A record 1,813 people aged under 18 fell victim to crimes via social media in 2017, up 4.4 percent from the previous year, the National Police Agency announced Thursday.
More than 90 percent of the victims were girls, most of whom fell prey to sexual crimes. The NPA is calling on the public to be on alert, as the number of victims involving social networking sites has been on the rise with the spread of smartphones.
By age, 16-year-olds accounted for the most victims with 447, followed by 17-year-olds with 417, 15-year-olds with 388 and 14-year-olds with 277. Junior high and high school students accounted for 89.2 percent of the total, with the youngest victim being an 8-year-old girl who was told by a man she met through a video-sharing site to send photographs of herself naked.
The survey found 95.9 percent of the victims were girls.
By sites, the largest number of 695 people, up 249 from the previous year, stumbled into crimes via Twitter, while 181 people fell victim via Himabu, 105 via Line and 97 via Gyaruru. Of the victims, 87.7 percent accessed these services using smartphones.
The NPA believes Twitter has become "a hotbed of crime because the site allows users to obtain multiple accounts, even anonymously, and its search function has been improving."
By crime category, the largest number of 702 fell victim to violations of juvenile protection ordinances such as sexual misconduct, with 570 involved in child pornography -- such as being told to send photos of themselves naked -- and 447 involved in prostitution.
Asked why they met perpetrators, the largest number, at 435 victims, said they did so for money or goods, while 336 said the offenders were "kind and helpful," and 249 said they "were asked out persistently."
In October last year, the body parts of nine people were found in Zama, Kanagawa Prefecture, after allegedly being lured by the suspect via Twitter. The suspect was charged from January to March in the cases of three female high school students among the victims, and these cases will be categorized as murder in the NPA's 2018 survey.
According to a survey conducted from January to February on 618 boys and girls aged between 10 and 18 by Digital Arts Inc., a Tokyo-based information security firm, 68.9 percent of the female high school students said they had not only their regular accounts on Twitter and other social networking sites, but also "hidden accounts" that they kept secret from their families.
In an effort to protect children from crimes, the revised Law on Development of Internet Environment for Young People came into force in February, whereby cell phone operators are obliged to tell their customers about a filtering function that asks users to identify their age and restricts access to harmful sites.
"We hope parents will use the filtering function when they allow their children to use smartphones," an NPA official said.
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