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Human trafficking is a very alarming problem and has been for many years. There are many threats on social media that young children can be easily drawn to and vulnerable. This causes them to be taken advantage of, groomed, sold and be a victim of human trafficking. There are many things that children can do to avoid human traffickers on social media including having a limited amount of time allowed on sites, having risky sites be blocked off, and only chatting with people that they know are real.

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Example of what an online predator might say.

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Example of what an online predator might say.

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All about online predators and online grooming.

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All about online predators and online grooming.

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How sex traffickers target children and sell them.

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How sex traffickers target children and sell them.

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Example of how sex traffickers use social media to find victims.

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Example of how sex traffickers use social media to find victims.

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This is Human Trafficking - Social Media Recruitment | Youth Activists Inc.

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In 2019, Facebook was sued by a 15-year-old sex trafficking survivor.

The suit originated in Houston, and it said that "Jane Doe"-the pseudonym given to the trafficking survivor-was only 12 years old when Facebook permitted her first contact with the man who trafficked her.

The man allegedly used Facebook to message and groom Doe for a period of six months before eventually convincing her to meet up with him at a Motel 6. When she showed up, he reportedly kidnapped her and sex trafficked her on Backpage.

According to Doe's attorney, Annie McAdams, this heartbreaking story is anything but unique. The common plotline goes something like this: traffickers use social media to find and coerce and/or manipulate victims into meeting with them before the trafficker kidnap and exploits them.

Related: Sex Trafficker Sentenced To 122 Years For Using Facebook To Recruit Underage Students

McAdams states, "We represent thousands of trafficking victims and it's like the same story. Different kid same story."

In her 61-page suit, Doe's attorney argued that her trafficking was caused by Facebook not providing the safe environment it claims to provide.

While we don't know the exact truth regarding the specific allegations made against Facebook in this lawsuit, research and survivor accounts clearly suggest that social media is regularly used by traffickers to connect with potential victims.

Is social media being used for trafficking?

Assuming Doe's trafficker did get hold of her through Facebook, the answer to whether social media is being used for trafficking is a "yes"-one that becomes considerably more resounding when taking into account McAdams' representation of thousands of victims with similar stories. Consider also that Facebook is one of the most popular social media sites, and recruitment can and does happen on other platforms, too.

A study performed by The University of Toledo (UT) Human Trafficking and Social Justice Institute also strongly supported this and found that social media is increasingly being utilized as a medium to contact, recruit, and sell children for sex.

In the UT study, a true story shared by an unnamed expert offers a clear example of why social media is used so often by traffickers. But that study isn't the only report to find that social media is being utilized more and more by traffickers.
Related: 2021 Trafficking In Persons Report: The Impact COVID-19 Had On Sexual Exploitation
The Human Trafficking Institute also published its annual Federal Human Trafficking Report in June 2021-shining a light on the reality and scale of human trafficking in the United States, specifically.

The following estimates are based on prosecuted cases, and are not necessarily representative of all trafficking cases, but they are telling.

83% of active 2020 sex trafficking cases involved online solicitation, which is overwhelmingly the most common tactic traffickers use to solicit sex buyers.

59% of online victim recruitment in active sex trafficking cases occurred on Facebook.

65% of underage victims recruited online in 2020 active criminal sex trafficking cases were recruited through Facebook, while 14% were recruited through Instagram, and 8% were recruited through Snapchat.

Concerning, right?

In the real-life example, a trafficker used social media to connect with a vulnerable, young girl. She was an easy target because of how unhappy she was at the foster home she was living in-something the man immediately garnered from the girl's profile. In only a matter of hours after their initial social media-induced connection, he had picked her up at her foster home in Toledo and taken her to Columbus to traffic her.

Related: How This Woman's Tinder Relationship Became A Sex Trafficking Nightmare

Clearly, what once was improbable has been made possible through social media.

Traffickers not only have immediate access to their victims, but they also have immediate access to a wealth of information about those victims such as what they look like, what their interests are, whether they are happy or not, where they are, who they spend time with, among other information.

Not only that, but traffickers can do their research and contact their victim all while protecting their own identities. UT professor of social work and director of the UT Human Trafficking and Social Justice Institute, Dr. Celia Williamson, cites a 2018 report that says 42% of trafficking victims who met their trafficker online never actually met their trafficker in person.

