New reports suggest that sexual predators are beginning to contact and abuse children in the Metaverse, and experts say parents need to take preemptive steps to protect their kids.
"This is not a topic that's going to be going away. It's a topic that's going to be sadly escalating," Foster Care Institute Founder and Director Dr. John DeGarmo said. "We've seen the breakdown of families. The breakdown of a lot of things and, as a result, children are affected. We just have to turn the TV on and see children out of control and a lot of it's coming from what they're seeing online."
DeGarmo, a TEDx Talk speaker, has conducted seminars and consulted worldwide on foster care, child sex trafficking, adoption, and child welfare-related issues. He said that the current mental health crisis affecting kids drives them online to places like the Metaverse, where they can fall prey to sexual predators.
Last year, Channel 4's Dispatches uncovered evidence that Metaverse users bragged about being attracted to little girls between the ages of nine and 12 and joked about things like rape and racism.
Shockingly, this incident and other explicit and threatening comments came within minutes of an undercover Channel 4 journalist entering the virtual reality world.
Days later, The National Center on Sexual Exploitation called on Meta to cultivate new safety standards after the investigation found adults and minors experiencing sexual abuse, harassment and racism.
"Child sex trafficking happens in every single community in our nation. There are 300,000 child victims of human trafficking in our nation, estimated by many studies," DeGarmo said, noting that there are also 800,000 kids missing, many of which are runaways.
Often, these kids run away based on false promises and become the victims of sex trafficking, according to DeGarmo, who has fostered over 60 children.
He said that many times, children in the foster care system are previous victims of sexual abuse and trafficking and wind up again falling into the hands of adults looking to harm them. Some of these interactions originate online and because this abuse has become normal to these kids, the cycle continues.
Furthermore, child sex trafficking does not have to occur in person but can also happen online in places like the Metaverse. He noted that millions of images of child pornography are uploaded to the internet every day. In places like the Metaverse, pictures can be sent and received and are often not logged after the fact for parents to review. DeGarmo said these pictures could be trafficked by predators and have long traumatic effects on kids.
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Last week, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children obtained data on child abuse imagery crimes after a Freedom of Information request to police forces in the UK asked for the numbers on child abuse image offenses. The request found police had recorded eight crimes involving headsets and VR.
These numbers are small compared to the overall data, which found a record 30,925 offenses related to the possession and sharing of pornographic images of kids committed from 2021 to 2022.
DeGarmo often refers to child sex trafficking as "America's ugly secret," wherein people push it under the carpet, ignore it and talk about something else that makes them feel better. Yet, to successfully combat these crimes, DeGarmo says awareness from parents, members of the community and kids is paramount.
As a career sex crimes prosecutor and author, Wendy Patrick has published and taught on sexual assault in the Metaverse, including what one can do to prevent victimization and help survivors.
"Child predators target underage victims in the Metaverse in the same way they target victims in real life—by hanging out where the kids are," Patrick said. "And because children are usually far more tech-savvy than their parents, they are often exploring virtuality unsupervised, which makes them uniquely vulnerable."
Patrick, the president and founder of BlackSwanVerdicts.com, said that "patterns make the predator," and by identifying their behavior, parents can detect concerning elements in their child's social media use.
Like real life, predators in the Metaverse spark sexualized conversation topics using language strategically tailored to young victims. Patrick said they also ask questions about parental supervision, which are red flags the child is not speaking with someone of a similar age.
She also urged the importance of "protection through proactivity." Should parents permit children access to the Metaverse, they should learn the tools and safeguards, such as "boundary features" available to block and report certain types of content.
Additionally, Patrick said parents and guardians should keep up with ongoing updates to platform policies to maintain pace with the increasing interest in using the Metaverse in various contexts, both personally and professionally.
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Shahnawaz Sadique is a Metaverse expert and the founder of TheViralPink.com, a leading website in technology, gaming, and entertainment news coverage. She said that through "parental oversight, education, and caution," parents and children can "ensure a safe and positive online experience."
"For children, it's important to be cautious when engaging with others in the Metaverse and online. They should avoid sharing personal information, such as their real name, address, or phone number, with anyone they don't know in person," Sadique said. "Children should also be wary of individuals who ask them to keep secrets or who make them feel uncomfortable in any way."
