FEARS OF PEDOPHILES ON TIKTOK: MOMS REMOVING VIDEOS WITH DAUGHTERS

Mothers on TikTok are removing pictures of their children after raising concerns about where the footage will end up – accusing one mom of allowing pedophiles to target her child.

Parents of young toddlers are concerned with the amount of videos of the youngsters that are being saved by potential pedophiles online, and are now urging others to be more careful.

The movement was sparked after the mothers spotted a worrying trend with TikTok’s ‘most popular’ three-year-old girl, Wren Eleanor.

Wren, whose mom Jacquelyn has posted photos and videos of her on the social media site since she was born, has more than 17 million followers on the platform. 

Her account features hundreds of seemingly innocent videos of the blonde toddler playing and enjoying days out with her mother and grandma, along with sponsored content.

Jacquelyn began receiving an onslaught of abuse after online sleuths pointed out that videos of the three-year-old playing in the bath and holding tampons were being saved by hundreds of thousands of people. 

TikTok allows users to save content that they like to their accounts. Some mothers, however, warn the feature is being used as a catalogue for pedophiles to share images of children.

 

Jacquelyn deleted videos from her account that received the most backlash after concerns were pointed out to her.

Now mothers have turned against the popular account, accusing Jacquelyn of knowingly exposing her daughter to pedophiles and predators, sharing videos with the tag #savewren and #protectthechildren.

The vigilante mothers have also claimed that Jacquelyn is deliberately ignoring concerns because she receives payment for advertisements with her daughter, which include brands like Shein and Khol’s.

Wren and Jacquelyn have 17.3million followers  on their account with more than 560million likes, and are estimated to earn around $13,000 per post - but brand sponsorship deals vary on the company. 

TikToker Kelso, @allthings.kelso, captioned her video talking about Wren ‘#SavetheChildren,' which has been viewed over 674,000 times.

She said that she first spotted a problem after seeing Wren playing with a tampon ‘posed in an inappropriate way.'

The video, which has now been deleted, had almost 400,000 saves and thousands of ‘creeps’ in the comments.

Predators are also able to use smartphone's screen-recording feature to record or screenshot content directly to their phones without being accounted for by the app. 

Kelso added: ‘Obviously there are creeps everywhere and they’re a lot of things you cannot control when it comes to protecting children.

‘But you can control the content you post of your own children on social media.’

A second user, Danielle Tilley, added in a video: ‘It’s the creeps’ fault and I agree, but the fact of the matter is they are out there and they are not leaving any time soon.

‘And it is your job as a parent to protect your child.’

Others also expressed concerns about the safety of the toddler, saying that there are people who will 'abduct the child for sex trafficking.'

One user spotted that a video of the toddler wearing a cropped, orange shirt was saved more than 45,000 times.

They also pointed out that a video of Wren eating a hotdog was saved nearly 350,000 times, and pointed to disturbing comments on the content.

Popular searches for Wren’s videos include phrases like ‘Wren Eleanor hot dog’ or ‘pickle,' meaning users on TikTok and Google were searching for the three-year-old eating those foods.

In light of the potentially unwanted attention on Wren, other parents have taken it upon themselves to delete photos of their children on public social media profiles.

Makayla Musick told Fox News Digital: ‘I just saw the posts on TikTok and was absolutely appalled by the story and had decided that I needed to protect my daughter.

‘Wren's story brought a lot of light to all the sick people in the world, so I decided to remove my own daughter's photos from anyone who is not close family/close friends.

‘My duty as her mother is to protect her from things like this. I took the initiative to remove her photos before anything like Wren's situation could happen to my own daughter.’

She added that she has ‘always known there were sick people in the world that do these kinds of things’ and that she looks at social media in a ‘different light.'

Calahan Walsh, executive director of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) told Fox News Digital that people who use social media platforms can be ‘drawn into a false sense of security.'

He explained this is because of the positive interactions they have with friends, family and strangers who follow their accounts with good intentions.

Walsh added: ‘Parents have to understand that when you're putting this information out to the public, you're opening up your world to the entire outside world.

‘And anybody on these social media platforms — especially if your, if your page is public — anybody in the entire world can view and consume the content that you're putting out there.

‘Because you're putting that content up on social media, and you're the ones sharing it, it's not like they're the ones creating… that type of content. They're just consuming it.’

The NCMEC executive director explained that online predators seek content that typical users don’t think is harmful because they don’t go ‘directly to that dark place.'

He believes that parents need to be aware of what predators are looking for and avoid posting that kind of content, adding: ‘Think twice. Trust your gut. Understand there's bad people out there. Try to keep your kids safe.’

DailyMail.com has reached out to Jacquelyn for comment.

By EMMA JAMES FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

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