Make It Harder to Isolate You

There is an interesting pattern in many exploitation situations.

The person trying to gain control often needs something else to happen first. They need less interference. Fewer people noticing. More secrecy. More opportunity to make requests without somebody outside the situation asking, “Hang on. What is going on here?”

That helps explain why some ordinary safety strategies are surprisingly powerful.

Consider telling another person where you are going, who you are meeting or what has been happening online. That can sound like nothing more than keeping someone informed. But it changes the situation. An exploitative person now has less control over the information.

The same idea applies to avoiding unnecessary time alone in situations where you are uncertain about someone's intentions. Isolation does not only mean being physically alone. A private account, disappearing messages, a secret conversation or being told that nobody else would understand can create another kind of isolation. Bringing a trusted person into the situation can break that isolation surprisingly quickly.

This is where risk assessment comes in.

You already know from earlier Safety posts that risk assessment does not mean avoiding everything uncertain. It means noticing what could go wrong, how serious that would be and what could make the situation safer. If someone you barely know wants to meet privately, for example, changing the location, bringing another person and making sure someone knows where you are changes the risk. If the person becomes angry because you added those protections, that reaction provides useful information too.

Consent is another protection, but it means more than being able to say the word “no.” Your choices should still belong to you when somebody is offering attention, gifts, opportunities or approval. A person repeatedly wearing down your answer, making you feel indebted, threatening consequences or telling you to keep something secret is changing the conditions around your decision. When refusing becomes harder, it is worth asking why.

Then there are programs and community supports, which are an important part of reducing exploitation risk because young people should not have to solve these situations alone.

Schools have counsellors, administrators and other adults responsible for student safety. Alberta has child protection services for concerns involving abuse and sexual exploitation. Canada also has services specifically designed for online exploitation, including Cybertip.ca. Other organizations can help when images have been shared, someone is being threatened online, or trafficking or exploitation is suspected.

These programs do something an individual cannot always do alone. They bring additional people, information, authority and resources into the situation. Some can help report harmful online activity. Others can help remove images, assess safety, connect someone with professional support or involve authorities when necessary.

That leads to perhaps the most important strategy in this entire topic: keep widening the circle.

If the first person you tell does not understand, tell someone else. If somebody has convinced you that asking for help will make everything worse, that itself may be part of how they are maintaining control. You do not need a perfectly organized explanation before you speak to someone.

And if you already trusted the person, replied to them, accepted something, went somewhere, shared information or agreed to something earlier, you can still reach out.

Safety strategies work partly because they change who holds the information, who has access to you and how much control one person can build. Programs work because they add people and resources that can act when the situation has become difficult to manage yourself.

Exploitation tries to make someone's world smaller.

One powerful response is to make that world bigger again.