MS. BLUE

We’re smack dab in the middle of Sex and Technology month, and thus far we’ve focused on the great things the intersection of the two bring to our lives (I for one can’t even fathom a world where things like gratuitous dick pics and free porn didn’t exist). However, this wouldn’t be a balanced discussion if we didn’t highlight some of the downsides of the communing of Sex and Technology. Right?

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So, there I was huffing and puffing on one of the cardio machines at the gym on Monday, when the following headline appeared on the TV screen in front of me:

Corporate ads appear beside live teen sex talk

Wait. What?!?!?

The instant I saw that my workout was pretty much over. I hurriedly turned up the volume on my headphones to learn that  a dismayed father of two teen girls had stumbled upon a site called Stickam, while doing some research online. And people, Stickam allows teens to share…well everything. In and amongst the sharing of music, ideas and a few laughs, the 10 million strong community of  mostly 14-25 year olds* on the site also flash a whole lot of skin and private parts, often while cybersexing it up in the chatrooms. What’s more, some very big name Canadian and multi-national corporations (that more than likely paid for mass advertising online without knowing where their ads would show up) had ads placed right along side the action.

Now, as interesting/horrifying as you may think that is, the thing that really caught my attention in the story was the brief discussion of “sextortion”. And just what is sextortion you ask? Well folks, it seems that the more tech savvy and particularly predatory lovers of child porn (think hot and fresh teen ass), have developed a new way of getting more of what they want courtesy of the World Wide Web. You see, sextortionists, like the infamous Richard Finkbiner, get their kicks by hanging out on sites like Stickam (and the plethora of others like it, including Chat Roulette, Omegle, Tinychat and Teenspot), convincing teens to do sexually explicit things which they record, so they can blackmail the teens in question into providing them with more explicit content. Their threats generally involve sharing the content on porn sites, exposing the victims to their family and friends (turns out that sextortionists are often pretty good hackers too, FML), and even (horror of horrors!) forcing the object of their desire to meet them offline. And, the worst part is that the predators who commit such crimes often get away with it for weeks (if not months) because the teens are scared shitless of telling their parents mainly because they’ll…

TAKE AWAY THEIR COMPUTERS.

A painful and very true story that provides the perfect segue to today’s PSA…

Parents, teachers and anyone else who really cares about the kids in their lives need to talk to kids about about sex and the power (and permanence) of the internet – a lot.

But not in the “I’m-the-parent/adult-and-you-have-to-do-as-I-say-or-I’ll-punish-severely” kind of way. Such discussions should be had in a “Let’s-keep-the-lines-of-communication-open-so-you’ll-feel-comfortable-enough-to-talk-to-me-when-you-get-into-trouble-so-you-don’t-end-up-in-some-dark-alley-with-some-lowlife-who-likes-to-diddle-minors” kind of way. Also, instead of burying our heads in the sand and/or fear-mongering about the dangers of social media, we have to face the fact that many horny, curious teenagers are now looking for action, acceptance and approval online (much like we would have been had the internet existed when we were young). I mean, if the kids in your life are too afraid to tell you what’s going on for fear of losing the privilege of being connected to their friends online, or you’re not comfortable asking them what they’re doing on the computer all night because you’re scared of what you’ll find out, you can’t protect them from what’s out there: which I for one believe is our job as adults. After all they’re just kids, and if they fall victim to sextortionists (or other web-crawling creeps) we, the grown-ups, have failed them…EPICLY. No?

*Notably, there is no age verification process on the site, so there’s bound to a few members way younger than the ‘required’ age of 14.