WP3: Manipulation In a Modern World — Teenage Girls and Online Grooming

Trigger Warning: This paper contains discussions of grooming and sexual manipulation of children. Please continue reading at your own discretion.

Being curious about relationships, intimacy, and sex are all natural parts of growing up, especially for a teenage girl. However, with the rise of the internet and social media, this curiosity has painted a target on the backs of these young girls, leaving them more vulnerable than ever to be taken advantage of, namely, to be groomed. There are many factors and cultural influences that can play a role in why someone becomes a victim of grooming, and in a modern society, these factors are all the more prevalent in the lives of most teenagers. To fully understand what puts teenage girls at a higher risk of being groomed or staying in a situation where they are being preyed on sexually, it is important to consider all aspects of modern life that contribute to this issue.

Before the topic of grooming can be appropriately discussed, it is important that the concept be understood in context. Grooming, specifically online grooming, is when an adult, (someone over the age of eighteen), “befriends a child online and builds up their trust with the intention of exploiting them” (“Help and Advice”). While online grooming can occur with a myriad of motivations, for our purposes, we will be focusing specifically on children who are groomed online with a sexual intent. In the past four years, the number of recorded online grooming cases in the UK have risen by 84%, totaling more than 27,000 reported cases since 2017. Out of these reported cases, 39% of all victims were girls between the ages of twelve and fifteen (“Online Grooming Crimes”). While the sheer number of cases is staggering, even more concerning is the high likelihood of victims being both female and being between the ages of twelve and fifteen. There are many reasons why people that fall into both of these categories are more likely to be preyed upon, including social norms and expectations, the impact of social media, and how society views certain traits, which cause girls of these ages to be more at risk than any other group.

One of the constantly growing aspects of today’s society has a large impact on the rise of the number of online grooming cases: instant gratification. In a world filled with smartphones and laptops, people can now shop, order food, and find out almost anything with just a click of a button. This constant availability of having the world at one’s fingertips has led to the cultivation of a society dependent on instant gratification, in which everything needs to be immediate. Since we are able to do or act on every desire essentially instantaneously, younger generations especially often fail to consider long-term effects when it comes to making decisions about things that cannot be achieved immediately. Rather, they look for the quick, immediate gratification that comes from being able to satisfy every craving right away. A study performed by social researcher Mark McCrindle reveals that need for immediate gratification may be the nature of the teenage brain, as a developing brain “reward[s] instant choice over long-term goals” (King).

However, the issue arises when this instant gratification culture begins to bleed into other aspects of young girls’ lives which have no way of being immediate, such as building solid relationships. It is normal for teenage girls to want to begin exploring themselves within the world of intimate relationships, but building up to that level with someone takes time, and cannot be achieved instantly. This often causes girls to turn to the internet in order to find the instant praise or affirmation that they desire. Children craving this instant gratification dopamine-hit of being in a relationship has opened up a world of opportunity for those who seek to prey on them, as their desired targets have just become much more attainable. This is often how online grooming relationships begin: a predator will approach a teenage girl and shower her with compliments, often telling her how attractive she is, or how mature she is for her age. This newfound stream of admiration and attention satisfies the brain’s need for instant gratification, which causes the victim to feel good in the moment, and creates a reason for them to keep returning for more.

Instant gratification also helps to explain one of the main reasons why this particular age-and-gender combination is more susceptible to being online groomed than others, which has to do with basic psychology and the makeup of the human brain. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a theory proposed by psychologist Abraham Maslow, in which there are five “levels” of human needs, which are depicted in a pyramid. These needs, in ascending order, are physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization, where each level can only be achieved if the needs of the stage below it have been previously satisfied (McLeod). While, for most of a young teenager’s life, the “love and belonging” level of human needs has been satisfied by parental or platonic relationships, as they begin to go through puberty, the desire for relationships that are intimate or of a sexual nature begin to appear. As stated earlier, these relationships take time to cultivate, and cannot be immediately achieved. Since they are accustomed to having this level of human needs being fulfilled, it seems like a natural next step to attempt to regain this feeling of love and belonging as quickly as possible, which can lead to girls being preyed upon by groomers.

The main reason why it is so easy for young teenage girls to be impacted by this is because attention is readily available for them online, with many predators specifically looking for younger girls, due to their perceived impressionability and innocence at that age (Wilkin). This high demand for young teenagers is one of the main reasons why they are the most vulnerable to being groomed, as there are more opportunities for them to become involved in a relationship of this nature than any other age and gender combination.

