Story audio is generated using AI
For some children playing on harmless online platforms such as Roblox, Minecraft, Animal Jam, Discord and Snapchat, there comes a moment when their online life stops being a game.
A stranger becomes a mentor. A chatroom becomes a crew. A “trick” becomes a skill. A small favour becomes a job. Somewhere between the praise, the belonging and the promise of money, a child can cross a line without fully understanding what has happened.
This was clearly illustrated by the recent arrest of a 16-year-old boy in Malmesbury in the Western Cape for alleged involvement in a violent, transnational online extortion network known as “764” – a group believed to target, blackmail and coerce underage minors into online sexual abuse, self-harm and animal torture.
The boy was arrested on August 17 after an international intelligence-led investigation. The SAPS said its national serial and electronic crime investigations team had acted on information from the FBI, the US embassy and the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. Police allege the teenager was involved in accessing, possessing, facilitating and downloading child sexual abuse material, and several child victims have been identified.
The case has since developed, and the teenager now faces additional allegations, including sexual assault and animal cruelty.
Cybersecurity specialist Anna Collard, senior vice-president of content strategy at KnowBe4 Africa, has investigated the phenomenon.
Almost none of them are approached with ‘come commit a crime’. It looks like an opportunity until it doesn’t
— Anna Collard, cybersecurity specialist
“Someone online shows them a ‘trick’ that feels harmless at first. Then the community pulls them in. Everyone’s doing it. It feels like skill, not crime.”
Collard’s research with 238 young people across South Africa and Latin America found that 72% said cybercrime recruitment was disguised as a normal online job offering flexible hours, quick money, a small favour or simply “helping a friend”.
The recruitment, she says, takes place on the same platforms where ordinary teenage life happens, such as WhatsApp, TikTok, Telegram and Discord. In South Africa, her research found, WhatsApp was identified by 71% of respondents and TikTok by 53% as places where such activity commonly plays out.
“Almost none of them are approached with ‘come commit a crime’,” Collard said. “It looks like an opportunity until it doesn’t.”
Her research found that 45% of South African respondents said cyber offenders are admired in their communities, compared with 19% in the Latin American sample. Collard argues that the criminal ecosystem appeals to ordinary young people by offering them a sense that they matter.
“For a lonely teenager, the entry point looks identical to any other online community where they find attention, status, someone finally taking an interest in what they can do,” she said.
“That’s what makes them so dangerous, and it’s exactly what an age restriction doesn’t reach. It’s not a stranger-danger problem; it’s a belonging problem, and the recruiters are better at offering that than we are.”
The SAPS has linked the Malmesbury teenager to the 764 network, which it says is connected to violent international online extremist networks associated with child exploitation. Police say these networks target, blackmail and coerce minors into sexual abuse and other harmful criminal activity.
The 764 ecosystem has also attracted international law-enforcement attention. Collard says various community groups, including 764, have been flagged by the FBI and Britain’s National Crime Agency over the recruitment and coercion of young people.
This means that South Africa’s teenagers are plugged into a global digital criminal economy. And it’s blurring the categories of “victim” and “perpetrator”.
Jessica Shelver, founder of The Digital Bodyguard and a specialist in digital investigations, intelligence and online risk, says children can be groomed or coerced into networks in which they themselves become involved in harmful or criminal behaviour.
The other danger is that the predator does not look like a predator.
“They might be young, charming, persuasive and completely believable,” she said, making the old “stranger-danger” warnings redundant in cases where children believe they are talking to a peer or a clever older teenager who appreciates their coding ability.
Shelver says parents should therefore ask a harder question than which apps their children use. They need to know whether their child can tell them the worst thing they have ever done online and still feel safe.
“Children hide things when they expect anger or punishment. Shame and secrecy are extremely powerful tools for those seeking to control them.” A parent should tell their child often, ‘There is nothing you can show me, tell me or admit to me that would make me stop helping you.’”
The global response is now shifting towards solving the problem by keeping children off the platforms.
