Porn and child abuse images

[Nellodee]

https://amp.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/dec/04/thousands-young-people-caught-watching-online-child-abuse-images-scary-figures-show-england-wales

This article horrified me. It’s about teens looking for porn with children their own age in, and obviously then finding child abused images. There’s more, but it’s just horrifying and yet an obvious result of the all pervasiveness of porn in our society. I was going to post it in the safeguarding thread, but I thought it deserved its own. The children seeing these images are obviously victims in their own right, but what happens when they grow up? This isn’t going to get any better any time soon, is it?

Bloody hell.

It is very shocking and awful that's it's so easily accessible. The fall out others around the young person is also devastating

No it's not going to get better.

Online harms has been a feature of safeguarding for a few years now but I always get the impression that what is being done and discussed in schools is about 5-10 years behind where the kids actually are and what those dangers actually are.

There has to be constant real time research going on into this. It also feels like very little is actually being done.

Things are going to get a shit load worse unless we sort this out.

It isn't only this but the other recent report about how images are taken from anywhere (Facebook, school feeds, wherever), and manipulated such that images are made of those children, being abused. And then you have the fact it's possible to just create an image with no child or person present at all.

Big Tech has been allowed to run riot and these are the entirely predictable consequences.

On the former, I am surprised that schools haven't noticed and haven't stopped pumping out images of the kids that attend. You can opt out of your child's image being used of course, but the default should be privacy for u-18s IMO.

My hope is that we are in the 'wild-west' stage of the internet - the intial, unregulated phase, before we figure out as a society what new rules & laws we implement in order to maintain order & a healthy society.

Sadly, these children who have seen these images will very pssibly go on to abuse, in turn creating more abusers.

I think we will have generations of fallout from this, during which time we need to be so vigilant on safe-guarding.

I think the old methods of safe-guarding are outdated and not fit for the protection of children in this current climate.

Its crazy right!? The internet is just isnt a place for children, its literally impossible to ring fence and set boundaries or age restricted content, and you have no idea what their photos could be used for/linked with.

So many people seem totally oblivious to this though. My DD is only 2 but we've made it clear to all family and friends that her face isn't to be posted to any social media and we're going to set some quite strict rules about Internet access and if a mobile phone is needed in her teen years it'll be a dumb phone with zero Internet access. I forsee so many issues though and I've found it incredibly rare that anyone takes this approach. He cousin is 5 and has unsupervised access to tiktok! Another friend has countless photos, videos, and details about DCs posted across all their public social media accounts, details of school, clubs, birthdays, everything. If anyone had nefarious inclinations they could easially find everything they need to know about that child in a few minutes.

And the effect on children of seeing all this content... I think we're only just starting to see the fall out from it but I expect the mental health of our youth is going to continue to decline staggeringly fast. The porn aspect is so incredibly concerning though, the chances these kids will go on to be abusive is high, at the very least they'll struggle to form a normal sexual relationship in adulthood as expectations won't match reality by any stretch.

“On the former, I am surprised that schools haven't noticed and haven't stopped pumping out images of the kids that attend. You can opt out of your child's image being used of course, but the default should be privacy for u-18s IMO.”

All schools give advice out to children to keep identifiable details like name of school etc out of social media posts then post children in uniform, faces unobscured, under their own accounts.

why would you believe a school is only being followed by parents of attendees?

It should absolutely be opt in. We opted out in reception, weren’t asked again and a couple of years later the school assumed that meant it was ok, then on a day out a place they’d been visiting took photos (!) and then used them in their marketing materials. I only found out by chance.

I had sound reasons for asking for my children not to be included in photos posted by their primary school. I had go through the same huffing, eyerolling rigmarole with the school secretary every September, then more of the same with their class teachers each time there was an event they wanted to photograph or film. I suspect there are many parents who would prefer their kids not to be photographed and used in promotional materials/SM, but are cowed into acquiescing.

I had heard that a new tatic has been for predators to harvest information about the potential child victim; birthdays, family holidays etc, so that they can then approach the child, say 'Oh hey [child's name], it's me John! I'm your mums friend... oh you don't recognise me? I was there at the wedding last week too, and I couldn't come to Johnnie's party because I was ill... Do you want a lift home? You'r mum won't mind, I'll pop in and say hi...''

Basically a stranger harvests available social media information to appear like a family friend.

Has anyone read 'Protecting the gift' by Gavin de Becker? - It's a great book about child safeguarding. One peice of advice the author gives is to instruct your child to find a female if they are lost. So if they are lost in a shopping centre, or festival or wherever, they know they must approach a woman for help. This is based on statistical safety.

This man worked for the supreme courts in the USA as a 'threat assessor', has worked for celebrities in managing threats to their children, and the president.... I can't even list his career, its too vast - (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_de_Becker)

Basically he looks at statistics, measures risk, and devises ways to reduce said risk.

And his advice about finding a female to help.... can you imagine the response on here, with the way the other thread went? people would be LIVID. And yet, it clearly has value

Sure, women are safer in real life but remember to teach your kids that anyone can just say they’re a woman online.

Read some of the results of unrestricted access to Omegle: https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2023/nov/15/omegle-closing-random-video-chat

I don't think children or teenagers should be allowed online in chat rooms, or just browsing the internet as they like, full stop.

I agree with you!

And a 5 year old having unsupervised time on TikTok is so irresponsible. I just wouldn’t show TikTok to a 5 year old at all!