Nova Scotia child porn case highlights dangers of online friendships

We oftenthink of child pornographers as dirty old men in front of their computers, but a Halifax youth court case makes it clear the creepy guy trolling the internet could, in fact, be the 16-year-old who your daughter is chatting with when she's in her bedroom with her iPad or smartphone.

And the result can be life-threatening.

The case involved a boy, called Y in the court documents, and his friend, who set up a fake Facebook account, pretending to be a teenage girl. They targeted a 15 -year-old girl known as A in court documents and spent months chatting online with her, getting to know her and gaining her trust.

• Nova Scotia teen guilty in child porn case involving topless photos

They used a mix of flattery and threats to entice the victim to send them a selfie of herself with her shirt pulled up.

"OMG ur not even flat," replied Y, calling her "hawt" and pressing her to send a shot without the bra, which she eventually did. They threatened to post the picture on Facebook, and later did, continuing to torment her.

Message and warning

There are echoes of the sad case of Amanda Todd, the 15-year-old B.C. girl who killed herself after being coerced into baring her breasts on camera for a man who later used the images to blackmail her.

"Cases like this featuring social media are becoming more and more common in criminal courts across this country," said Mark Heerema, the Crown prosecutor in the case.

The message and the warning: there are some sad, vulnerable kids online, looking for connection and affirmation, and they're willing to literally and figuratively bare their breasts to someone they've never met face-to-face in order to get it.

In this case, Nova Scotia Youth Court Judge Anne Derrick said the case is about "lonely, anxious teenagers and the harm caused by the callous exploitation of internet anonymity."

Researchers call it de-individuation.

"Basically, as soon as you remove yourself from responsibility by being anonymous, then people act in ways they wouldn't normally," said Sara Konrath, a Canadian researcher working at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research.

Empathy declines, narcissism increases

Konrath documented a decline in empathy and an increase in narcissism among college-age students, and she links it to the many hours a day young people spend in the digital world.

"Even nice people will do things that aren't nice. And the other thing is, there's not that same emotional response," she said,

The saga of Y and A is testament to that. When the boys got bored with toying with A, they killed off the fake Facebook friend she had become so attached to, telling her through yet another fake account that the girl had "sliced her throat."

A and a real-life female friend who'd also chatted with the fictional friend were devastated by the news. Both girls tried to kill themselves and were hospitalized.

To adults, it sounds crazy both the extreme responses and the ease with which kids can become caught up in emotionally fraught relationships with people they've never met. There's research that helps explain some of that too.

A U.S. study found that girls who are heavy users of online media score lower on feelings of social well-being. That leaves them open to opportunists.

And all those hours with devices instead of people takes another kind of toll.

Changing ideas

Patricia Greenfield, a psychology professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and the director of the Children's Digital Media Center, says social media use has changed young people's ideas about intimacy, self-disclosure and where they look for social support.

Her research shows they now look to large numbers of online friends for that, instead of face-to-face friendships.

Couple that with another UCLA study showing that electronic socializing makes people feel less connected and bonded than face-to-face communication bad news for our kids.

I can cite a lot of other research raising red flags about the impacts of too much time spent with technology, but it doesn't really resonate until you're confronted with a girl who's attempted to join the ranks of young people who've ended their lives because of the trauma they've encountered in their online forays.

'Casual cruelty, shattered trust'

The dangers of kids left to spend hours alone with their computers are clear. They're still developing cognitively and emotionally.

This is why pediatric specialists tell parents not let kids have connected devices in their bedrooms.

And it's why parents need to exercise their authority and be aware of what their kids are up to on social media.

I can't put it any better than Judge Anne Derrick, who found Y guilty of child pornography and extortion charges this week: "Casual cruelty, shattered trust, attempted suicide and criminal charges are the bitter harvest of the shadowy, distorted world these teens inhabited."