How is social media being used to traffic?

Traffickers use social media to specifically seek out vulnerable children-and they can reach out to all of those children at one time.

According to the experts from the UT study, traffickers are drawn to children who post expressions of fear, emptiness, and disappointment, such as "nobody gets me," "my life sucks," "I need to get out of here," and more. Traffickers also look for indicators of substance abuse, runaway activity, and home instability.

Related: How To Identify Sex Trafficking Victims And Stop Contributing To Sexual Exploitation

From there, the traffickers will further educate themselves on their potential victim by studying other posts their potential victim makes on his or her commonly used view-and-comment sites like Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, and others.

To explain how traffickers use social media for trafficking, one professional from the study commented, "These guys, they learn about the girls and pretend to understand them, and so these girls, who are feeling not understood and not loved and not beautiful ... these guys are very good at sort of pretending that they are all of these things and they really understand them."

Traffickers' strategic responses include phrases like, "I think you're beautiful," "I'll encourage you to show your body," and "I'll protect you," to get the victim's guard down and establish trust.

After trust is built, traffickers will convince the potential victim to meet up with them or may even coerce the potential victim to send a risky picture, which the trafficker can then use to extort the potential victim.

Social media can help victims, too

While McAdams' caseload and UT's study both show how social media can be used to coerce and manipulate potential trafficking victims, a conversation we shared with the head of an Illinois-based anti-sex trafficking nonprofit, "Annie," illuminated how social media can also be used to help victims.

"We occasionally use fake profiles to connect with other trafficking victims. This approach serves two purposes. First, it may allow us to catch the trafficker. Because traffickers often check their victims' social media accounts, we can make ourselves look like an easy target who the trafficker might want to connect with. Second, and more importantly, we can check on the status of the trafficker's victim and potentially even rescue them," Annie says.

Related: How "Recruiters" Use Social Media To Trick Teens Into Cam Model Scams

But there's also a way potential victims can be protected over social media before a situation escalates. Our affiliates at Bark have developed an algorithm that can alert parents when predators have contacted their children on their devices.

According to the experts, a main way to protect kids from predators on social media is by having them communicate openly with trusted older figures, such as parents and mentors-they form the front line in the fight.

Now, we know having older people check your online presence isn't the best feeling, but it is the safest option.

And, in this case, the safest option is most definitely the best option.
Click here to learn more about how porn and sex trafficking are inseparably connected.

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How Sex Traffickers Use Social Media to Contact, Recruit, and Sell Children

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In 2019, Facebook was sued by a 15-year-old sex trafficking survivor. The suit originated in Houston, and it said that "Jane Doe"-the pseudonym given to the trafficking survivor-was only 12 years old when Facebook permitted her first contact with the man who trafficked her.

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Children and Grooming / Online Predators | Child Crime Prevention & Safety Center

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The Child Crime Prevention & Safety Center includes information about keeping kids safe from crime, including Children and Grooming / Online Predators situations.

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https://www.innocentlivesfoundation.org/everything-you-need-to-know-about-online-grooming/

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The internet can be a great resource, but it can also be a dangerous place where predators prey on children. As children gain access to the internet through smart devices, social media, and online gaming platforms, they become more vulnerable. Nowadays, predators often use the internet to groom and sexually abuse children.

If you remember our last series about identifying modern sexual exploitation, we included a that explained grooming and what it may look like in a real-life setting. However, with the increase of younger online users, we feel the need to shine a light on online grooming and how to promote safety for your loved ones.

Here is everything you need to know about online grooming including how to tell if your loved one is a victim.
Grooming
Before jumping into online grooming, we want to refresh your memory about grooming in general. is when an adult forges a relationship with a child by filling a need in their life or take advantage of a child's vulnerabilities. This is a process that can occur over a period of time to ultimately exploit children through sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, or trafficking. This can happen in person or online. Not to mention, children can be groomed by people they know, family members, or strangers of any age or gender. Over time, the groomer normalizes sexual and intimate conversation thus making it acceptable to take actions they normally would not.
Online Grooming Explained
Online grooming can happen on social media, gaming sites, or any site that allows individuals to communicate with one another. Since this kind of grooming happens online, the signs may be harder to recognize.

