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Smut on small screens
| Date: |
30 July 2006 12:00 |
| Producer: |
First Edit
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| Show: | Carte Blanche |
The world's youngest generation, generation Y, have been called the 'thumb tribe' because of their ability to SMS at lightning speeds.
Keith Coats (Generation Theorist): 'They are more socially, politically and economically aware than any generation before them.'
But according to generation theorist, Keith Coats, with the good comes the bad.
While the Internet and cell phones have opened up a whole new world for youngsters, parents who don't monitor what their children do with these fast-evolving technologies are paving the way for pornographers and sexual predators.
Keith: 'Where do we draw the lines? How do we protect? Can we protect?'
Devi Sankaree Govender (Carte Blanche presenter): 'Parents regard cell phones as a form of security; a means to stay in touch with their offspring. But to children, cell phones mean freedom - a gateway to a world beyond parental control.'
Frances Oliver was ten when her mother, Dinky, gave her a spare cell phone to use.
Frances Oliver: 'I felt like responsible that I could, like, have my own thing... that I could like phone people with and everything.'
Devi: 'Was it a nice cell phone?'
Frances: 'No, it was a brick! (Laughs)'
Frances is now 14 and has had three cell phone upgrades. Her newest cell phone not only takes and sends video clips and photographs, it also comes with Internet connectivity.
Devi: 'In your class, how many people have phones?'
Frances: 'I think everybody. And they all bring it to school and, they like, go on MXit during school and everything.'
MXit is a grouping of chat rooms found on the MXit website. These chat rooms are accessed via the Internet using a cell phone.
The MXit environment has been as a virtual shopping mall, where you and your friends can meet in groups to discuss movies, or meet at a virtual nightclub.
Frances: 'There's like religious chat rooms, there's flirt chat rooms.'
But, like any unsupervised setting, there is always the danger you may run into a stranger with a hidden agenda.
Frances had only been chatting on MXit for a day before she met a 16-year-old boy in one of the chat rooms.
Diana 'Dinky' Oliver: 'She was sitting exactly here. SMS-ing all night.'
MXit is the only South African cell phone instant messaging service, with approximately 855 000 users. Herman Heunis is the creator of MXit.
Devi: 'How many messages are sent a day on MXit?'
Herman Heunis (Creator MXit): 'Using our system, between 50 and 70 million a day.'
Messages on MXit are sent at a cost of just two cents for a 160-character message.
Dinky: 'Because your child can come home from school, communicate with her friends at a fraction of the price... but there are the sickos out there.'
Generally, MXit users are anonymous, but when Frances's friend asked her to go 'private', she sent him her cell phone number.
Herman: 'That means that if you sent me a message, only I can see that message.'
Frances: 'So I said okay. And obviously he saved my number, so he phoned me that night because he had my number.'
Dinky: 'And the next thing the phone went, and she went... and she said, 'It's this guy' ... and she looked a bit nervous. And it was clearly a middle-aged man, clearly!'
Frances: 'He was like 50 or something - and it was really scary.'
Devi: 'Did he ask to meet you?'
Frances: 'He said that he was going to come to Durban for his holiday and everything, like, and he said that we would meet and everything.'
Dinky deleted the MXit software from Frances's phone.
Dinky: 'I nipped it in the bud. And I'm glad that it was happening right under my nose.'
But Keith Coats says cutting your children off from technology may not be the answer.
Keith: 'It's their main link to their community, to their friends. And so, by putting blocks and limits, all you're going to be doing is engage in an ongoing battle that you will, I'm pretty sure, lose as a parent.'
So what is the solution for parents who want to protect, but not limit, their children's right to communicate?
Devi: 'Many of your users are minors. What are you doing to protect them?'
Herman: 'On our website, on our forum, when you register for MXit, when you log in for the first time... every time you enter a chat room we say, 'Please do not reveal your personal information'.'
But how does one ensure teenagers, traditionally rebellious in nature, abide by these rules?
We logged onto MXit and posed as a 16-year-old girl with the online name SupaSXC16. Within minutes we had been drawn into a sexually suggestive conversation with a man claiming to be 20 years old.
According to Frances this is not unusual; she and her friends often find themselves in this situation.
Frances: 'How big is your thing? ... How big is your bra size and everything.'
Herman: 'There [is] a number of players here. It is the individual; it is the parent; it is the technology company.'
But even if all these role-players are vigilant, cell phones have become the perfect tool to deliver naive children into the hands of sexual predators.
