safari etc and the only app's she has are kids & educational ones that i picked and put on there but i was thinking is there any way these hackers can get access to her stuff like the camera etc through apps? I might be sounding paranoid but its something that kind of freaks me out because it seems anything is possible these days. She is only 6, i went through all the settings and made sure no apps could get access to her camera or photos or anything but i just hope thats enough. I should mention i almost always have it on airplane mode too, So i limit actual internet access but sometimes wifi is on if its needed for an app.

The internet itself is bad news for young people and it is clearly causing young teens/ children to do stuff they would never do without it. I absolutely agree its not just the pervs to worry about theres the online bullying thats just another thing, then if they are on social media theres alot of adult content that they rarely bother sensoring so they are exposed too that, and i think it can become very depressing because of the image some people present online they make these young people feel they aren't good enough or their life isn't good enough because everyone talks themselves up so much on social media it leaves people feeling below them or hard done by because of these unrealistic expectations. Then theres the body image issues because alot of people online edit and photoshop their photos, professional sites with the airbrushing, so again majorly unrealistic expectations which severely damages their confidence!

I agree people are incredibly rude online! Trolls are guarantee everywhere now be it on forums or even comment sections of things like news sites and as for social media well its everywhere, on pages everything.. Its like when online people think just because the person isn't physically there they don't have feelings, its awful how people talk to eachother no respect at all! Its clearly an issue but not alot seems to be done about it, i guess because its normal now to have internet access from a young age and people tend to flow with what everyone else is doing! i dont think you are overboard for cutting net access at all, i say good on you! When my daughter comes to the age of using the net access will be extremely restricted if at all. I honestly think they are way better off without it! I realise everything can't be blamed on the internet but i firmly believe its one of the reasons why alot of mental illness issues, eating disorders etc are on a massive rise.

reply to post by Shana91aus


I don't know that much about Apple products. Haven't used one for 21 years, lol, so I don't know if there are any RAT problems for iPAD. If you're concerned about access to any built in camera, then a sticker, bit of tape or whatever over it pretty quickly eliminates the problem. No great surprise but that's what happened with the laptop and the little girl in question, lol. Considering her age, it's probably going to be pretty unlikely that she'll be getting into any trouble for a while still. Age 10-11 seems to be the hot age for kids downloading things that they shouldn't.

I agree that social media does have a kind of "grass is way greener over there" effect and agreed, photoshop is noxious stuff. For adults, things like facebook is like one very prolonged, daily high school reunion. For kids, it seems like, at least from the little pool I've been around, that it's who is the coolest, most bad *** kid on the net. It absolutely is that lack of face to face interaction that is the root of it in my opinion, too. I've seen that play out between kids several times now. One says something really vile to the other online but then apologizes when confronted face to face. That's good in a lot of ways but I've also seen ones that refused to go face to face at all despite admitting that what they did was really wrong. They just couldn't face that face.

I think the big problem with it is that it risks normalizing what could be construed as stunted relationships and ill-behavior. I know that other parents/friends have done the same at this point and just completely cut their kids off. My youngest has been off the net for several months. She has her games still but the net is gone. She actually chooses to spend most of her evenings drawing, practicing clarinet, and reading. Cannot complain about that at all, lol. Now if only I had done this with my eldest lol. Definitely consider it and like I said, she doesn't complain about the lack of access at all either. As she put it, kids are on their phones, on facebook, and etc all day at school, getting in fights online and dragging it into the hallways. She thinks they are all nuts.

Shana91aus
reply to post by WhiteAlice

 

Wow!! That is so scary! My daughter has an ipad which i have gone through and put restrictions on she cant use it for safari etc and the only app's she has are kids & educational ones that i picked and put on there but i was thinking is there any way these hackers can get access to her stuff like the camera etc through apps? I might be sounding paranoid but its something that kind of freaks me out because it seems anything is possible these days. She is only 6, i went through all the settings and made sure no apps could get access to her camera or photos or anything but i just hope thats enough. I should mention i almost always have it on airplane mode too, So i limit actual internet access but sometimes wifi is on if its needed for an app.

The internet itself is bad news for young people and it is clearly causing young teens/ children to do stuff they would never do without it. I absolutely agree its not just the pervs to worry about theres the online bullying thats just another thing, then if they are on social media theres alot of adult content that they rarely bother sensoring so they are exposed too that, and i think it can become very depressing because of the image some people present online they make these young people feel they aren't good enough or their life isn't good enough because everyone talks themselves up so much on social media it leaves people feeling below them or hard done by because of these unrealistic expectations. Then theres the body image issues because alot of people online edit and photoshop their photos, professional sites with the airbrushing, so again majorly unrealistic expectations which severely damages their confidence!

I agree people are incredibly rude online! Trolls are guarantee everywhere now be it on forums or even comment sections of things like news sites and as for social media well its everywhere, on pages everything.. Its like when online people think just because the person isn't physically there they don't have feelings, its awful how people talk to eachother no respect at all! Its clearly an issue but not alot seems to be done about it, i guess because its normal now to have internet access from a young age and people tend to flow with what everyone else is doing! i dont think you are overboard for cutting net access at all, i say good on you! When my daughter comes to the age of using the net access will be extremely restricted if at all. I honestly think they are way better off without it! I realise everything can't be blamed on the internet but i firmly believe its one of the reasons why alot of mental illness issues, eating disorders etc are on a massive rise.

Your daughter is pretty safe with an iPad. Probably more so than anything. gigaom.com...
I hope your daughters iPad is up to date with the latest version of iOS. Make sure it is by checking in Settings>general>software update. Otherwise you are good to go. Sounds like you have done a few things already to secure it. Apps now have to ask you for permission before using anything like camera, microphone and gps etc. you probably do not need airplane mode on, however it may save a bit of battery life. I agree with the person above who said to place a bit of tape over the camera if you are wary. I doubt it is really necessary though but err on the side of caution if you like. Though as long as you are nearby and can kind of see what is going on, just let her have fun with it. Maybe play some of the games with her.