Photos and videos that “rule the stomach”. This is what the mother of a minor from Astillero (Cantabria) said after discovering on her son's phone images of extreme violence (mutilations and beheadings) and other recordings of brutal sexual assaults, some involving minors. Those photos and scenes ran through a WhatsApp group followed by a hundred minors. A chat of schoolchildren with authentic "wildness", repeat the families who have seen that material.
How many chat groups between minors – many of them under the age of 14 – are there with identical videos and photos? There is no answer to this question, but you suspect that there may be dozens, or even hundreds, if you consider other similar episodes discovered in recent weeks. And most of these cases would not have been discovered if mothers and fathers had not been spying on their children's phones.
In Almendralejo (Badajoz), dozens of girls have been stripped with artificial intelligence. The mother of one of these minors discovered it when she looked at her daughter's phone. In Palencia, photographs of a sexual nature of one of her classmates spread like wildfire among students of the same high school. A 15-year-old girl having intimate relations with another student. Without the permission, of course, of the minor, whose mother was also the one who reported it. A dozen schoolchildren were also stripped by one of their classmates in Ayamonte (Huelva). Images, in this case, altered with Photoshop and disseminated in a school chat.
These sexual images are being published like never before, but the most worrying thing, experts agree, is that victims and executioners now live together in the same groups through which the content is disseminated. And this reinforces the pact of silence - no one wants to be singled out as an accuser - between the protagonists. The question, having reached this point, falls under its own weight: it is necessary to control more the content of the phones of the daughters and sons after it has been established that they are the protagonists of these images, increasingly violent, that run through their channels? It is not a new debate, that of control, but the rules of the game are changing in the limits of the control of these devices. If years ago spying on children's phones was a dilemma posed to detect if they were hanging out with bad company or flirting with drugs, now a porno enters the scene in which they are the main protagonists.
Úrsula Perona, child psychologist, is clear about it. The control of children's technological devices, and more with this new reality, "is not only recommended, but very necessary". At least until they are 15 or 16 years old, continue, so that no one can say that we are violating their right to privacy." Perona believes that these minors "must understand that these devices will be monitored" and clarifies that in no case is this spying.
The problem, often, is not so much based on the control of these children's phones as on the "lack of training of many parents about this technology and the risks it entails", says Abel Domínguez, child and youth psychologist and director of Domínguez Psicóloges. Not even "it is clear the age at which these devices should be left in the hands of children". Regarding control, Domínguez points out that "each family must draw its own red lines" and shares, with Úrsula Perona, that at the slightest suspicion of harmful information for these minors in devices provided by parents, it should not be hesitate when looking at the content”.