Devi: 'Joan van Niekerk, National Director of Childline SA, says that cell phone-related cases of sexual violence against children is on the increase in South Africa. A recent case in point was when a KwaZulu-Natal man sent cell phone porn to a 14-year-old boy.'
The images were intended to de-sensitise the child to sex with an adult.
Joan van Niekerk: 'As technology advances, so people who commit offence against children just get more and more clever.'
'Craig' - Paedophile in Fairlady Magazine May 2006: 'Almost all cell phones come with built-in cameras these days and with good resolution, which is fantastic for paedophiles. And because they're so small and simple to use, you can get great angles.'
Devi: 'Did he ever ask you to send pictures of yourself?'
Frances: 'He asked me to, but at that moment I didn't have a camera phone so I didn't send one.'
Joan: 'One of the problems we've also come across is children taking pictures of each other, or even of themselves, and not realising how these photographs can be abused and misused.'
In March this year, a 16-year-old girl in Mpumalanga took cell phone pictures of her breasts and vagina and sent them to the boyfriend of a girl in her school, who threatened to distribute the images.
Eventually her father got a court interdict to prevent the man from selling or distributing the photos.
Al Malambo runs Webwatchsa, a website where concerned parents can talk about the cons of cell phone technology. He warns that, even without an Internet market, amateur pornographic films involving minors are already hitting the South African market.
Al Malambo (Webwatchsa): 'The future case scenario... of a case scenario like that, basically is that this boy - instead of just sending this particular picture to friends - now would be able to send this picture that he has taken and publish it to an international website and receive currency in return.'
A case in point is the recent story of a 16-year-old girl who was filmed on a cell phone having sexual intercourse with two men.
The four-minute clip was then sold on at a cost of anywhere between R20 and R100.
And although this was an amateur video, legitimate cell phone downloads or SMS-like services had annual turnover of R1.5 billion rand last year.
Joan: 'This is how children often access pornography on their cell phones... it's through these adverts. And you're absolutely right, there is no verification of the age of the child. And I believe this really irresponsible advertising [that] is making someone a lot of money at the expense of the sexual safety of our children.'
Adult entertainment providers sell pornographic video clips during late night adult viewing on TV channels in South Africa.
We bought one of these clips.
Within a minute of SMS-ing the short SMS code advertised, we were sent an explicit 30 second video clip. We were never asked to verify our age.
Al Malambo: 'You could literally call it the Wild West. And everyone is pushing the buck!'
Devi: 'The easiest way to stop children from having access to pornography via their cell phones would be to ban cell phone pornography outright, like they've done in countries like Australia and Mexico. But, according to the Film and Publications Board, this is unlikely to happen in South Africa because of constitutional freedoms... and economics.'
We showed Philip Mamobolo, a compliance inspector at the Film and Publications Board, the cell phone clip we downloaded.
Philip Mamobolo (Film and Publication Board): 'Your concern is my concern with regards to this.'
Philip rated the clip X18 because it showed genitals and masturbation.
And although it is illegal to sell or distribute X18 content without a licence, Philip says there is little the Film and Publications Board can do to monitor how this material is broadcast via cell phones.
Philip: 'We haven't yet finalised a procedure as to just how you are going to classify this kind of stuff.'
To counteract this shortfall, the Film and Publications Boards have told adult entertainment companies that they may not show advertisements on television selling porn which are rated X18 or above.
Despite this, we managed to download a second pornographic clip, also with X18 content.
John showed this clip to Wayne Levine, from Adult Mobile Entertainment, or AME, in Cape Town.
John: 'Within seconds we were able to view this explicit material. That obviously does not suggest an overly-regulated sector or industry - would you agree?'
Wayne Levine (Adult Mobile Entertainment): 'I would agree if they didn't ask for their age.'
John: 'I mean, even if they do ask for your age, it's still pretty easy for someone to lie about it.'
At first AME denied that this clip was theirs. But we were able to confirm later that the short code we had used to download the clip did, in fact, belong to them. We were never asked to verify our age.
Wayne: 'I think a good question is - are minors actually interested in the content? I think it is a good question.'
But Phillip says Wayne is missing the point. By law, minors are not allowed even to have the option to access porn.
Phillip: 'This is still a criminal offence.'
Devi: 'And they know it.'
Phillip: 'Ignorance of the law is never an excuse.'
Al Malambo: 'It is our responsibility as citizens of this country to engage government and to provoke government to implement or take a greater stance in the implementation in some kind of system or framework.'
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Carte Blanche or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.
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