I despair that in the 21st century a 13-year-old girl still takes the rap for the sexual bullying and manipulation of much older boys (almost men). When will we ever leave the Dark Ages?
I find it odd that there is no discussion of not giving kids smart phones —- you can get your child a phone that doesn’t send pictures or take pictures and we can encourage all parents to do this …
It’s a collective action problem; there is no incentive for any individual child to stay off social media if all their friends are on it. Social media leverages social exclusion as part of its business model. As a parent, you may choose to prevent your child from having access to social media, but if everyone else at your child’s school is using Facebook or Instagram, you are effectively choosing to exclude them from that area of social life, which can also lead to ostracization.
This is why I advocate for a pact among parents to not allow their children on social media until they are at least 16. This can only be done effectively at the level of the class, so parent-teacher associations can be the vehicle for this message, but ultimately parents themselves need to educate their children on the subject and, above all, put the relevant parental controls on the telephone, have a level of oversight, and coordinate with other parents. Social media loses its appeal to children if their friends are not on the network, but this strategy can only work if every parent of every child (or the vast majority) in the class is aware of the issue and on board.
Surely it’s illegal to have what is effectively child pornography on your phone and to circulate it. And there’s a digital trail to show who solicited the pictures and who passed them on. A few criminal convictions with the perpetrators being placed on the sexual offenders register would make youngsters think twice before doing this in future.
It is illegal but for various reasons rarely enforced. This happened at my younger siblings' high school (luckily neither one of them was involved) and it seems like there is a pattern in these cases - usually 1 - 3 ringleaders who are true predators and other kids who passively accept it. I absolutely agree the ringleaders need to be on the sex offender registry.
I’ve been a governor of a senior school in England and any pupil circulating child pornography would be expelled.
And why don’t the parents take a civil prosecution against the offenders if the police won’t bring criminal charges? Get the social media companies to fund it.
The social media companies don’t give a shit. In fact, this kind of abuse is good for their bottom line. Hate and abuse is what drives traffic on their platform. The top management at these companies are narcissistic psychopaths themselves.
Sadly, you’re probably right. I don’t really understand why the social media companies can’t be made publishers, at least in the UK. Maybe the UK government doesn’t want to offend the Americans.
It is psycho to blame the girl. This shows how delusional parents are about this.
But why are you framing this as relatively rare? This or the threat of it is nearly universal.
I am deeply frustrated with all of Zack's framing here. There is no such thing as an "ordinary online interaction" for 13 year olds. On what platform? On what internet? with whom is a 13 year-old girl having a "normal online interaction?" The entire thing is thickly cloaked by the palpable influence of hardcore pornography, from the language to the warped sense of "exploration". They are on an algorithm made and controlled by insane, nihilistic raunch-brained tech bros.
This story really began when the pornographers got access to these boys. Same misunderstanding. These boys are being abused and tormented and hurt people hurt people. We have allowed good old harmless "porn" to enrage and emasculate boys and turn them into tricks and predators.
This is going to keep getting worse. How can anyone call this whole affair "free speech"
And nothing happened to the boys? Wrong! What happened to the boys occurred years earlier, when we allowed pornographers to get their claws into them to begin with. Pornography fills boys with hate and malice, that’s what happened to them.
Certainly none of this was Roxy's fault. But how do we imagine bottomless searchable databases of women having orgasms being a rite of passage for boys makes them feel? Nihilistic and disillusioned and angry. The idea that boys love it is totally insane.
We have let these boys be brainwashed by the most spiteful people on earth. Every 14 year old looked up sexual content the day the got their phone, while their clueless parents told themselves some fairy tale.
There is a deep ideological aversion to confront the fact that this was NOT inevitable. We could have made the internet a much more wholesome and worthwhile place. We listened to the libertarian, sex-positive fools. Hardcore internet pornography is not free speech and never was.
Now millions of parents and girls live in constant fear and anxiety, so some gooner can wack it to movies instead of magazines. And look what happened to our boys. BTW someone tell Richard Reeves, his American Institute for Boys and Men has NOT ONE WORD to say about pornography. Not one.
As bad as Epstein. Suicide even more possible and prevalent here, perhaps.
Thank you for your work to get kids off their phones and off device-learning in schools. Our true selves are who we need, to learn, love, and support each other.
First of all, this is terrifying. Thank you for the reminder of how dangerous smartphones can be. Second of all, kids who send around these images should be charged with distributing child sex abuse materials, which is what they are.
completely agree with you. I was a social work major in college and had a professor laugh in my face when I suggested that boys who actively spread these photos should be punished for it. the consensus in that class was “boys will be boys.” when I was in high school in the 2010s, we learned about the laws that exist to classify this as child pornography, but everyone knew that they would never be enforced in any way so it had no effect. a lot of my peers that did take photos like that are still dealing with the psychological fallout a decade later.
