THE proliferation of child pornography online is a worrying trend as it may be accidentally viewed by children, experts warned.

D’Dawn Psychologist Development Centre founder and psychologist Tan Chee Seng said parents should protect their children, but their awareness is too low.

“With internet access readily available, children are easily exposed to inappropriate subjects,” he told The Malaysian Insight.

“Parents may think that their children are just reading or playing games online while in reality they may be looking at inappropriate content such as child pornography.”

Tan said there needs to be greater supervision by parents, such as looking into the browsing history to check on what their children have been looking at.

“How many parents actually do this? When children are given phones and tablets, that’s when the danger starts.”

Tan said children who watch child pornography may be affected in many ways.

“Their mind may misunderstand sex and associate it with filth. They may think that sex is just a casual thing and may start meeting strangers online.

“It could also lead to the sharing of nude photographs. Teenagers, on the other hand, may develop an addiction to it,” he said.

Women, Family and Community Development Minister Rina Harun said sexual exploitation of children online is on the rise with more than 100,000 Malaysia-registered Internet protocol (IP) addresses identified for involvement in child pornography over the last six years.

She said data furnished by the police revealed that 106,764 IP addresses linked with child pornography were recorded from 2017 until August this year, which was a worrying figure.

Sharing the statistics of sexual offences involving children, Rina said that from January to June, the police received 47 cases of gang rape, unnatural sex (95), incest (127), obscenity (438) and 641 cases of rape.

Sex education counsellor Ngoh Chee Meng said children who have not received proper sex education may be misled by pornography.

“This is why pornography is limited to those above 18 years of age. Children who watch porn may think that it is normal to treat their male or female partners the way they are treated in pornographic content.

“Worse, they could end up becoming rapists,” he said.

Ngoh said sex is about consent, pleasure, respect and hygiene, but these aspect cannot be seen in pornography.

“Those who watch them thinking that it is normal behaviour may want to replicate them. This is not to say everyone will become deviant, but there is a risk.”

Fong Choong Fook of LGMS, a cybersecurity penetration test and assessment firm, said the lack of detection is one of the main reasons for the prevalence of child pornography.

“Usually, we use artificial intelligence (AI), but it is not 100% accurate. At the moment, there is no foolproof way to deal with it,” said the cybersecurity expert.

Referring to the data from the police, Choong said this is a serious problem that needs to be remedied.

The government should consider increasing the penalty to act as a deterrent, he said. – September 21, 2022.