ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Giant social media platforms are one of the leading causes of children committing criminal acts, a researcher told Rudaw on Friday, noting that 75 percent of criminal activities among the youth have been influenced by content encountered on social media platforms. Dlan Ismael, a researcher who worked in the Kurdistan Region’s correctional facilities for females and children, told Rudaw’s Nwenar Fatih that “seventy-five percent of children in the correctional facilities have been involved in criminal activities, and some of those children committed the crime due to the influence of videos and live broadcasts on social media.” Based on Ismael’s research, social media platforms TikTok and Snapchat have been the main influential social media platforms for influencing children to commit criminal activities and experience sexual harassment. The researcher also highlighted that social media also impacted children's behaviors. “Some children learned the use of profanities and inappropriate language from TikTok live broadcast. All the children that committed crimes under the influence of social media were deprived of any form of monitoring and internet censoring from their families,” Ismael said. Another study from Soran University concluded that social media platforms have made child molestation more prevalent in real life. It also stated that sexual harassment of children has been practiced more often through social media platforms. Associate Professor Karwan Kakabra, who conducted the research, said that the research surveyed 446 children in Soran Independent administration and Erbil. The results showed that 40% of the children in the Kurdistan Region are experiencing online harassment and have been mentally abused. Females have been more often subjected to harassment on social media platforms based on the results. “According to scientific research, it has been proven that online harassment has a long-lasting influence on children, and it will lead to fray and phobia,” Kakabra said. Awareness of gender-based and sexual violence is slowly growing across the Kurdistan Region and Iraq, helped by campaigns by civil society organizations, the governments in Erbil and Baghdad, the United Nations, and non-governmental organizations. The Iraqi penal code defines an imprisonment period not exceeding 15 years for any person charged with raping a man or a woman, specifying child rape as “an aggravating circumstance” which could result in increasing the severity of the punishment.
