Love it or hate it, the cyberworld is now an indelible part of our children’s lives, be it for school research, entertainment or socialising. Yet, as the recent news stories on naked pictures and videos of individuals being shared online went to show there are greater dangers than overexposure to YouTube videos of kittens falling over.
Deborah Vassallo, the hotline administrator for the Child Web Alert hotline service within Aġenzija Appoġġ, knows the dangers of the internet all too well. The service, launched three years ago, part of the Be Smart Online project, is there to help young victims of online abuse – be it online bullying in all its forms or child sexual abuse images or videos.
The internet helpline – 179 – provides a faster route to reporting abusive behaviour online than the built-in reporting mechanisms some websites like as Facebook use.
“Not everyone knows how to use Facebook’s reporting mechanism, and usually reports take some time to be acted upon. We have direct contacts with Facebook, so if something has to be taken offline, it’s going to be removed within 12 hours. That’s something we tell kids when we go on school visits – if there’s something online worrying you and you need to report it immediately, let us know,” Vassallo says.
Apart from bullying and sexting, other cases involved Facebook accounts being accessed and changed, using a password youngsters might have given their friends who then turned against them; other cases involved parents who wanted pictures of their children – uploaded as part of a family photo – taken offline.
The majority of cases where the victims sought online help concerned online bullying, which was often a reflection of what happened at school. “The victims need a lot of support: they would have gone through bullying at school, which eventually transfers online,” Vassallo says.
The hotline works hand-in-hand with the police cybercrime unit where legal or criminal action has to be taken. Sometimes, however, the trauma of bullying gets in the way of helping build a case against the bullies.
“Some children don’t realise they needed to keep chat transcripts and so on for evidence, and they just delete everything so they can forget,” Vassallo explains.
If private, naked pictures of an adult being shared without consent weren’t enough to potentially wreck the life of a person, imagine what it can do to a minor. Last year alone, 25 sexting cases were dealt with by the agency, many of which were uploaded by the children themselves.
“On a local scenario, the most frequent cases are pictures that children and adolescents as young as 10 years old take and upload to social networks themselves,” Vassallo says.
“My first case here was of a 10-year-old girl who stripped in front of her webcam and was recorded. The thing that had struck me the most was that she had a cartoon top on,” Vassallo says.
The video in question was recorded by a man who had looked her up online – she had a Facebook profile, even though the minimum age to join is 13 – and he had started chatting with her – a process known as grooming.
“For some reason or other they would have caught the eye of the perpetrator – they think ‘this is an easy girl’ or ‘this girl doesn’t have much adult supervision’ – so they feel it’s easier to make contact,” the social worker says.
My first case here was of a 10-year-old girl who stripped in front of her webcam, and she was recorded
“The girl in this case had admitted that she had been chatting with this guy for a long time, and that stripping was a reward.”
The punishment came later: after refusing to meet up with him in real life, he took the video he had recorded of her stripping and uploaded it online.
“By the time we had heard of the case, the video had racked up 16,000 views; and we got to know four hours after the video was uploaded.
“The webcam, the screen, create a false sense of security,” Vassallo says.
In many of these cases, the perpetrator would be someone close to the victim, a family friend or a father. However, one of the most common features is the parents’ lack of presence – something an adult can easily suss out.
The reasons why young people take pictures of themselves naked, however, range from peer pressure and feeling accepted/liked (even in the Facebook sense of the word) to sheer exhibitionism.
“When we asked some children and adolescents whether they’d be happy if, say, their future employer found these pictures online in a few years’ time they answered they were happy with that. That’s a challenge for us: it’s one thing dealing with someone who regrets taking the picture, another when you’re dealing with someone who doesn’t see it as a problem,” Vassallo says.
It isn’t kids taking pictures of themselves that’s the only problem –sometimes even photographers prey on eager girls’ enthusiasm, offering them free photo-shoots as long as they pose very provocatively in front of a camera.
Although she cannot find a common socio-economic element between all these cases, Vassallo has found a common characteristic: “One of the common factors was that a lot of parents are not being present enough in the lives of their children. This happens in all strata of society.
“The presence of parents is crucial. I think families do not communicate enough between themselves, and parents often use the internet as a babysitter while they go about their own business. Some people call and say they’re happy that their children spend eight hours online because they know they’re safe and sound at home. At this point, I think it’s better to go out than spend all that time online. Parents are using it as a form of pacifier. They only get to know what happens afterwards,” Vassallo says.
There are also a number of software solutions that could be implemented to try and restrict certain sites from being accessed. Filtering software such as Safe Eyes can block certain sites, such as pornographic ones. It can also be used to restrict time spent on others, such as social networks, and monitor chats.
OpenDNS Home is another possible solution, blocking certain sites and services through the router, which are all controlled through a password. Although not as straightforward as switching off the computer, with some patience, these could effectively make the internet marginally safer –as long as the password isn’t discovered.
But Vassallo stresses that nothing replaces parents being there for their children, even by having the home computer in a shared space.
Vassallo suggests that children and adolescents should have a fair amount of time out of the house away from the screen. “There has to be a balance between the virtual and the real life.”
Getting help
The Child Web Alert Service is an EU-funded project under the Safer Internet programme. It is part of the besmartonline project led by the Malta Communications Authority together with Aġenzija Appoġġ and the Office for the Commissioner of Children.
Parents and children can report abusive internet material through www.childwebalert.gov.mt, and can seek help through Aġenzija Appoġġ’s helpline on 179.