Movie ”V siti”: How to Protect Your Child Online (Director Barbora Chalupova)

I wrote this article in Japanese and translated it into English using ChatGPT. I also used ChatGPT to create the English article title. I did my best to correct any translation mistakes, but please let me know if you find any errors. By the way, I did not use ChatGPT when writing the Japanese article. The entire article was written from scratch by me, Saikawa Goto.

Introduction

Movies and books covered in this article

I will write an article about this movie/book

Three takeaways from this article

The very parents who have not experienced sexual abuse online should watch this movie. Let’s learn about the reality.

Self-introduction article

Please refer to the self-introduction article above to learn about the person writing this article. Be sure to check out the Kindle book linked below as well.

The quotes used in this article are based on notes taken at the movie theater from movies in Japanese and are not direct quotes from the foreign language original movies, even if they exist.

Who Should Watch This Movie?

If you are raising children, you should definitely watch it. Or if you are thinking about raising children, you should also watch it.

In the world, there are many things that we cannot fully understand without facing them directly, even if we think we understand them in our heads. This movie deals with exactly that type of thing. With only a vague understanding such as “I don’t know the details, but it’s probably dangerous,” you cannot protect your children.

In the Czech Republic, 60% of children use the Internet without any restrictions. 41% of children have been asked for sexually explicit images. One in five children are not hesitant to meet strangers they talk to on the Internet in person.

Anyone would feel like they understand that social media is dangerous. However, if you have never experienced that danger yourself, you can understand how “dangerous beyond imagination” it is by watching this movie.

Setting the Stage for a Film that Captures the Shocking Reality

The movie starts with an audition scene to select adult women who can look about 12 years old.

Three actresses are eventually chosen to spend 10 days in a studio. In this studio, there are three children’s rooms made to look like the real thing. The three actresses spend their time in their respective bedrooms and keep Skype and Facebook online from 12am to 12pm. They then verify in real-time what kind of person contacts them and what kind of interactions they have.

This movie had a significant impact in the Czech Republic, even moving the police to action. Footage from before it was processed for privacy was submitted as evidence, leading to arrests.

The studio is staffed with a range of experts, including sex researchers, lawyers, psychiatrists, and child protection center directors, all closely monitoring the experiment and ready to handle any issues that arise.

In order to more clearly depict the danger posed by the “beasts” attempting to contact a 12-year-old girl, actresses were given the following instructions:

Now the preparation is complete. All that’s left is to wait for the contact to come.

Shocking Result

On Parade of Human Scum

Of course, the actresses obtained a new account for the shooting. From the moment they got it, they were flooded with messages. Most of them were from middle-aged or elderly men.

Even as a man, I’m disgusted by the grotesqueness of these people.

“Is it okay if I’m only 12 years old?” When asked this, the men replied calmly, “What do you need to worry about?” “I was 12 years old too once,” and “I don’t care at all.”

They would say things like, “I’m with my friends. Let me introduce you,” and then show their genitals on the screen, and persistently ask questions like, “Have you had sex yet?” or “Do you masturbate?” They also repeated sexual demands like “Just show me your chest a little bit,” or “Take off your clothes.”

The lawyer who witnessed the filming spoke about his shock, saying,

I’ve been watching their interaction the whole time, and it was a parade of sexual abuse and criminal acts. Everyone they were interacting with deserves to be sent to penitentiary. Frankly, it was the first time I had witnessed such terrible abuse.

While internet service providers should normally impose restrictions, it is pointed out that they are leaving the situation alone for fear of losing users.

To everyone’s surprise, one of the staff members present during filming remarked upon seeing one of the men on screen, “I might know that person…” This article does not go into detail, but the identity of that person was later thoroughly investigated.

Legal Measures

During this investigation, 2458 men attempted to contact 3 people in 10 days. Although the actual number of people who conducted video chats is probably lower, their faces have been perfectly recorded (although in the movie, they were pixelated). I felt that if more experiments like this were conducted, it could become a deterrent.