The brain’s need for instant gratification and feelings of love and belonging may be the initial lure for trapping a minor in a grooming situation, but it is also the reason why so many girls of this age group feel like they cannot leave once the relationship has been established. In an undeveloped child brain, relationships of all types are seen as transactional. In relationships with parents, the adults take care of the children, who are then expected to be respectful and obedient to their parents’ requests in return. In platonic relationships, a friend is expected to be reliable and kind, and the other person in the relationship is supposed to act the same in return. The mind of a young teenager has not had sufficient time or experience to fully grasp the idea of deserving or personal boundaries, which is what causes them to feel like they need to stay in situations where they are being groomed. Since the groomer is causing them to feel good about themselves by providing them with attention and the instant satisfaction of being seen as desired, they feel like they need to be providing something in return, which is often requested in the form of sexual images or videos. Although many teenage girls may not be comfortable with this, and view what they are doing as ‘wrong’ in some capacity, it feels like it is necessary to do in order to uphold the transactional nature of relationships that they have grown accustomed to in all other areas of life.

Unfortunately, this act of staying is not understood as a nuanced issue, but is rather often used as an argument to invalidate one’s experience later on. Many girls are discouraged or dissuaded from speaking up about their experiences because they stayed in the situation, with common statements being “if it was as bad as you say, why did you stay?” and “you could have said no, but you did or sent those things anyway” being used as arguments against victims of grooming. These statements and many others are an example of the common logical fallacy of moral equivalence, in which the actions of those being groomed are viewed as equally as bad as the actions of the groomer, despite the child being the victim of the situation. Adults are knowingly and purposely taking advantage of young children whose brains are not fully developed, and yet, society views the roles as being equally as at fault due to the child’s attempt to uphold what they believe is a two-sided relationship, even when they do not have the capacity to understand that they are being preyed upon.

This stigma is incredibly dangerous, not only because it normalizes these types of relationships, but also because it forces many victims of grooming into silence. A study performed by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England found that an estimated 89% of childhood online grooming cases go unreported each year, which would bring the total of grooming cases in the UK alone from around 6,000 to between 60,000–75,000 yearly (Hayes). While these stigmas may not be the only reason why cases go unreported, they play a big role in both invalidating the experiences of grooming victims and also potentially keeping groomers from receiving proper justice for their actions.

Something that has a big influence on a society dependent on instant gratification is being compared to others, and to many teenagers, there is nowhere in their lives where comparison is more prevalent than on social media. The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry reports that more than 90% of teenagers between the ages of thirteen to seventeen have used social media, with over 51% reporting that they visit at least one social media site daily (“Social Media and Teens”). Social media is a prime outlet for comparison, especially when children can consume media relating to any and all interests, skills, and aspects of life. With the recent rise of social media platform TikTok, in which all content must be shared in the form of videos fifteen to thirty seconds long, creators now need to be able to grab the attention of their audience quickly and effectively. With this comes many sweeping generalizations, often categorizing a thing or situation as entirely good or fully bad to a young, impressionable audience.

One particularly dangerous situation that is often glamorized on TikTok specifically is a sugar parent/sugar baby relationship, in which a younger person has a relationship with a (typically much older) person in exchange for money or other gifts. A TikTok shared by user @sarapemby features a young girl sitting on her bed smiling at her laptop, and reads “Me booking a vacation paid for entirely by men online who i’ve never met & never will”. The video, which features the tags #sugarbaby and #sugardaddy, has more than six million views and over one million likes, and is accompanied by the visibly sarcastic caption of “it’s a hard life I live” (Pemby).

The comments are filled with people praising her, with TikTok user @leblunt_ (who has a following of over 330,000 on the app) commenting “AS YOU SHOULD”. Others in the comments offer to provide a relationship like this, some with over fifty replies from (mostly female) profiles asking if they will begin a monetarily-driven relationship with them. A video like this is dangerous, especially when seen by younger, more impressionable minds, as it presents being in a relationship with someone much older as being entirely good and beneficial, when in reality, that may not be the case. Videos like these can cause young girls to view all relationships of this nature as being advantageous, which can lead to them ending up in a situation where they are being taken advantage of.