Australia became the first country to impose a national under-16 social media restriction last December. A similar ban is due to come into effect in the UK next year, alongside restrictions on features such as livestreaming and strangers contacting children. France and other countries have also moved towards tighter age restrictions.
South Africa, according to the experts, is still debating the matter, and there is no legislated minimum age for social media in South Africa.
Communications and digital technologies minister Solly Malatsi has warned that an unenforceable ban could become a “cosmetic intervention”.
Collard supports age restrictions in principle.
“I’m a big proponent of the smartphone-free childhood initiative, and I do support age restrictions for smartphones and social media in general,” she said. But she warns against confusing an age gate with child safety. “An under-16 ban may well be part of the answer, but it can’t be the whole answer.”
Shelver takes a similar position, arguing that South Africa should consider a minimum social media age of 16 because it could place greater responsibility on platforms rather than expecting individual families to police enormous digital ecosystems.
She believes an age ban should be viewed as a guardrail rather than a complete child-safety strategy.
Gaming platforms illustrate the problem, with Roblox, Discord and other digital spaces combining gaming, messaging, communities and social interaction. These distinctions between a game, a messaging application and a social network may be meaningless to a child.
“Wherever children can communicate with others, there is potential for grooming, coercion, extortion, manipulation and exploitation,” Shelver said.
Digital-law expert Rorke Wilson has a different view and believes South Africa should not follow the global rush towards banning under-16s from social media.
The concern is that a ban could create a false sense of security while expanding surveillance and potentially driving the problem elsewhere.
“Imposing a ban feels like a way to shovel in government surveillance under the guise of child safety,” he said.
For Wilson, the Malmesbury case demonstrates the danger of viewing the issue too simply.
“That boy was underage when he was arrested and had already been on social media for years — possibly an exploitation victim himself who didn’t speak out and became a secret-keeper.”
Wilson believes the stronger route is platform accountability and points to the lawsuits and judgments emerging in the US as a model for forcing technology companies to confront the consequences of the systems they build.
Last month a New Mexico court ordered Meta to pay $567m (about R9bn) to address harms to young people and imposed five years of court-supervised reforms. Combined with a $375m civil penalty previously imposed by a jury, Meta’s total exposure in that case reached $942m. The judge found Meta’s platforms to be a “public nuisance” and said their design and effect were to optimise engagement in ways detrimental to teenagers’ health and safety. Meta has denied wrongdoing.
Social media is good in many ways, but it should not be built by the people building casinos in Las Vegas. The path we need to be taking is to regulate those companies not as corporates but in the way we regulate public good — calling for greater transparency on things like algorithm information
— Rorke Wilson, digital-law expert
Last week Meta agreed to pay up to $16.68bn to settle claims brought by 29 US states alleging that Facebook and Instagram were deliberately designed to addict children, mislead users about safety and improperly collect children’s personal information. Meta denied wrongdoing.
The settlement includes measures such as daily usage limits, restrictions on nighttime access, improved content-safety measures and stronger age-verification processes.
“Social media is good in many ways, but it should not be built by the people building casinos in Las Vegas,” Wilson said. “The path we need to be taking is to regulate those companies not as corporates but in the way we regulate public good — calling for greater transparency on things like algorithm information.”
Wilson believes the technology companies that design environments that can be addictive and profitable precisely because children remain engaged should be held to account by society for the harm they cause, rather than leaving the entire burden of managing the consequences to 13-year-olds and their parents.
Collard points out that it is the same young people who can be drawn into criminal networks because they are technically gifted who are potentially the people the legitimate economy needs most.
Her research argues for treating this as a talent pipeline problem as well as a policing problem. A young person who learns to break a system can be taught to defend one, she says.
Collard says young people involved in cybercrime should not be reduced to two simplistic categories: monsters or helpless victims.
One South African respondent who impressed Collard put it to her in this way: “Stop treating young people in cybercrime as either monsters to be locked away or victims with no agency; start treating them as diversions of potential.”
