Police Warn of Facebook (and other Social Media) Timebomb

Police warn of Facebook and other Social Media Timbomb

Police warn of Facebook and other Social Media Timbomb

Facebook and other Social Media sites setup ‘age limits’ when they opened themselves up for public use – however, many young children simply lied about their age and joined up to use the popular social media sites.

This means, that when they opened for business some years back, child of say, 8 or 9, who declared themselves to be 13 by misrepresentation, would appear to be 18+. The truth might be that they are 13-14 years of age, and could be ‘groomed’ by a pedophile.

According to The Western Daily Press:

Paedophiles could get away with grooming young teenagers on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter – because of a timebomb triggered years ago by their parents, police have warned.

Police have called on parents to act now to get their children to change their profiles, to decrease the risk from paedophiles who target young people online.

They said paedophiles could ‘will be able to argue’ that they thought the person they were befriending was 18, and an adult, because the youngster lied about their age when they joined Facebook years ago.

They warn that the timebomb was set in motion around five or six years ago when social media sites like Facebook and Twitter exploded in popularity.

Thousands of parents allowed their children to join their friends on the sites, and helped them do it by lying about their age. All social media sites have age restrictions, with the most popular ones – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and Tumblr – setting the minimum age at 13.

Back in 2010 and 2011 an entire generation of young people signed up to join Facebook and Twitter, including tens of thousands of youngsters who were under 13, some as young as eight or nine, who pretended to be 13 to get on board.

Five years on, and those ‘pretend 13 year olds’ are now considered by Facebook and Twitter to be 18, which because they were actually nine at the time, opens thousands of 14-year-olds to be groomed by paedophiles without any comeback from the law.

While this press report was originally posted in the UK, the legal implications are wide ranging. We comment further when we have input from US based law enforcement.

Source

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