One things that always made me a bit uneasy was the near universal reply to ‘what did you do on the weekend’ of ‘I played computer games’ during teaching.
And it wasn’t some convenience thing of memorising the language and just defaulting to ‘computer games’ as a reply – this is really what most of these kids got up to on the weekend.
Now fair enough, back in the day I played my fair share of computer games too and it didn’t seem to do too much harm (I think).
With summer holidays currently in swing though, computer games are no longer just a weekend pass time. With no exams to study for or homework to review, the internet is increasingly becoming the new television babysitter.
Add to this Taiwan’s crazy work ethic and the long hours parents stay away from home, the amount of grandparents that are utilised as cheap baby sitter substitutes and the internet (a magical box that keeps children entertained for hours as far as most Taiwanese grandparents go), and ultimately you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
Case in point? A Taiwanese nine year old kid who recently whored herself out over the internet.
Left in the care of her grandmother whilst her divorced mother works 12+ hour shifts and ‘admitting she has no idea ’doesn’t know what exactly‘ her kid gets up to online , the child published the classified ad offering herself up on a porn site.
Yes, not only did she whore herself out, it appears she had an account on a porn (messageboard?) site and was savvy enough to publish an ad.
Despite being just 9 years old and revealing her age in the ad published, ‘no one stepped in, alerted the police, tried to do something about it, or even said a word before it happened‘.
And what exactly ‘happened‘?
Well, after 19 public bids on an offer for sex, a teenager won for $1000 TWD ($34 USD). Then, not only was the act carried out but it was done so ‘in the presence‘ of the nine year old’s twin sister.
And despite all this happening online and being illegal in Taiwan, the teenager and 19 other bidders on the girl’s offer are still at large (according to the 13th August news report).
With the increased and consistently long working hours most parents are forced to work due to an overbearingly devotion to their jobs that Taiwanese people have, one can only wonder just how rampant online child prostitution is.
As one Wang Yun-tung (王雲東), an associate professor on the faculty of National Taiwan University’s Department of Social Work put it, ‘online prostitution by people of a young age group is becoming a pervasive trend’.
Indeed. It seems shitty parenting is also becoming a pervasive trend that is also coming back to bite Taiwan in the arse too.
Parents need to appreciate that their kids aren’t mindless robot zombie drones – or else trends like this are not only going to continue… but god forbid they become the socially accepted norm.
