Child sex traffickers are now hanging out on social media and gaming sites, pretending to be poor, troubled teens like the victims they target.It’s a process anti-trafficking campaigners call ‘grooming,’ where children,  aged 11 to 15, are courted online by people who pretend to be their peers. Once they’ve gained their trust, they lure or coerce these children to send sexual images of themselves that are shared online. Thomson Reuters Foundation says: recruiters are of similar age (to their victims). They say, ‘I too have problems at school and with my parents. From the USA to the Philippines, a soaring number of young people are being trafficked online, fueled by the global spread of cheap, high-speed internet and rising mobile phone ownership, particularly in developing countries.About 750,000 sexual predators worldwide are online at any given moment, the U.S.-based International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children said last year, often grooming children for sexual abuse as a first step to enslaving them.Experts say that children who come from poor backgrounds or broken families are most at risk .In the United States, last year the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) found that 1 in 7 missing children was a likely victim of sex trafficking. In response to the growing problem of grooming, numerous groups and telecommunication companies around the world are trying to educate children and parents on safe ways to use the internet.To read the entire article,  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-trafficking-technology-youth/grooming-is-gateway-to-child-sex-trafficking-as-seducing-moves-online-idUSKBN1JD00I