Kids Are Learning Coded Language Like 'MAP' Online – We Need To Talk About It

Parents need to monitor their kids' time online and teach simple scripts on what to do if they come across people who make them uncomfortable, says an academic.

Parents editor at HuffPost UK

An academic has opened up about the alarming moment she realised her 10-year-old daughter had been contacted by a stranger online who asked her “do you like children?”, to which the child replied: “I’m not a MAP.”

For those who are unaware of the acronym’s meaning (I certainly hadn’t heard of it before writing this), MAP stands for ’minor attracted person’.

Sharlette Kellum, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Texas Southern University, wrote for The Conversation: “In that moment, I realised something unsettling but important: Children are encountering coded language online long before many parents even know it exists.”

Per Safer Society, the term emerged as an alternative to paedophile because there are “people who realised that they felt sexually attracted to children”, but it was “a feeling that they never asked for and never wanted to act upon”.

“They felt that they needed........

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