Impact on Society

Society has made it far too easy to sex trafficking occur so often because women have been seen as inferior since the dawn of time, regardless of whether or not it can be genuinely proven. Even though slavery has since become illegal, women are still being held captive and forced to commit sexual acts. Women have been stripped of their rights because they were never given them in the past. Even though there has been progression, women are still targeted because society has allowed this to occur for so long.

Nothing but the method has changed; the result remains that they end up in the same unfortunate situation. In fact, these kinds of situations are so common that Stephanie Nancarrow, a youth educator for the Indiana State Police, holds frequent session that covers the ways in which children and young women are targeted by pimps. In the second annual Southern Indiana Human Trafficking Awareness Conference she, “urged attendees to pay attention to warning signs, risk factors and to spread the word on how prevalent social media is in reeling in and exploiting youth and children for human trafficking rings,” (Online Predators, 66). She discusses how unfortunately common it is for young girls to be tricked and preyed upon via social media.

In an article written by Alex Whiting, the author mentions a girl named Nicole who was just 17 years old when her mom went to jail for committing white-collar crimes. Feeling alone, Nicole went online to occupy her time when she met a man on Facebook who offered to help her and take care of her. However, the article writes, “But instead of looking after her, he sold Nicole to men across the United States from Texas to Washington D.C.. It was only when she was in her early 20s, after being badly injured in a vicious rape, that she was finally able to escape sex work,” (Venture Beat). As the article continues, it highlights that Nicole’s experience wasn’t special and in fact sex traffickers have begun to use social media more and more to contact vulnerable teens in order to coerce them into the illegal sex trade.  The pimps and sex traffickers try their best to keep up with the trends of social media because they know that as soon as one girl responds to a direct message or funny post, they have the capability of making thousands of dollars.

Andre Powell, founder and director of FAIR Girls, which is a United States based NGO said, “If just one of them answers…traffickers can make thousands of dollars off that girl very quickly. Now, 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 ball game.” What she brings up is also important to note because some people don’t realize how hard it can become to catch these pimps in action. One good aspect of having social media be the medium for pimps, is that once something goes online, it is essentially there forever. That means that if police are able to understand how social media works, they could have a better chance of catching their suspect. As a result, traffickers and victims leave permanent traces, which can help police, identify who they need to catch and who the victims are.

According to Kimberly Kotrla in Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking in the United States, Kendis Paris, a woman who she interviewed, helped run Truckers against trafficking labels social media as a “massive entry point.” She also mentioned how easy it is for young women to be manipulated highlighting, “especially young girls, unfortunately, looking for love.” She concludes by saying, This kind of thing happens all the time.  Most child traffickers use Facebook to get close and some use other messaging apps that police are just finding out about.”