Social media has great benefits, but it appeared to be dangerous as well. A new story about sexual abuse through social in the Netherlands came out today. I post it down here (it is a dutch article, translated with Google Translate).
Man abused minors through social media
Today, 15:16 by editor
A 22 year old man from Brielle in March arrested on suspicion of sexual abuse of minors through social media, so let the Public Prosecutor (OM) know now. Meanwhile, 30 girls return to the man done, but according to this number may increase further. The man was arrested on March 6, 2012 and is since then fixed. He suspected that he had more than 100 girls over the internet has been approached with sexual requests.
Meanwhile, the vice detective’s identity 100 girls traced to which the defendant has had contact over the internet. The 22-year-old man is suspected that he through various social media made contact with the girls. He would thereby have used various ways to the girls, aged between 10 and 17 years, to approach.
Thus, he had several e-mail accounts and identities of other would have used. He also victims on webcam strip, where the man secretly recorded images. Then he blackmailed the victims to sexual acts for the webcam to perform. After declaration of two victims, the police came to the Brielle on the track.
Computers
After his arrest, the police computer and a mobile phone of the suspect seized. The investigators found on his computers indications that there may be more victims. Thus many chats and movies found. In the study of the Brielle To is also a second suspect emerged.
It is a 21-year old man from Voorburg. He was arrested on 17 July 2012 and is still in detention. He is accused of approaching twenty underage girls through social media. According to the prosecution, the two suspects over the internet contact with each other about the girls approached. As far as known was taking a number of the girls exchanged contact information.
http://www.security.nl/artikel/42975/1/Man_misbruikt_minderjarigen_via_social_media.html
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This article raise the question whether Social Media should be as free as it is today. Should there be restrictions or how can we prevent such things from happening? And because Social Media is gaining popularity, we probably will hear more of these kind of awful stories in the future.
What do you think what should happen to prevent such stories? More control, or is freedom to important on the internet?
Thank you for the first post Jon! I recall someone mentioned it during the class.
I think during class it was about the Facebook murder. But it belongs indeed in the same category of unpleasant side effects of social media!
Hi John,
I’ve read the article and I think it is shocking because Brielle is a 10 minute drive from my house. To answer your question, the freedom on the internet should remain in my opinion. For the most part the girls are responsible for their own actions, because they accept an unknown person in the messenger application and they also accept a video chat with that person. Those things are difficult to avoid because younger girls are attracted to older boys. Unfortunately those things happen but i don’t think the problem can’t be solved without limiting the freedom on the internet.
Shocking indeed! It’s difficult to prevent such events, since internet is accessable for everyone. Regarding to this subject, it’s possible to give information sessions or workshops at primary and secondary school, because of the growing popularity of social media. A years ago I participated the Buddy Project where we organized activities for children on the primary school. One of the activities was giving a short information session about the Internet. We explained using the internet and thus also chatting. After telling them about the dangers and giving an example of a old man behind the computer that behaves like a 15 year old boy, we realized (little) children know very little about the dangers. I think parents or schools should provide information about the dangers, regarding the growing use of social media.
I remembered an advertisement that I had seen on TV that has to do with this, maybe I can upload it on the blog!
By advertisement on TV i meant a commercial! 🙂
I think that freedom of internet is something that is very precious. But SM also allows bad thins to happen, in addition to your article is recruiting for terrorist activities or interesting young people for ideologies that oppose the values that we have here. So of course some more monitoring of wha\t is happening on the social media is needed, but it is of course impossible to say if that will prevent murders from happening or that people just search for an alternative application to discuss and share these things.