Kids don't need phones with open internet access or social media. Go watch the trailer for the new Shaun Ryan episode - it'll make you sick. Take the damn phone away. Just say no.
I'm a new mother to a beautiful baby girl and things like this terrify me. Her father and I are already in agreement on a strict no-smart phone or connected tech in her bedroom policy (yes I realize it's early), but who knows what technology will be out there in 15 years that I won't understand?
Where is the father? Where is the culpability for what you taught, or didn’t teach your daughter about sexuality? Teach children that sex is the gift of co-creation from God, a gift we give to our spouse in marriage, the fruit of which is a new soul. Teach children to resist vice and grow in virtue, and they will be more resistant to these problems. I’m sorry this happened to you, but tell us about what you could have done to prevent it. That will help up and coming parents.
Yes 2. They are 21 and 18 now. Both healthy and happily committed to waiting until marriage before sex and having lots of children God willing. Both went through moments of crisis with porn, my daughter with same sex attraction and extreme anxiety. It was only with continuous, loving cooperation between my wife and I that we brought them through.
Thank you for this post, as an incest survivor, and a grandmother, and AI scientist, I am deeply impressed with the courage and compassion it takes to become 'shameless' in discussing such dysfunctional systems. These are legacy patterns that are amplified by technology and these platforms can absolutely be designed to support safe interactions for users....These toxic patterns are amplifications of the toxic culture of these companies.....these platforms are designed to exploit users for profit....and it will always be vulnerable populations that are harmed the most....however, remember that Humanity has survived in the midst of legacy trauma and violence because of the courage and compassion of those who have been victimized. These are system level problems, even the predatory actors are victims of such dysfunctional patterns that are being amplified by technology......What is needed now is an understanding that we're in the midst of a paradigm shift that requires victims to learn healing....to learn to regulate our nervous systems and the stories we express so that we can move beyond the harms and continue to hold platforms accountable because they won't change if there is not bottom-up pressure on their bottom line....What an inspirational story, thank you so much!!!! Remember that even these young men are victims....when we only see their monstrous behaviors, we forget that they are trying to make sense of amplified patterns of dysfunctional behaviors and have learned that projections of dominance are rewarded in toxic cultures...They need role models to speak up and give them a path forward for healing...that is what is missing.
This experience is not, by any means, rare. It is unfortunately beyond common, from the psychotic episode, the sharing of photos, and the manipulation, paranoia and disconnect that followed. It is a common story for young people everywhere, and for their families. The importance of this story is huge, and Roxy, you are a survivor. I am so proud of you, your growth, your academic success and most importantly, your recovery. You are an inspiration to all. I can attest that I, too, survived the social media psychosis I endured, and I survived because of my father. And I am so grateful that you feel that same way about your mother.
Thank you for sharing this. My daughter is 12 and reading your story helps me feel completely affirmed in my fierce protection of her from the screen world and the shadows that hide behind it.
For the love of our children can we please understand that this vile behaviour has long been around - millennia actually - during adolescence most notably. Only now we have the internet that it is amplified, rife and able to hide in the depths more easily and readily. What saddend me themost is how adults and society blame the victim here when the perpetrator's targeted her and used her. This went on in High Schools before the internet by a subset of 'boys' to girls. The reason why women warned girls and children of the coercive bullying, lies and manipulation they may face and to be aware of it.
Where are the adults leaders......on the dangers knowing the truth of our past human collective. All we heard was how grand it all is without acknowledging the very real and present dangers.
It takes so much courage to share this story but it needs to be heard! Thank you. It's crazy to me that so many tech companies, governments, etc could have put guardrails on sextortion but didn't. This is why we built LivingRoom for iOS to protect kids. Because Snapchat won't do it. The other parental control companies can't monitor Snapchat on iPhone. Because 87% of teens own an iPhone. Because kids deserve better.
Unfortunately, the words "safe", "kind" and "Internet" do not belong in the same sentence. The only solution to this problem will be to restrict children to offline software. There is no reason why there should be any connection to the World Wide web in schools, when the seventy-five thousand volumes of Project Gutenberg fit on less than 100 gigabytes of a 1 terabyte hard drive. The internet should be optional; a place to explore for verified adults. End digital involution today.
So, did anyone take legal action against those young men monsters?
I despair that in the 21st century a 13-year-old girl still takes the rap for the sexual bullying and manipulation of much older boys (almost men). When will we ever leave the Dark Ages?
I find it odd that there is no discussion of not giving kids smart phones —- you can get your child a phone that doesn’t send pictures or take pictures and we can encourage all parents to do this …
The parents are pressuredinto getting them one, as all the other kids do. A social media ban would be more effective.