In Czech law, it is determined as follows:

In the case of the former, showing one’s genitals online is also considered sexual abuse, while in the latter, simply meeting with the purpose of having sex with a child under 15 years of age is recognized as illegal, even if no actual sexual activity takes place.

Therefore, almost all of the men who exposed their faces in this verification will be recognized as having committed some illegal act.

When I think that this is the reality, I tremble again at the grotesqueness of it all. We should face this ugliness.

Why do Young Girls Become Victims?

However, some people may wonder why girls would listen to such creepy men or send them naked pictures, no matter how young they are.

The director of this movie also wanted to shed light on this issue and planned the film with that intention. This is written on the official website for the Japanese version.

I wanted to accurately convey all the tricks that beasts use to deceive and manipulate children while communicating with them in a sophisticated manner.

「SNS 少女たちの10日間」official website

In this movie, the very aspect is emphasized.

The men just keep praising them. They praise and praise endlessly. For children who don’t receive much praise in their daily lives, this would be a valuable experience.

The director of the child protection center, who participated in the verification, said something like this:

In adolescence, because they have dissatisfaction with friends and family, they are always looking for someone who can fulfill themselves. That’s why they end up sending nude photos because they want to continue interacting with such a person.

Yes, they take advantage of the “void in their heart” of these lonely girls.

At the end of the movie, it is displayed as follows:

Restrictions on the internet are not enough. Let’s talk directly with children.

We can educate by saying “don’t use the internet” or “be careful when using it.” But the fundamental problem is that the girls are “lonely.” They search for a conversation partner on the internet because they feel lonely. They listen to the words of creepy middle-aged men that they wouldn’t normally pay attention to because they feel lonely.

Therefore, what needs to be addressed is the feeling of “loneliness.” This movie strongly reminds us of that fact.

What Can Parents Do?

While watching this movie, I was amazed at how the experiment was conducted at the perfect timing.

This is because I think that mothers who are raising children around 12 years old may not have directly experienced the reality depicted in this movie.

At the time of writing this article, I am 38 years old. If only my child had been born when I was 26, they would be 12 years old now. It is reasonable to assume that parents who have 12-year-old children are around my age. And when I was a child, there were no smartphones and cell phones were just starting to become popular. Social media was not widespread at all.

Therefore, I think that there are relatively few people around my age who have experienced sexual harassment through SNS when they were children.

Of course, I don’t think the number is zero. However, online games and matching apps weren’t as popular back then, and the hurdle for meeting people children met online was probably higher than it is now. Also, connecting to the internet on a computer was more natural, so it should have been more difficult for children in that sense too. The environment is completely different from today.

At the beginning of the movie audition, 23 women came. They looked about 12 years old, so they were probably around 20 years old. And out of those 23, 19 said in the exchange during the audition that they had experienced sexual harassment online when they were children.

I think if people who have had these experiences get married and have children, they can personally convey the dangers to their children.

Therefore, you could say that this movie was released right in the midst of that transition period.

Parents first need to understand that the environment is completely different from when they were children. And they need to realize that things that seem “impossible” to an adult can actually happen.

In the movie, there’s a scene where one of the actresses talks with a sex researcher. The researcher asked the actress, “If you were 12 years old, would you want to keep talking to people who ask to see your genitals or watch you masturbate?” Here was how the actress responds.

If I were 12 years old, I might reply out of curiosity. Of course, I wouldn’t send naked pictures, but I might want to provoke and see how the other person would react.

This is also a reality. If you think “my child would never do such a thing,” you may not be able to protect your child.

It’s important to understand that we live in a world full of danger.

Conclusion

Perhaps, I think Japan is still better off. Because it is not an English-speaking country. In English-speaking countries, they receive messages from all over the world, but in Japan, it would only be an exchange with “someone who understands Japanese”. The fact that the number of potential targets is small may be a little reassuring.

However, the reality depicted in movies is so ugly that it can only be felt as a comfort. Parents would need to perceive the danger with their own senses so that their children can avoid this horror altogether.