Being aware of the dangers of social media sadly does not always allow parents to prevent bad things happening. This alarming story of a boy, aged 10, in Australia, reported by The Age, highlights how easy it is for children to come across sex offenders and be drawn into their claws, and frequently with little possibility of detection by a parent. The most shocking part of this case is that the boy had only been on Snapchat for four days yet was being groomed by numerous sexual predators. Inevitably the effect on the boy has been devastating, suffering depression now in counselling. More worrying is the frequency “this scenario is far from unusual as online predators ramp up and diversify their activity since children have become accustomed to spending far more time online in the pandemic”. Perpetrators of these despicable acts resort to using threats, extortion and blackmail in order to bully children into taking sexual abuse images. According to Australia´s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman-Grant there has been a 90% increase in reports of online child sex abuse since the start of the pandemic. Parents need to be ever vigilant, as we have allowed children to be online far more than before. Our secure browser filter can prevent this.