Another big issue with videos of this nature lies within the comments. It is one thing to have the creator of the video present a relationship of this type in a purely positive light, but it is another entirely when the comments support this viewpoint. Big creators such as @leblunt_ are associated with having a lot of ethos, a rhetorical appeal in which one establishes their authority to speak on a certain topic (“Ethos, Logos and Pathos”). While @leblunt_ may not be directly attempting to persuade an audience that her viewpoint on sugar baby relationships is correct, by being a creator with such a large following, this ethos is implicitly established.

Those on social media, especially younger users, tend to trust the opinions of big creators, be it because they look up to them, or because they hold the false notion that having such a big following means that their opinions cannot possibly be incorrect or harmful. This is incredibly dangerous, and can lead to teenagers forming biased opinions that leave them unable to view the negative side of a potentially damaging and unhealthy relationship. Videos and open opinions like these also create a basis of normalization for relationships between much older and much younger people, which can make it difficult for one in a grooming situation to understand that they are being taken advantage of, or that their relationship does not model a conventional standard. While the internet is a place to express one’s opinions and experiences, it is important to understand how defining certain situations as wholly good or bad can be impactful on setting standards for young impressionable teenage girls.

The over-sexualization of childlike qualities is another normalized aspect of society that plays a role in why so many young teenage girls are groomed. Qualities such as being hairless, small, and having a high-pitched voice are seen as desirable and sexually appealing traits for a woman to have, even though the majority of the bearers of these traits are children. According to a study performed by Brandeis University, when having men compare photos of women with and without hair, the hairless women were rated as significantly more attractive, being chosen over the women with hair 95.2% of the time. In a later study, body hair on women was found to be described as “unfeminine, abnormal, and freakish” by both male and female participants alike (Azevedo). Although something like body hair is completely natural, the extreme majority presence of hairless women in many sexually-based industries such as pornography has lead to a stigma around it, causing these pre-pubescent traits to become the ‘ideal’.

In pornography specifically, there are also a large volume of videos in which the female partner is wearing pigtails or is dressed up in a schoolgirl uniform, both of which are reminiscent of being a child. Since so many girls ages twelve to fifteen possess these childlike qualities due to them being children, this may cause them to see themselves as the ‘ideal’ sex object, when in reality, they are just prepubescent themselves. When a girl begins to envision herself in a sexual relationship, it is natural that she will want to begin exploring that, both internally and with others. Due to the normalization of so many prepubescent traits being seen as a sexual ideal, girls younger and younger are beginning to want to explore themselves as a sexual being. However, at this age, it is likely that they have not had sufficient experience, both relating to sex and with forming relationships with others, to know how to do that properly and safely. This can lead to girls ending up in situations where they are being taken advantage of, where they may fail to realize that they are due to their lack of experience with relationships of this nature.

While being groomed online can happen to a child of any age or gender, girls between the ages of twelve and fifteen are the most vulnerable to falling into a situation of this nature for a variety of reasons. In a society where instant gratification culture pervades all aspects of life, girls commonly want to explore their newfound desires for a sexual relationship in a way that satisfies that immediate craving, which due to the high demand for girls of this age, can lead to them ending up in a situation where they are being groomed. The polarizing “all-good all-bad” nature of the ever-growing presence of social media around topics such as grooming can also color how one views a relationship, and can lead to a victim staying in a potentially harmful situation. Along with this, what mainstream society views as desirable is highly impactful on young girls, especially when so many of these traits are quintessentially prepubescent. Society and its many influences play a big role in why so many girls each year end up in situations where they are being groomed, and the number of cases will continue to rise unless a change is made. We as a society must not only make efforts to end the stigmas around coming forward about being groomed, but also educate our children on how healthy relationships look and are built, and how to know if they are in an unsafe situation. As parents, family members, friends, and parts of a greater community, we must all do our part to help protect young children of all ages from the dangers of grooming and online predators.

Works Cited

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Pemby, Sara [@sarapemby]. “It’s a hard life I live”. TikTok, 26 Nov. 2021, https://www.tiktok.com/@sarapemby/video/7035024334267665711?_r=1&_t=8XHPptbQpQs&is_from_webapp=v1&item_id=7035024334267665711

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Wilkin, Chris. “Girls Three Times More at Risk of Being Groomed than Boys.” Braintreeandwithamtimes.co.uk, 7 Oct. 2021, https://www.braintreeandwithamtimes.co.uk/news/19632543.girls-three-times-risk-groomed-boys/.