AvoidingInternetSexualPredation
I wanted to write this article on avoiding internet sexual predation to help keep young people safer on the internet. What I'm talking about is boys and girls getting sexually exploited? by someone on the internet. Victimisation ranges all that way from inappropriate? sexual talk to rape, other sex crimes?, and murder.
Both girls and boys can be exploited. It's mostly older boys and men? who are the sexual predators, though.
Here are some things you should know to help keep you safer on the internet:
- There are literally millions of sexual predators on the internet (not exaggerating), and they are generally practiced at what they do
- Predators fake who they are on the internet, that is, they pretend to be girls or boys your own age. There is no way to know for sure who someone is on the internet.
- They will try to be friends with you, and may send you pictures of children your own age engaged in sexual activity, this is called grooming
- They may gradually introduce sexual talk and later get you to take mildly sexual pictures or videos
- Then they will blackmail you, that is, threaten to send out the pictures to other predators or people you know, unless you send more pictures or videos, doing worse and worse things
- Or they will try to meet you in real life and have sex with you
I don't think girls and boys, even teenaged boys and girls, should use the internet unsupervised. And I mean they should have a parent looking over in the shoulder, not just in the same room.
If you have gotten in trouble on the internet, and someone is threatening to share intimate pictures, you should tell your parents or a trusted grown-up.
Boys and girls, healthy, good grown men do not form relationships with much younger girls (or boys) online. And they don't talk about sex with younger girls or boys.