Ending child exploitation means rethinking inclusion

MY SON talks to Alexa¹. He consults ChatGPT on his phone, and has named and renamed the Meta AI according to themes he’s interested in. We did not teach him how it’s done. He is a 12-year-old digital native who could figure out online shopping faster than his father does. He is also on the autism spectrum. Sometimes, I think he uses AI to help him cope with and understand the digital world, where he's largely teased for being a “noob².”

- By Anna Abelinde

As parents, we are worried. We have safeguards in place: Alexa is located in my workstation, so we can hear all the exchanges. We also have access to his phone and can see all his conversations. So far, they range from game design talk (he is learning how to code) to surviving games in Roblox. I am grateful that we are here to respond to his questions — Why is it not acceptable to fart in public when it is a normal human experience? Why do people tease him for (still) wanting to play with plushies?

But through these interactions, I've learned how children — and even adults who feel unseen — would turn to AI to process their feelings and learn social cues in order to belong. At the end of the day, it is fundamentally human to want to be “seen.” AI affords that, without the feeling of being judged. And that is where the line between connection and exploitation begins to blur; how many children — especially those who feel unseen, unheard, or different — turn to digital spaces to find belonging.

Last month, our team was out of town to monitor the implementation of one of our child labor prevention projects.

According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, child labor is on a decline — from 4.7% in 2022 to 2.7% in 2024. Ironically though, online sexual abuse and exploitation of children (OSAEC) are increasing, with recent data from the Commission on Human Rights indicating that as many as 2.7 million children have become victims of OSAEC.