from The Epoch Times:
TikTok may be providing opportunities for sex traffickers to groom children, a youth therapist has warned.
Dr. Katie Guinn has spent the past 10 years providing in-home family therapy to young people and their families in the Acadiana region of Louisiana. She’s the regional director of The Center for Children and Families, a nonprofit organization that provides advocacy, counseling, and other services for families in need.
The need for mental health services among young people has skyrocketed in the past two years, according to Guinn, who said she’s encountering more and more children who have been victims of sex trafficking.
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In providing a definition of the term, she said that “sex trafficking involves engaging in sexual activities against the will of a person for an exchange of goods.” The transaction isn’t always associated with money, but can also include drugs, food, or shelter, for example.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Guinn said, a relatively new concept has emerged, which she called “cybersex trafficking.” The goal of luring children and adults into sex trafficking remains the same, but in this approach, she said, “everything is virtual.” Websites and a variety of phone apps with messaging capabilities are utilized to communicate with users, who are often minors.
Victims and participants can upload content, such as photographs or videos, and a transaction occurs using cryptocurrency. According to Guinn, “this new realm of sex trafficking is incredibly difficult to track and learn more about because it constantly and instantly evolves.”
What is known, she said, is that children are particularly vulnerable.
“For a child or another victim to be susceptible to sex trafficking, there first has to be a vulnerability,” she said.
A vulnerability can be defined as “something missing in a child’s life that needs to be filled.” This void or need can come in many forms, she explained.
“It can be connection, survival, love, substance abuse, shelter, food, stability, and more,” she said.
“In the last three years, the biggest need we have seen in children is connection, [as] kids have been incredibly isolated as a result of the pandemic.”
Guinn identified connection as a human need that is as significant for a child as eating or breathing.
“People need connection, especially children,” she said.
Groomed on TikTok
Social media has become a primary means for people to connect, according to Guinn. However, all avenues of social media can be used for contacting and potentially recruiting victims for sex trafficking, including Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. But TikTok—a hugely popular Chinese-owned app—is the “most aggressive,” she said, explaining that its algorithm is “incredibly aggressive and customizable to the user.”
“The app tracks how much time is spent using it; how a user engages with a video, whether it be by sharing it, commenting on it, or liking it; and determines what videos will show up next on the user’s feed,” she said. “It’s the user’s interaction with the video that determines their customized algorithm.
“Traffickers will make videos, posts, or different kinds of content, which talk about the lifestyle of sex trafficking very openly and blatantly. They glamorize it, making it very desirable for a child who is lacking so much. They’ll show such things as women at parties enjoying drinking, eating, and flaunting expensive gifts, for example. For a kid, this all looks very enticing.”
Once a child watches an attractive video, she said, “the TikTok algorithm is going to shuffle similar videos to share more of that content to the child user, further glamorizing a very dangerous lifestyle.”
It’s part of the larger process that “naturally starts to fill a vulnerability,” Guinn said.
“A child could become more incentivized to message the person responsible for the video, to make contact with this person in hopes to partake in this lifestyle they observed, and get their needs met.
“Inadvertently, they could easily become part of the realm of sex trafficking, simply with the intention of getting their needs met, but oftentimes, [they aren’t] able to find a way out.
