Today headteachers across the UK will be told that schoolchildren are facing increased bullying, abuse and malicious use of ‘deepfakes’ on social media platforms.
This type of online exploitation and the threat of explicit images being shared, both real and deepfakes, is a method that traffickers often use to coerce and blackmail their victims.
The president of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) is set to make an announcement at the union’s annual conference in Liverpool today. He will draw on the results of a survey of more than 6,000 teachers and school leaders, which found that 71% of primary school teachers know of pupils aged under 13 who are using social media platforms. This is despite many of the platforms, such as TikTok, Facebook and Instagram, requiring a minimum sign-up age of 13.
The survey conducted on behalf of the ASCL asked schoolteachers and leaders across England what social media related issues they had noticed since the start of the academic year in September. More than one in 10 (11%) secondary school teachers said deepfake imagery or audio had been used maliciously against students or staff.
Hope for Justice is taking this opportunity to again call for parents, guardians, schoolteachers and adults with childcare responsibilities, to take seriously their duty to protect children online.
Pete Kernoghan, Hope for Justice’s Training Manager, said: “The internet is a powerful tool – but its ever-evolving dark side is increasingly putting children and young people at risk of exploitation. With 90% of children owning a smartphone by age 11 and 75% of young social media users (aged 8-17) having at least one personal account, the scale of risk has never been greater. Exploiters are using social media and online platforms to groom, recruit, and exploit children in ways that are harder to detect than ever before. As parents, guardians, and responsible adults, we have a critical role in safeguarding the children in our care. Awareness is the first step – knowing what to look for and how to respond is the next. Hope for Justice’s ‘Keeping Kids Safe in a Digital World’ is a practical tool to help adults recognise online exploitation, understand its warning signs, and take action. Protecting children starts with education, through that we can help protect children in this ever-evolving digital world.”
Human traffickers are known to misuse social media; perpetrators use platforms to recruit victims, to control victims and to expand their operations.
A 2021 Polaris report shows that between 2019 and 2020, Facebook experienced a 125% increase in trafficking recruitment whilst Instagram experienced a 95% increase. Meanwhile, there was a major decline in the use of traditional recruitment locations, such as bus stations, strip clubs, mental health facilities and private foster homes.
Our team of investigators – trained former law enforcement officers – has worked on several cases of online grooming, whereby a perpetrator befriends a child to gain their trust. You can read how we helped to safeguard 12-year-old Maisie* after she was groomed online by a 44-year-old man. In this type of case, perpetrators build an intimate relationship with the child over social media. They then lure or coerce them into sending sexual or explicit content of themselves, which they may then share online. Social media is also used by traffickers to advertise false or deceptive job opportunities.
Approximately 2 in 5 victims of sex trafficking in the U.S.A are recruited online, according to data presented by the Department of Justice. That makes online platforms – including social media, gaming sites and messaging apps – the most common place for victim recruitment.
To equip parents and caregivers to respond to these concerning trends, Hope for Justice has developed an online e-learning course to help keep kids safe online. Keeping Kids Safe in the Digital World is an award-winning course that gives parents and caregivers practical techniques for empowering themselves and their children to take action against online exploitation.