In addition, she said children should be encouraged to speak up if they feel uncomfortable or threatened in any online situation, and parents should establish open communication to share any concerns or incidents that may have occurred.
She added that parents should consider implementing parental oversight tools, such as monitoring software or parental controls, to help manage their children's online activities and limit exposure to inappropriate content or individuals.
Safewise.com Family Safety expert Cathy Habas highlighted one such parental control app called Bark, which claims to monitor for signs of cyberbullying, depression and online predators.
The alternative, she said, is to block troublesome social media apps outright.
A 2022 annual report from Bark highlighted several startling statistics about teens and social media.
According to their data, the top five apps flagged for "severe sexual content," beginning with the most severe, are Kik, Tumblr, Twitter, Discord, and Instagram.
Meanwhile, 9.4% of "tweens" and 14.2% of teens encountered predatory behavior from someone online.
The report also revealed 62.4% of tweens and 82.2% of teens encountered nudity or content of a sexual nature.
This data is supported by Thorn, a company that builds tools to end child sex trafficking. Thorn's statistics indicate that 43% of kids who have shared their nudes admitted to sharing them with someone they did not know in real life.
Thorn added that it only takes 8 minutes for a predator to form a bond with a child and 4 in 5 minors interact with unfamiliar adults online.
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Regarding the Metaverse, Habas noted that parental controls on the virtual reality system are pretty basic and center around app approvals. She said that virtual reality makes it similarly difficult to monitor live interactions like live videos on social media applications. Furthermore, censoring an abusive verbal comment before it reaches the viewer is not always possible.
"If you wouldn't let your kid use an online chatroom, you absolutely should not be letting them use Metaverse," Habas said. "Meeting new people is one of the reasons the Metaverse exists—but because it's VR, predators can do way more than just say sexually explicit things or try to set up a real-life meeting. They can grope avatars, for example, and that's definitely a violation of someone's space, dignity, rights, you name it."
She urged parents to hop on the Metaverse themselves, find out what their kids do there, play games with them, point out any red flags about someone else's behavior, and let them play alone for a while if comfortable. Habas also highlighted the importance of limiting screen time and encouraging other hobbies and in-person interactions.
Elliott Anderson, CTO, ShadowDragon, said it is essential to teach children about the importance of their privacy. Making them aware of how data they share can be easily accessible by many people or corporations is important, as is the idea that any item labeled "free" means you, your time and your privacy are the product.
"The cow thinks the grass is free. With this as a basis, it helps teach them that all forms of transactions whether online or in the real world are a transaction with you paying in some way for what you are getting," he said. "This extends not just to companies but to individuals as well. We can't truly know the intentions of a person when we 'meet' them online and recognizing that everyone is there for something is paramount for anyone online to be aware of."
Anderson, who has 20 years of experience in software engineering that includes training analysts and law enforcement agencies in advanced techniques of open-source intelligence (OSINT) gathering, including the targeting of human traffickers, said he does not let his children online until they are old enough to understand these concepts.
He has also taught them several rules and red flags.
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Rule: Boundaries are very important. If you want to try a new game, social media platform, or app, ask permission to use it.
Rule: If you feel like you need to hide something, there's a good chance there is something or someone dangerous involved.
Rule: Never send or receive explicit photos. While it's enticing and the pressure is high for teens, once the photo has been sent, it's in the wild and can become something the entire world sees. For younger children it's extremely important that they know to notify a parent immediately if something like this happens.
Rule: Never accept gifts from someone online.
Rule: Never agree to meet or video chat with anyone online.
Red flag: Anyone who asks if you can keep a secret is generally an untrustworthy person and should be avoided, as well as anyone who tells someone they're mature for their age.
For parents, it's imperative to keep the doors of communication open with kids, Anderson said. This can be done by staying connected to their world. For example, if they love playing Minecraft with friends, learn about the game and how it is played.
"As they get older, monitor what they post and engage with them positively. In the later teens it's important for kids to recognize what they post online can have effects on jobs or attract predators. A common tactic predators use with unhappy teens is to help drive a wedge between the teen and their parents to come in and 'save' them," he added.