I know - my son is 7 and in his friend group we as parents have all agreed to not get smart phones for our kids
We get them landlines so they can still talk - and maybe a “dumb” phone in the future that can’t send pictures or be on the internet
It’s a collective action problem; there is no incentive for any individual child to stay off social media if all their friends are on it. Social media leverages social exclusion as part of its business model. As a parent, you may choose to prevent your child from having access to social media, but if everyone else at your child’s school is using Facebook or Instagram, you are effectively choosing to exclude them from that area of social life, which can also lead to ostracization.
This is why I advocate for a pact among parents to not allow their children on social media until they are at least 16. This can only be done effectively at the level of the class, so parent-teacher associations can be the vehicle for this message, but ultimately parents themselves need to educate their children on the subject and, above all, put the relevant parental controls on the telephone, have a level of oversight, and coordinate with other parents. Social media loses its appeal to children if their friends are not on the network, but this strategy can only work if every parent of every child (or the vast majority) in the class is aware of the issue and on board.
https://www.smartphonefreechildhood.org
Surely it’s illegal to have what is effectively child pornography on your phone and to circulate it. And there’s a digital trail to show who solicited the pictures and who passed them on. A few criminal convictions with the perpetrators being placed on the sexual offenders register would make youngsters think twice before doing this in future.
It is illegal but for various reasons rarely enforced. This happened at my younger siblings' high school (luckily neither one of them was involved) and it seems like there is a pattern in these cases - usually 1 - 3 ringleaders who are true predators and other kids who passively accept it. I absolutely agree the ringleaders need to be on the sex offender registry.
I’ve been a governor of a senior school in England and any pupil circulating child pornography would be expelled.
And why don’t the parents take a civil prosecution against the offenders if the police won’t bring criminal charges? Get the social media companies to fund it.
The social media companies don’t give a shit. In fact, this kind of abuse is good for their bottom line. Hate and abuse is what drives traffic on their platform. The top management at these companies are narcissistic psychopaths themselves.
Sadly, you’re probably right. I don’t really understand why the social media companies can’t be made publishers, at least in the UK. Maybe the UK government doesn’t want to offend the Americans.
It is psycho to blame the girl. This shows how delusional parents are about this.
But why are you framing this as relatively rare? This or the threat of it is nearly universal.
I am deeply frustrated with all of Zack's framing here. There is no such thing as an "ordinary online interaction" for 13 year olds. On what platform? On what internet? with whom is a 13 year-old girl having a "normal online interaction?" The entire thing is thickly cloaked by the palpable influence of hardcore pornography, from the language to the warped sense of "exploration". They are on an algorithm made and controlled by insane, nihilistic raunch-brained tech bros.
This story really began when the pornographers got access to these boys. Same misunderstanding. These boys are being abused and tormented and hurt people hurt people. We have allowed good old harmless "porn" to enrage and emasculate boys and turn them into tricks and predators.
This is going to keep getting worse. How can anyone call this whole affair "free speech"
And nothing happened to the boys? Wrong! What happened to the boys occurred years earlier, when we allowed pornographers to get their claws into them to begin with. Pornography fills boys with hate and malice, that’s what happened to them.
Certainly none of this was Roxy's fault. But how do we imagine bottomless searchable databases of women having orgasms being a rite of passage for boys makes them feel? Nihilistic and disillusioned and angry. The idea that boys love it is totally insane.
We have let these boys be brainwashed by the most spiteful people on earth. Every 14 year old looked up sexual content the day the got their phone, while their clueless parents told themselves some fairy tale.
There is a deep ideological aversion to confront the fact that this was NOT inevitable. We could have made the internet a much more wholesome and worthwhile place. We listened to the libertarian, sex-positive fools. Hardcore internet pornography is not free speech and never was.
Now millions of parents and girls live in constant fear and anxiety, so some gooner can wack it to movies instead of magazines. And look what happened to our boys. BTW someone tell Richard Reeves, his American Institute for Boys and Men has NOT ONE WORD to say about pornography. Not one.
Well said 👍
As bad as Epstein. Suicide even more possible and prevalent here, perhaps.
Thank you for your work to get kids off their phones and off device-learning in schools. Our true selves are who we need, to learn, love, and support each other.
Far worse and more widespread then Epstein. We have done this to kids for 20 years.
First of all, this is terrifying. Thank you for the reminder of how dangerous smartphones can be. Second of all, kids who send around these images should be charged with distributing child sex abuse materials, which is what they are.
completely agree with you. I was a social work major in college and had a professor laugh in my face when I suggested that boys who actively spread these photos should be punished for it. the consensus in that class was “boys will be boys.” when I was in high school in the 2010s, we learned about the laws that exist to classify this as child pornography, but everyone knew that they would never be enforced in any way so it had no effect. a lot of my peers that did take photos like that are still dealing with the psychological fallout a decade later.
