How I See It

Children are our future, and we should teach them and protect them from harmful influences. The increasing use of the Internet in our society brings both positive and negative effects. Children should be taught to acknowledge and be aware of negative consequences. Are we doing enough to create safety for the youngest members of our society?

There are many ways in which we can protect our children from inappropriate behavior. One way we can help is to ensure that children are involved in more age-appropriate activities after school, such as sports, so there will be a limited amount of time for them to browse on the Internet. In addition, parents should become more aware of children’s online activity—for instance, where they surf or to whom they talk. There are many ways to find out about their Internet activity, such as the many available programs that log browser and messaging usage so that parents can see their children’s Internet activity, etc.

We should not stop there. Parents should consider whether they are spending adequate time with their children so there will be less time that they spend on the Internet. In the case when parents have a busy work schedule, they should involve their children in more activities in their free time, such as sports, so there will be a limited amount of time to browse on the Internet. Pedophiles like to look for loners—children who feel they have no friends. Lonely kids, especially, tend to create parasocial relationships.  Also, parents and teachers, at least, should teach all children to defend themselves from Internet safety risks. They should be informed about the prevalence of predators and taught not to put their personal information on the Internet, for example. Another great way to decrease pedophilia over the Internet is to set up more strict laws. For example, laws could be strengthened to require sites that cater to children to track the identities of their users more closely and prevent abuse. An increased chance of being exposed and punished will deter many borderline pedophiles.

One interesting area that could hold great promise is the use of advanced technology to detect and combat inappropriate and illegal behavior by sexual predators on the Internet. Companies already use data mining and pattern recognition techniques to detect credit card fraud, identity theft, computer hacking, etc. Governments use data analysis to detect and locate likely terrorists and financial criminals. The same techniques for detecting suspicious patterns can be used to find people who harm innocent children, and bring them to justice. For example, sophisticated software could be attached to chat rooms that cater to children, and this software could detect the differences in language use, subject matter, speed of typing, number of contacts, etc., that would indicate a potential child abuser.

And what about the sexualization of young girls through popular media? Have you ever deeply considered the intensity of the portrayal of children’s sexual provocation in media, and its impact on pedophiles? Current social media indirectly teach children to act sexually in any situation. The result is that they are treated as sexual objects from a young age. It might also create superficial values in them. We should stop ignoring the negative consequences of sexualization of underage people. We should consider also that it deepen even further the inappropriate desires of those who have pedophilic tendencies. I believe that with restricted sexualization or more strict censorship of media images of underage, sexy girls in media, there would be smaller number of sexual offenders. All of these stimuli combined with easy access to the Internet only make the problem more intense. You can see bellow an example of little model named Ashley Milne who is sexualize from youth age.

This is a huge, ongoing problem in our current society that deserves more attention. Sexual abuse has a negative impact on the quality of life. It can be horribly destructive to our psychic and social life. The end result could be psychological problems or anxiety, for example. As adults, most of us are not completely aware of the terrible consequences.

We will never be able to eliminate the problem with pedophilia completely, but if we put resources into it and work together, we can definitely decrease the number of victims of sexual abuse in the future. The methods mentioned above are only a few possibilities. 

Women of Influence: Object of Attention.
Digital image. 'Ashley Milne-Tyte' 9 July 2013. Web. 12 May 2014.

References:

Jefferson, Cord. "Born This Way: Sympathy and Science for Those Who Want to Have Sex with Children". Gawker. July 9, 2012. Web. <http://gawker.com/5941037/born-this-way-sympathy-and-science-for-those-who--want-to-have-sex-with-children>.

"Child sexual abuse". Wikipedia. (D. n.) Web. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse>.