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‘Every Parent’s Nightmare’: TikTok Is a Venue for Child Sexual Exploitation
A 42-year-old Alabama man uploaded to TikTok videos of himself lip-syncing to music and sharing depressive thoughts. A 14-year-old Texas girl responded.
Before long, the two were exchanging romantic notes visible to anyone on the platform. “Married for life baby,” the teen commented on one of his posts. He responded, “Yes Baby Married For Life.”
Several TikTok commenters accused him of inappropriate conduct. “This dude has been stalking a little girls account guys,” wrote one.
Last March, he hopped a bus to Texas and met up with the girl. Several days later, he was arrested, and he later was indicted on charges related to alleged sexual assault of a child.
“I fell in love with her,” said the man, Grady Moffett Sr., in an interview from a county jail in Fort Worth. As of Tuesday, he hadn’t entered a plea.
Adults have been starting improper relationships with minors online since the dawn of the internet. TikTok, the most downloaded social-media app in recent years, has emerged as the biggest, fastest-growing danger zone yet, according to law-enforcement officials and others who track child exploitation.
TikTok, which features short videos, has been a magnet for children and teens, who spend more time there each day than on any other social-media platform. Billions of videos are uploaded to the site each month, many starring young people singing, dancing and talking about their personal lives.
What troubles those who track child exploitation is that TikTok’s algorithm is designed to learn what type of content users like, then feed them a string of it. That keeps youngsters glued to the site and makes it easier for pedophiles to seek them out. A user who lingers on videos of, say, teens dancing gets sent more videos of the very same thing.
“The audience that’s following these children, a lot of them are adult males that have a sexual interest in children,” said Jon Rouse, a 38-year police veteran who leads a group targeting child sex offenders for Interpol, an international police network. “Child sex offenders will gravitate toward where there are children. Pedophiles prefer looking at videos.”
Like other popular social-media sites including Facebook and Instagram, TikTok allows users to restrict their postings to family and friends. Many teens choose to make theirs fully public so they can amass “likes” and use other popular functions such as one that allows them to post a video side-by-side with one from a stranger.
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1 Reply
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What are your thoughts on tiktok as a means of social media practice?
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All the bad things are bad, but the only thing that ties tiktok to it is your opinion. People go to the grocery store all the time but they dont shut down Walmart because of a few shootings. This looks like politically charged fear mongering.
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The hate on Tik Tok is racist and xenophobic.
Every bit of social media is just as dangerous as another. I started an alt account and one of the default subs that I see is /r/MeetPeople.
If you have never been there its mostly girls under the age of 18 asking for people to talk to. It is creepy and it is the only sub I routinely got push notifications for without me asking for them.
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A kid shouldn’t be allowed on the apps. It’s the parents responsibility to monitor that. None of SM platforms are safe!
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