Kids don't need phones with open internet access or social media. Go watch the trailer for the new Shaun Ryan episode - it'll make you sick. Take the damn phone away. Just say no.
Watch this: https://x.com/ShawnRyan762/status/1990933038155300899
I'm a new mother to a beautiful baby girl and things like this terrify me. Her father and I are already in agreement on a strict no-smart phone or connected tech in her bedroom policy (yes I realize it's early), but who knows what technology will be out there in 15 years that I won't understand?
Where is the father? Where is the culpability for what you taught, or didn’t teach your daughter about sexuality? Teach children that sex is the gift of co-creation from God, a gift we give to our spouse in marriage, the fruit of which is a new soul. Teach children to resist vice and grow in virtue, and they will be more resistant to these problems. I’m sorry this happened to you, but tell us about what you could have done to prevent it. That will help up and coming parents.
Have you had a teenager in your house since smartphones were invented?
Yes 2. They are 21 and 18 now. Both healthy and happily committed to waiting until marriage before sex and having lots of children God willing. Both went through moments of crisis with porn, my daughter with same sex attraction and extreme anxiety. It was only with continuous, loving cooperation between my wife and I that we brought them through.
Thank you for this post, as an incest survivor, and a grandmother, and AI scientist, I am deeply impressed with the courage and compassion it takes to become 'shameless' in discussing such dysfunctional systems. These are legacy patterns that are amplified by technology and these platforms can absolutely be designed to support safe interactions for users....These toxic patterns are amplifications of the toxic culture of these companies.....these platforms are designed to exploit users for profit....and it will always be vulnerable populations that are harmed the most....however, remember that Humanity has survived in the midst of legacy trauma and violence because of the courage and compassion of those who have been victimized. These are system level problems, even the predatory actors are victims of such dysfunctional patterns that are being amplified by technology......What is needed now is an understanding that we're in the midst of a paradigm shift that requires victims to learn healing....to learn to regulate our nervous systems and the stories we express so that we can move beyond the harms and continue to hold platforms accountable because they won't change if there is not bottom-up pressure on their bottom line....What an inspirational story, thank you so much!!!! Remember that even these young men are victims....when we only see their monstrous behaviors, we forget that they are trying to make sense of amplified patterns of dysfunctional behaviors and have learned that projections of dominance are rewarded in toxic cultures...They need role models to speak up and give them a path forward for healing...that is what is missing.
This experience is not, by any means, rare. It is unfortunately beyond common, from the psychotic episode, the sharing of photos, and the manipulation, paranoia and disconnect that followed. It is a common story for young people everywhere, and for their families. The importance of this story is huge, and Roxy, you are a survivor. I am so proud of you, your growth, your academic success and most importantly, your recovery. You are an inspiration to all. I can attest that I, too, survived the social media psychosis I endured, and I survived because of my father. And I am so grateful that you feel that same way about your mother.
Thank you for sharing this. My daughter is 12 and reading your story helps me feel completely affirmed in my fierce protection of her from the screen world and the shadows that hide behind it.
For the love of our children can we please understand that this vile behaviour has long been around - millennia actually - during adolescence most notably. Only now we have the internet that it is amplified, rife and able to hide in the depths more easily and readily. What saddend me themost is how adults and society blame the victim here when the perpetrator's targeted her and used her. This went on in High Schools before the internet by a subset of 'boys' to girls. The reason why women warned girls and children of the coercive bullying, lies and manipulation they may face and to be aware of it.
Where are the adults leaders......on the dangers knowing the truth of our past human collective. All we heard was how grand it all is without acknowledging the very real and present dangers.
My heart goes out to her.
not true. this behaviour was literally impossible before the internet
It takes so much courage to share this story but it needs to be heard! Thank you. It's crazy to me that so many tech companies, governments, etc could have put guardrails on sextortion but didn't. This is why we built LivingRoom for iOS to protect kids. Because Snapchat won't do it. The other parental control companies can't monitor Snapchat on iPhone. Because 87% of teens own an iPhone. Because kids deserve better.
Unfortunately, the words "safe", "kind" and "Internet" do not belong in the same sentence. The only solution to this problem will be to restrict children to offline software. There is no reason why there should be any connection to the World Wide web in schools, when the seventy-five thousand volumes of Project Gutenberg fit on less than 100 gigabytes of a 1 terabyte hard drive. The internet should be optional; a place to explore for verified adults. End digital involution today.
https://swiftenterprises.substack.com/p/digital-involution