Many people are adopting technology each day, and this means that children can access the services used by adults easily. They can even use the services even when the adults are not around. The National Crime Agency (NCA) pointed the risks that come along with this behavior more so the usage of streaming sites by children. In seven days, authorities were able to identify more than 300 children who were vulnerable. Also, they were able to arrest more than a 100 people who participated in activities that included blackmail, streaming, and grooming.
The number of people using social media sites is increasing each day. Most adults are not strict on children accessing these sites. Most social media sites can support some form of a live capability. They include popular platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube among others. Authorities claim that abusers take advantage of the immediacy of such services available on these social media platforms. They use different methods to trick children into sexual acts or manipulate them to get nude in front of the cameras. The abusers use tricks, threats and even dares to achieve these goals on unsuspecting children.
The police agreed that parents had a great role to play to avoid this from happening. First, parents need to talk to their children on how to maintain healthy relationships and to ensure their safety when they are online on these platforms. Research by the NCA found out that 84 percent of the people who participated in the survey were aware of the potential dangers that their children faced when they were using the platforms. However, more than a third of the respondents had not taken the initiative to speak to their children about online safety. Also, more than half of the respondents were not sure on how to ensure online safety.
It is difficult to control the access of children to these platforms with live streaming capabilities. In a month, various live streaming services will be launched. They become the must do for children. Children will use the services to stream activities from their playground, classroom or even bedroom. They could send it to their friend or even to the public using the platform not knowing among the users there are predators. Also, they can broadcast anything that will give them the highest number of views possible as the numbers will give them an affirmation.
Dil Bole Oberoi
