We’ve somehow made it normal to allow kids to use smart devices and have access to social media, and now it’s catching up to us. The Manitoba RCMP Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) Unit has seen a drastic increase in the number of investigations involving youth and social media. The apps youth are using remain the same, but they are starting to use them at alarmingly younger ages.
“For the main part, youth are still using the same old kind of stand-by apps, such Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram, so that part hasn’t really changed,” said Manitoba RCMP ICE Unit’s Constable Gord Olson. “What we are really trying to do now is convince the parents that 13 years and older should be the age youth are when they use social media, and that’s by the social media platform standards as well. We’re seeing a ton of kids that are on those platforms for the older teens that are much younger than that. We’re seeing younger and younger kids using social media devices. “Their brain capacity at that age, especially on that younger scale which is 8 to 10 years old, they just don’t have the ability to deal with the situations they are facing on social media or their devices. Even that middle teen age of 12 to 14, they still have difficulties dealing with that just based on how their brains are operating at that time in their lives. We see a lot dealing with these ages right now.” Sending intimate images remains a large part of these investigations as youth still gravitate to sending these out. Now it’s elementary school kids who are taking part in sharing nude images of themselves, resulting in more ICE investigations. “We’re still seeing a lot of investigations around youth taking nude images and videos of themselves and sending it to a boyfriend or girlfriend they just have,” said Con stable Olson. “There’s a perception now that it’s al most the norm to send a nude out, because they feel they have to. There are obviously illegalities to that from having it in your possession to sending it out, and all of those things because it is child pornography. I just don’t think they understand the gravity of what they are doing when they are taking those pictures and videos, and sending them out. They are sending them out to peer age-ap propriate people and relationships they’re in, but they are also talking to strangers right out of the gate and sharing those images right then and there as well. “We’re seeing so many things with the younger crowd as well, between 5 and 10 years old, taking their parents phone, taking naked photos or videos of them selves and uploading it to YouTube or TikTok. These kids are not doing it to be malicious, but think its comical. We are seeing a huge uptake on investigations around this as well. I’m not sure where the thought process of this is coming from other than kids thinking they are being silly.” Many parents think that the RCMP ICE Unit can get that nude photo or video of their children off the internet without any is sues, but that is rarely the case. The more a nude photo or video has been shared and uploaded, it’s virtually impossible to ensure that file will never show up again somewhere at some point in time. “It really is almost impossible for us to delete those kinds of images and videos once they are being circulated through social media,” said Corporal Olson. “If it’s gone from them to that one person, like the boyfriend or girl friend in their lives, we can deal with that by going and meeting with the person or few people it got sent to, talk to their parents, educate them and make sure they deleted the image or video. “But what we are seeing happening now is these pictures and videos are being uploaded to a story and being sent out to multiple people. It may not just be their school mates, but rather people in another country it’s being sent to. It’s impossible to get those deleted or dealt with, because they may pop up again at another time in their lives.” There is a significant rise of young boys being sextorted online through either video game chat rooms or social media. “We’re seeing a major uptake involving kids, young males between 11 and 15 specifically, talking to people online on the video gaming side or their social media apps,” said Constable Olson. “They are sending nude imagery out and being sextorted, then being blackmailed for money. If they don’t pay a certain amount of money to these people, then that specific image or video that was sent to them is being sent out or threatened to be sent out to their friends list on whatever platform they’ve been communicating with the person on. That’s not just in Manitoba, but there has been a major increase and rise in this across North America in these types of investigations.” If you have a youth who has shared an inti mate image or is being sextorted, it’s imperative to get in contact with the RCMP. “If a parent has a youth come forward to say something like this has happened, parents need to contact their local detachment,” said Olson. “An other option is to go through Cybertip.ca. When you use Cybertip, it will generate a police re port to the appropriate jurisdiction. I tell parents to do both of these things so we can get working on that. Cybertip also offers that wrap around care and resources for parents and youth to get help with this type of scenario.