Try thinking about grooming, specifically online grooming, as a long game. Predators will take time to build trust and a relationship with your loved one. It is a process of coercion and manipulation.

, an online in the United Kingdom that helps young people with personal issues, shares some fantastic insight about online grooming and how predators maneuver themselves into your loved one's life. They site six signs of grooming as:

Sending your child many messages

Telling the child to keep their conversations a secret

Asking questions to see if a child is alone in a room

Sending sexual messages that could be disguised as compliments or questions about past sexual experience

Trying to get personal information about the child or where they live

Manipulating children to send photos or blackmailing them with photos the child may have already sent

Similar to in-person grooming, online grooming works by building trust between the predator and the child. That said, the distinction between online grooming and grooming in person is that online predators can lie about their name, age, gender, life experiences and everything else. So, while the child may think they know who they are talking to, they could have no idea who is behind the screen.
Goals of the Predators
Think U Know, an education from the United Kingdom, that predators aim to sexually abuse children, but there are two main ways they go about doing this. The two ways include:
When the Predator's Goal is Online Sexual Abuse
Online sexual abuse is when the predator gets the child to perform sexual acts/take sexually explicit photos and to the predator, or the predator gets the child to engage in similar acts through a webcam.

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, or NSPCC, says predators groom children online to commit sexual abuse by having the child...

Send or post sexual photos for the predator

Participate in sexual activities by using a webcam or smartphone

Engage in sexual conversations

Because of the previous grooming that led up to this point, children do not feel as if they have a way out. Plus, the abuse can escalate. The predator can hold photos or videos over the child to ensure a continuation or increase in number or severity of the images.

In these situations, predators use a variety of methods to maintain control over the children. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command, or , explains that predators will maintain control of the child by blackmail, isolation, blaming the child, or bargaining with the child (i.e., saying that if the child does what the predator asks, the predator will stop asking-this is a lie).
When the Predator Wants to Meet IRL
The other goal of the predator may be to meet with the child in real life to sexually abuse them. For these predators, it is not enough to simply communicate online and receive virtual sexual abuse material.

When children are stuck with these predators, aka individuals the children thought they could trust, the danger to the child increases tremendously. In these instances, children can be sexually assaulted, raped, injured, abducted, forced into sex trafficking or prostitution, or killed. These predators are especially twisted.

While all occurrences of online grooming are dangerous and severe, meeting in real life has the potential for more and greater consequences.
Your Loved One's Behavior and Indications of Grooming
Now that we understand what online grooming is and how it works, we want to touch on spotting the signs that your loved one may be a victim of grooming.

Secrecy about who they are talking to

Unusual distractedness or preoccupation

Withdrawing and appearing quieter or sadder

Abrupt mood swings

Inability to turn off phone resulting in worry or stress

While some of these behaviors can scream teen angst, it is important to stay on top of the changes in behavior to ensure your loved one's safety.

The reality of this situation is that children are in a cycle of abuse and shame where they feel isolated and like they have no way out. Whether it is because they are being blackmailed, or because they're afraid of their family finding out, these children do not understand or feel like they can get help. This is what predators want.

Victims are isolated and can feel ashamed by what is happening to them. Therefore, your vigilance and readiness to protect your loved one can make all the difference.
About Us
Here at the Innocent Lives Foundation, your loved one's safety is our top priority. We want to stop this unnecessary trauma and victimization.

The ILF is dedicated to unmasking anonymous online predators to help bring them to justice. We work closely with law enforcement by developing comprehensive files about perpetrators, so that law enforcement can move forward with prosecution.

Children should not be stripped of their innocence, so we do everything we can to stop the predators that try to take it away.

Stay tuned for our next couple of blog posts for more information about where online grooming happens, what to do if your loved one is being groomed, and how to protect your loved one from online predators.
Join Us

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Everything You Need to Know About Online Grooming | The Innocent Lives Foundation

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The internet can be a great resource, but it can also be a dangerous place where predators prey on children. As children gain access to the internet through smart devices, social media, and online gaming platforms, they become more vulnerable. Nowadays, predators often use the internet to groom and sexually abuse children.