Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Notes on Contributors
- Editor’s Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- 1 Bringing Theory Home: Thinking About Child Sexual Exploitation
- 2 Moving Beyond Discourses of Agency, Gain and Blame: Reconceptualising Young People’S Experiences of Sexual Exploitation
- 3 Child Sexual Exploitation, Discourse Analysis and why we Still Need to Talk About Prostitution
- 4 Contextual Safeguarding: Theorising the Contexts of Child Protection and Peer Abuse
- 5 ‘Losing Track of Morality’: Understanding Online Forces and Dynamics Conducive to Child Sexual Exploitation
- 6 Understanding Adolescent Development in the Context of Child Sexual Exploitation
- 7 Some Psychodynamic Understandings of Child Sexual Exploitation
- 8 Understanding Trauma and its Relevance to Child Sexual Exploitation
- 9 Social Support, Empathy and Ecology: A Theoretical Underpinning for Working with Young People who have Suffered Child Sexual Abuse or Exploitation
- 10 Using an Intersectional Lens to Examine the Child Sexual Exploitation of Black Adolescents
- 11 What’s Gender Got to do With It? Sexual Exploitation of Children as Patriarchal Violence
- 12 Understanding Models of Disability to Improve Responses to Children with Learning Disabilities
- 13 Some Concluding Thoughts
- Index
5 - ‘Losing Track of Morality’: Understanding Online Forces and Dynamics Conducive to Child Sexual Exploitation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Notes on Contributors
- Editor’s Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- 1 Bringing Theory Home: Thinking About Child Sexual Exploitation
- 2 Moving Beyond Discourses of Agency, Gain and Blame: Reconceptualising Young People’S Experiences of Sexual Exploitation
- 3 Child Sexual Exploitation, Discourse Analysis and why we Still Need to Talk About Prostitution
- 4 Contextual Safeguarding: Theorising the Contexts of Child Protection and Peer Abuse
- 5 ‘Losing Track of Morality’: Understanding Online Forces and Dynamics Conducive to Child Sexual Exploitation
- 6 Understanding Adolescent Development in the Context of Child Sexual Exploitation
- 7 Some Psychodynamic Understandings of Child Sexual Exploitation
- 8 Understanding Trauma and its Relevance to Child Sexual Exploitation
- 9 Social Support, Empathy and Ecology: A Theoretical Underpinning for Working with Young People who have Suffered Child Sexual Abuse or Exploitation
- 10 Using an Intersectional Lens to Examine the Child Sexual Exploitation of Black Adolescents
- 11 What’s Gender Got to do With It? Sexual Exploitation of Children as Patriarchal Violence
- 12 Understanding Models of Disability to Improve Responses to Children with Learning Disabilities
- 13 Some Concluding Thoughts
- Index
Summary
Introduction
It is commonly understood that the internet and digital technologies confer both positive opportunities and risks to children and young people. This chapter is concerned with the latter, specifically exploring how the evolution, design and control of the internet and digital technology have been conducive to child sexual exploitation (CSE) – both CSE involving online elements and that which does not directly. Theorising and understanding this opens up avenues for more effective prevention and intervention.
Because CSE closely entwines and overlaps with other harms, such as familial sexual abuse, sexist sexual objectification and sexual harassment, this chapter is also relevant to understanding the influence of technology on these problems. Indeed, one argument made here is that online factors have amplified CSE in part via their influence on ‘lesser’ issues such as harassment and objectification. These may contribute to CSE by implicitly reinforcing harmful gender norms and signalling permission (Thomae and Pina 2015), while also being pernicious in and of themselves, their impact akin to a dripping tap.
Numerous utopian and dystopian visions have been projected onto the continuing evolution of digital technology (Naughton 2012). What these visions often have in common is a sense of inevitability, and this sense is also shared by those claiming the digital future is impossible to predict. This chapter is built on, and evidences, a contrasting position: currently technology (tech) contributes to significant harm to children (notwithstanding its positives), but there is no reason that this has to continue. Technology has been developed by humans, and so humans canfurther shape it, our understanding of it, and our interactions with it, to now prioritise the rights of children and young people. More specifically, we have agency to make the online space hostile to sexual exploitation.
The rising awareness of the range and severity of problems amplified or brought into motion online (including disinformation and online hatred) is currently provoking calls for fundamental change and a greater determination by governments to more effectively regulate the online space (see for example the UK government's recent Online Harms white paper, and the development of an Age Appropriate Design Code by the Information Commissioner's Office). All of these may lead to increased self-reflection within the tech industry (Zunger 2018). This has created a ripe moment in which to understand and more confidently challenge online practices and dynamics conducive to CSE and to chart new pathways (Davidson and Bifulco 2019).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Child Sexual Exploitation: Why Theory Matters , pp. 87 - 116Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2019