Your Kids Are Being Targeted. It’s Time to Go After Their Hunters.
As children and teens increasingly go online for entertainment and connection, parents, scholars, and policymakers are concerned that young people’s biology is making them particularly vulnerable to—and in some cases even exploited by—social media.
Younger social media users are more likely than older ones to have body image issues, while kids who use Instagram or Snapchat before age 11 face a higher risk of online harassment. “It’s time we stopped trying to make profits on kids’ developing brains.” 1
The worst target that could possibly be on a child, apart from being aborted, is that of child exploitation and child sex trafficking.
Sex trafficking is a growing yet inconspicuous issue in the United States, and youth are especially vulnerable to exploitation. Commercial sexual exploitation entails forcing or coercing a person into engaging in sexual acts for the profit of those who run the industry (i.e., the traffickers). This industry is driven by a demand for child sex and fueled by its lucrative nature.
Along with the inherent vulnerability of being young and not yet fully developed, youth have a variety of risk factors which make them especially susceptible to victimization, including experience with child abuse, homelessness, and online exposure. Children and adolescents who are targeted and sexually exploited can suffer damaging short- and long-term physical and sexual trauma to their bodies, as well as adverse mental and emotional trauma that can make it difficult to cope with the maltreatment they have been subjected to. 2
The sex trafficking of children is a rising problem in the United States and is estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands of victims. “The issue is fueled by nationwide demand, and, with the rise of technology, the Internet has become a marketplace for the growing industry.” 3
Instagram, the photocentric social media platform owned by Meta, helps link and promote a “vast” network of pedophile accounts that openly advertise illicit “child-sex material for sale,” The Wall Street Journal reported. Investigations by researchers at Stanford University, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and The Wall Street Journal found Instagram does not just host illicit content on its platform: Its algorithms actually promote it. The platform connects pedophiles to content sellers through a niche recommendation system that enables people to search explicit hashtags. It then connects them to accounts that use the terms to promote “child-sex material for sale.” 4
According to The Wall Street Journal, the buyers and sellers of sexual content involving children are just one component of the sexualized child content conglomerate. “Other Instagram accounts that seemingly belong to the platform’s pedophile community gather pro-pedophilia memes or talk about their access to children, according to the Journal. The number of accounts that exist mainly to follow child-sex content is at least in the
hundreds of thousands, if not millions, current and former Meta employees who have worked on child-safety initiatives at Instagram told the Journal.” 5
There is an overt attempt to normalize sex with children at an alarming rate as more children experience pornography and are encountering graphic content.
Studies have shown that children are getting exposed to child porn at younger ages as more kids have access to devices at younger ages. “New research from the security technology company Bitdefender reports the 10-and-under age group now accounts for one in 10 visitors to porn video sites. And when it comes to consumption, the same study shows children under the age of 10 now account for 22% of online porn watching for juveniles under the age of 18. Gone are the days where kids used to hunt down dirty magazines in the house. Now, everything and anything imaginable is available with one click.” 6
Sadly, parents are not innocent in this corruption either. Children’s exposure to pornography often starts at home.
“Investigators with the Franklin County Internet Crimes Against Children task force say they are seeing a concerning amount of cases involving children inadvertently learning about pornography through Internet searches on home computers, tablets, and smartphones.” 7
They have seen where children have been exposed through a parent’s or friend’s device, and “the next thing you know, they’re down the rabbit hole of pornography,” says Sergeant Jeff Zech, who has been part of the ICAC team for 6 years. 8 “Investigators say it’s a growing issue that many parents may not realize, but they’re part of the problem.” 9
In Matthew 18:6 (NIV), Jesus said, “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”
Your kids are being targeted. It’s time for us as parents, and decent government officials that are not involved with these heinous sins, to go after the hunters. We must stop letting the world exploit kids, and parents must do their part to protect and lead the way in what is right.
Excerpted from Drenda’s new book, They Are Coming for Your Children: The Fight We Must Win!
Drenda extensively covers the subject of education and family, including her own personal experience of homeschooling her five children, in her books They Are Coming for Your Children: The Fight We Must Win!, Fight Like Heaven! A Cultural Guide to Living on Guard and The New Vintage Family: A Vintage Look for the Modern-day Family.
Also, be sure to SUBSCRIBE to Drenda’s YouTube channel, Drenda on Guard, where you will hear the uncensored truth and a Kingdom perspective on news and current events that affect you.
Endnotes
1. Zara Abrams, “Why Young Brains Are Especially Vulnerable to Social Media,” https://www.apa.org/news/apa/2022/social-media-children-teens, August 25, 2022
2. Rachel Brown, “Sex Trafficking of Youth in the United States,” https://ballardbrief.byu.edu/issue-briefs/sex-trafficking-of-youth-in-the-united-states, Fall 2021
3. Ibid.
4. Nicole Wells, “Report: Instagram Connects Pedophile Accounts,” https://www.newsmax.com/us/instagram-pedophiles-algorithm/2023/06/07/id/1122718/, June 7, 2023
5. Ibid.
6. Angela An, “Children Being Exposed to Pornography Through Parents’ Internet Searches,” https://www.10tv.com/article/news/crime/crime-tracker/children-being-exposed-pornography-through-parents-internet-searches, July 19, 2019
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
