MADRID, 13 May. (Portaltic/EP) –
More than half of underage social media users (55%) who blocked other people for harassment they were contacted again by them on these same platforms or on others, according to a study on sexual harassment of children on social networks.
The number of children under 13 years of age who use social networks despite not having the minimum age specified by the platforms continued to be high in 2020. In decreasing order, the ‘apps’ that minors between 9 and 12 years old use at least once a day are YouTube (78%), followed by Facebook (45%), TikTok (41%) e Instagram and Snapchat (40%).
This is how it is extracted from a survey conducted among 1,000 children ages 9 to 17 in the United States by the company specialized in protecting children against sexual harassment, Thorn, focused on the use that these minors make of social networks and their security tools.
Among the main conclusions drawn from the report, one in three children under the age of 18 had at least one sexual interaction Through social networks, such as ‘sexting’ or being asked for a nude.
By age and by sex, girls between the ages of 13 and 17 were almost three times more likely than the children to be asked for a nude (28 percent). LGTBQ minors are also up to 8 percent more likely than minors who are not (20%).
One in four minors surveyed acknowledged having had a sexual interaction with a person over 18 years of age, a figure that grows among adolescent girls (34%) but also among girls ages 9 to 12, of which one in six reported having had sexual contact with adults through the networks.
Among the minors who had this type of experience, 26 percent did not report them in any way, and half of them said it was not a serious problem – although one in four feared for their anonymity and one in six felt ashamed.
The minors who did report sexual harassment did so mostly through the locking mechanisms or internal reporting of the platforms themselves, by 83 percent of the cases.
For its part, 37 percent of bullied minors told other people outside of the networks, although only 6 percent of those who received adult nudes reported it to others.
Among the mechanisms provided by social networks, blocking was the most popular among minors against sexual harassment, and used by a 65 percent of them, compared to 47 percent who chose to report. More than two-thirds say they would report more if the process were anonymous.
However, the use of these security mechanisms does not prevent minors from having contact with their harasser again, since more than half of them (55%) were contacted again on the Internet.
45 percent of the minors who blocked a person had contact with her again on the same platform, compared to 47 percent of the children who chose to report. About four out of ten were contacted using another social network.
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