Social media is no longer a communication area for people under the age of 18, but is turning into a ground for abuse. The research conducted at Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University Yenimahalle Training and Research Hospital Child and Adolescent Mental Health Clinic revealed with striking data the extent of the danger defined as “cyber servitude” in Türkiye. The research revealed that 70 of 511 children (13.7 percent) out of 511 children who applied to the hospital on the grounds that they were victims of sexual abuse between 2022 and 2025 were subjected to the “cyber servitude” process by the person they met on social media.
ALL DAUGHTERS
While all 70 cases examined in the research were girls, the average age of the victims was determined as 15.2. The research noted that the youngest victim was 13 years old and the oldest victim was 18 years old; It was stated that abusers especially target girls who are in adolescence, emotionally fragile and in search of identity. The data reflected from the research are as follows: “While 67 percent of the victims continue formal education, 21 percent are not enrolled in any educational institution. 8 children are open high school students. “This table reveals that girls who are disconnected from education or stay away from school are more vulnerable to online abuse.”
42 PERCENT ARE SINGLE PARENT
One of the most striking data reflected in the research was that 61 percent of children who were victims of abuse had mental disabilities. According to experts, this table shows that children with limited cognitive capacity are much more vulnerable to online manipulations. The fact that 42.9 percent of the victims live with their single parent and 10 percent have lost their father reveals that the risk is directly related to the family structure.
WE KNOW THE PERPETRATORS!
While it is noteworthy that all the abuse suspects examined in the research were male, more The striking result was that in two out of every three cases (67.1 percent), it was determined that the perpetrator was someone the victim knew before.. Accordingly, social media is not only a threat to strangers; It has also become a tool for familiar people to approach children digitally.
THEY USE FAKE IDENTITY
According to the results of the research, 52.9 percent of the suspects are young men under the age of 18. While experts explain this picture with the phenomenon of “adolescent perpetrators”, they evaluate that ‘young people who are uncontrollably exposed to pornographic content on the internet, after a while, tend to establish control over their own environment through power, pressure and sexuality’. In addition, 13 perpetrators (18.6 percent) communicated with the victims using fake identities and tried to gain trust, especially through anonymous accounts and “fake profiles”. It was also determined that they used strategies such as “emotional closeness”, “establishing a love relationship” and “being a confidant” to manipulate children.
DANGER ON INSTAGRAM
In the research, the most common platform where the victim and the suspect met was Instagram, while 53 of the 70 cases examined (75.7 percent) made the first contact through this application. Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University Yenimahalle Training and Research Hospital Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Diseases Specialists Selma Tural Çözümçıoğlu and Mehmet Fatih Ceylan make the following evaluations about the research results: “The results show that Instagram, the social media platform most actively used by young people between the ages of 13 and 17 in Türkiye, has also become the channel with the highest risk of abuse.”
PERPETRATORS DIRECT
The research results revealed that 84.3 percent of the victims were exposed to sexually explicit conversations, inappropriate photos or videos at the direction of the perpetrator. It was determined that the time from meeting to being dragged into abuse was less than 30 days in 68.6 percent of cases. Perhaps the most striking finding of the research was that one in every 10 sexual abuse cases started through social media.
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