Dr. Xanthe Weston

It's like, how far will you go?

And the further you go, the more rewards, the more points you get for what you've done.

And it's pure sadism, sadistic pleasure.

And these are other kids

egging on, for want of a better phrase, coercing people into doing more and more serious things.

And so it's all part of this online world.

And this is a new phenomenon, and sadly, a lot of girls are being preferentially targeted.

of pre-teens, teenagers, ones who are already vulnerable to other people's expectations and needing those likes to feel good about themselves.

And they may have histories of self-harm or depression, et cetera, and they're the ones who are getting caught up in conducting these activities.

And they don't know how to get out of it because by time they realize how serious it is, they're in, right?

They've posted these videos.

They've committed criminal acts.

You know, they're in trouble.

And so it's all this online coercion.

And it is coercive control.

It's a new form of coercive control that we're seeing.

And it's being perpetrated a lot of the time by young people against other young people.

So there's this whole scary online world and our young people are caught up in it in a myriad of ways.

And some of those ways are criminal.

And I don't want to scare all the parents out there, but some of those ways are criminal.