How Traffickers Uitilize Social Media To Tempt Teenagers Into Sex Work

Social media has been the major tool by which traffickers around the world utilize to entice vulnerable teenagers.  These poor, unprotected people were sold to do sex work which has become a great challenge for law enforcement agencies, as reported by Venture Beat.

Since streets are limited for traffickers to attract victims, they turn to social media platform including Facebook, Instangram and others to message their potential targets.

"If just one of them answers ... traffickers can make thousands of dollars of that girl very quickly," said Andrea Powell, founder, and director of FAIR Girls, a the United States-based NGO which is aimed at helping trafficked girls from the whole world.

"In some cases, you have really stupid traffickers mountains and mountains of email trails. But most of the time everything's done through different applications on different sites so law enforcement is having to learn how to use these ... it's a whole different ballgame," She further added.

Europol, the European Union's Police Agency, claimed social media, as well as other online technology, have not only taken the recruitment and selling process from the roadways but also made it possible for traffickers to manage victims using exclusive monitoring.

Almost 21 million people worlwide became victims of human trafficking, which according to the United Nation's International is a $150 billion industry.

FAIR Girls mentioned that about 90% of the people it assisted throughout Washington DC and Maryland have been sold on the internet. A lot of them have been sexually abused and they ended up in foster care. Still, traffickers have a psychological hold on these victims, the Eyewitness News reported.

Kendis Paris runs the US-based Truckers Against Trafficking marshalling lorry drivers against domestic sex trafficking where social media becomes the "massive entry point", according to The Malay Online. 

"The kind of thing happens all the time," Paris further elaborated whose network has led to more than 350 trafficking cases since 2011 and identified over 650 sufferers of trafficking curse.

With Facebook alone having more than 1.5 Billion users around the globe along with its online texting network WhatsApp which consists around 900 million users, Social media has brought up a new world for the traffickers.

Vulnerable target becomes victimized by promising them jobs in restaurants or shops and then sell them to sex traffickers, said Ahmad Sofian, national coordinator for ECPAT Indonesia.

To fight this no-mercy traffickers, specialist believe more kids ought to be aimed in public consciousness campaigns through Social Media and vulnerable kids should be supported to speak to reliable people.