Social Media Can Be Scary

Practically everybody in the world is on social media, but have you ever thought of how dangerous it is? According to Child Abduction and The Intern, between 1995 and 2000, approximately 135 children were abducted or molested as a result of Internet contact. I honestly think children now get abducted way more because of how easy it is to access social media and how easy it is for predators to find people’s location and trick them into giving them personal information. In the same article, it says, “The way predators can communicate with their victims has increased. Internet bulletin boards, chat rooms, private websites, and social networks, have been used by sexual predators and pedophiles in their attempts to exploit children.” 

We all realize how much technology is advancing, which can make it even easier for predators to find gullible children and teenagers who are desperate to talk to new people and could eventually lead to kidnapping or abduction. In my opinion, I feel like kids/teenagers shouldn’t get a phone until they’re at least 14, and either their parents check their kids’ phone or put a parental lock on certain things so that they have to approve of what their child is doing. Hopefully, this could help the child not to talk to the wrong person and prevent something terrible from happening. In the same article, it says, “Even though not all solicitations on the internet lead to child abduction, the internet is still a potentially dangerous place for children and teenagers”. 

Other things could happen besides being kidnapped or abducted. The article also says, “Every year over one million children are sex trafficked as young as 4 years old and younger than 18 years old”. In fact, according to Youth Underground,  “Approximately 130 people are trafficked worldwide every hour ” and “4 million of them are in forced marriages.” It is forced slavery for anybody who gets sex trafficked and the number is increasing more and more every day. This needs to stop. Slavery ended a long time ago for people of color, yet now it’s young children and teenagers of every race being sold like jewelry or something you’d buy at a store. In the U.S. right now, traffickers make over $9.5 billion. 

It’s not just little girls and females; it’s little boys, males, and non-binary youth too. You probably don’t even want to think about your child being trafficked or kidnapped, but you could try to prevent it from happening by checking your child’s phone, computer, and even tablet for messages from strangers, and by knowing what they’re doing and/or looking at every day. In conclusion, be careful who you talk to online and don’t give out any information about where you live, or just personal information in general. Other adults are trying their best to protect their children from predators online. Wouldn’t you want to protect your children too?