Social networks and information technologies do not lead to the prostitution of minors, but they accelerate and multiply all aspects of it, shows a disturbing report published on Tuesday, the first of its kind to document this phenomenon in Quebec. Even more worrying, we can measure to what extent the bubble effect, typical of filters, can contribute to legitimizing their entry into a world where prostitution is portrayed as a “glamorous, accessible and profitable activity”.
In France, the phenomenon has a name: the Zahia effect, from the first name of this former escort who brought down footballers who requested her services when she was a minor. Having become an influencer and actress, considered by many as a model, Zahia Dehar holds an uninhibited (and widespread) discourse that would serve as an accelerator to the trivialization of the commodification of the body among young girls. Last week, a vast campaign was also launched there to better prevent and identify the risks of sexual exploitation of the latter.
Quebec would benefit from drawing inspiration from it. The researchers, who conducted this study with community organizations, insist on the need to make our teenagers and young adults more aware of the bubble effects, against which they would be ill-armed. They also defend the need to equip them to promote safe and informed uses of social networks and give them back power over their digital lives by limiting negative experiences, imposed or unwanted, before, during and after prostitution.
The authors also observe that the gaze of the speakers will have to broaden. Social networks change the profile of young people likely to enter into prostitutional activities. They broaden and modulate it to the point of calling into question the current approach that calls for intervention on the basis of well-targeted categories.
On the strength of its $100 million over five years intended to give muscle to the police force specializing in the fight against sex crimes, Quebec recently took stock of the first year of the provincial squad for the fight against pimping. This team claims a hundred arrests across Quebec, pimps, but also customers. This is a good step forward, and this new light should be taken into account in its next interventions.
If not, we should be pleased with the judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada, which unanimously concluded last week that Project Raphael, carried out by the York Regional Police, in Ontario, constituted “a real investigation” and that the 104 men arrested in the process had therefore “not been the subject of police provocation”. This judgment increases the strike force of the investigators, who, under the cover of a well-marked investigation, will be able to trap presumed customers by posing as an online sex worker without fear of untimely prosecution.
There remains the elephant in the room: the giants of the Web, which, while exercising surface control, seem insensitive to the perverse effects described in this report. Instagram freaks out when seeing a breast, even breastfeeding. Facebook had a hard time with The origin of the world, by Courbet. But when it comes to their taking responsibility on issues as serious as child exploitation and the subculture it nurtures on their backs, we see that they are the absent subscribers.