The current system for app ratings is fundamentally flawed and it leaves our children vulnerable to exploitation.
Young girls have shared their heartbreaking stories with us, all of which included the common thread of Snapchat and Instagram used by their sex traffickers to groom them and then to sell them to others for sex over and over again.
These girls also showed us message after message from random men—strangers—that they were receiving with flirtatious messages, “dick pics,” and some even blatantly asking for sex acts in exchange for money. The girls were getting these direct messages even though some of their profiles were set to private.
Upon hearing their accounts, we reached out to other survivors and to survivor-serving organizations to see if this was a trend. It seems to be as many had similar experiences of being groomed and then sold over these popular platforms.
We have long known and advocated for solutions to help protect young people from sexually explicit media and hardcore pornography on the Internet. But, upon speaking with many young people about the grooming and sexual assault hurled at them on these platforms, they also made it very clear that they are troubled by other dangers. Many popular apps, including Instagram and Snapchat, are riddled with pornographic videos and images, as well as other content glamorizing and pushing risky sexual behaviors—like group sex or sex with strangers. Some of these teens told me, “There is just nowhere we can go without being bombarded by this kind of stuff.”
Right now, app developers self-rate their own apps based on their own whims. There’s no governing body that oversees the ratings process. As a result, many apps popularly used by children are given misleading—we would even say dishonest—ratings with generic explanations. This leaves parents with a false sense of security and minimal warnings when trying to decide what apps are appropriate for their family. How are parents supposed to help protect their kids when big tech is hiding the dangers rampant on their platforms?
It's because of powerful support from allies such as yourself that we are able to undertake such ambitious projects, and we are so grateful for that support. As the fight to end sexual exploitation continues to rage ever on, your help is as critical now as it ever has been. There is still much work to be done, and we need more resources in order to take the legions of well-funded and exploitative industries head on.
