Current Events l

As an example, I would like to provide the event that occurred in the UAE (April 28, 2019). This article describes cases of the frequent blackmailing of children and adolescents.

Barry Kamming of the campaign group Beat The Cyber ​​Bully said: “As a rule, children and adolescents are victims of online predators tracking activity on Snapchat and Instagram.” Online - predators. Encourage children and adolescents to initially send pictures of intimate content, then begin to blackmail them. “They monitor profiles and pretend to be peers, and face similar problems”.

People who post compromising content on social networks are known as sextworkers. Abu-Dhabi and Dubai police have previously warned people to beware of cheating.

As written in the UAE legislation, anyone found guilty of this crime faces two years in prison, as well as a fine of between 250,000 thousand and 500,000 thousand dirhams.

As Mr. Kamming said in an interview, he knows hundreds of cases in which people exchanged explicit photographs and subsequently were blackmailed.

The threat from online predators is very real and parents need to ensure that children or teenagers in such incidents feel comfortable in asking for help.

“Predators target the more vulnerable, and these are usually girls, because they are more open and honest with sharing on the Internet.”, “This is not a world of rainbows and unicorns. There are sick people who want to exploit the vulnerable” - says Mr. Kamming.

These are mostly girls of 17 - 18 years old, who send a photo of an intimate character to the guy she likes.

Dubai psychologist Soraya Kanafani said she offered counseling to many teenagers who suffered from blackmail in the UAE.

She said that many criminals lived near the victim and did not always look for money.

Dr. Kanafani said she worked with more than a dozen teenage victims in the UAE who were blackmailed for the photos they shared on the Internet. Also adding that "...predators are looking for weakness and are aimed at children with low self-esteem."

In 2017, Abu Dhabi police investigated 774 cases of cybercrime, 206 of which were classified as blackmail.

Thus, these news are an example of how media can harm the psyche of children and adolescents by blackmailing.

In my opinion, people need to put on the first place the issue of the blackmailing via Internet. Since many youngsters are afraid to admit to their parents that they are being blackmailed, so this most often leads to the fact that children and adolescents have problems with trust between them and their parents.

Link: https://www.thenational.ae/uae/online-predators-blackmailing-vulnerable-teenagers-in-the-uae-1.854448