In many ways, the Chinese dominate the social video apps market in India. ByteDance bought Musical.ly in November 2017 to combine it with its own short video app TikTok. By the end of May 2017, the app reached over 200 million users. In June 2016, musical.ly had over 90 million registered users, up from 10 million a year earlier, and had an average of 580 million new videos posted a day. The app soon became a rage among teenagers.

The phenomenon of short videos that went viral among teens globally found its early roots in Shanghai when Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang, longtime friends, released Musical.ly in August 2014. India-based Clip that counts Shunwei Capital as its investor had three million downloads as of December 2017. Kwai that counts India as its second priority market after China claims to have 10 million to 15 million users here. Apps like Kwai, TikTok and Clip aimed at lower- or lower-middle class users in India have found strong growth with demand from vernacular entertainment consumers. With data access getting cheaper, millions of users are getting on mobile platforms every day. TikTok, by Chinese giant ByteDance, counts India as its priority market had over 15 million users in India as of February 2018. Short video apps like Kwai have been quite a rage in India and globally in the past year or so. But a few minutes spent on the popular short video apps, including Kwai, Clip, TikTok, ShareIt, and others reveal the videos are only the tip of the iceberg of the underlying problem of children and preteens exposing themselves into a deep, dark world of paedophiles. These videos are disturbing, to say the least.

Photos masked to protect identity of subjects in the pictures. Screenshots of videos featuring underage kids on video apps. The comments on the posts have men complimenting girls on their body or asking for more flesh to be shown. Some of the videos are of girls as young as two or three years old, lip-syncing songs, dancing in an age-inappropriate manner, or doing regular chores like cooking, filling water pots, drawing water from a well, or having a meal. This account has nearly 98,000 followers and 562 videos of underage girls. The account that has posted this and other such videos has the name Gaon ki Bachchiya (Village Girls). She shies away saying, “Aur yaad nahi (don’t remember more).” ( FactorDaily is refraining from translating the lines by the girls.) A man’s voice behind the camera prods her: “Aur, aur suna (sing more, more)”. In another video, a girl about 10, looks directly at the camera, smiles sheepishly and parrots this couplet like she has just memorized the lines: Chadar odh kay sona, takiya modd kay sona, meri yaad aye, toh jagah chhod kay sona. There’s another video of the same girl, in the same setting and clothes, dancing with a boy, about the same age, this time thrusting their bodies at each other to another such song. It’s a 15-second clip on a short video app called Kwai popular in India. She is standing in the middle of a field and swaying her body, shaking her hips, her chest heaving as she dances to a popular Hariyanvi number that goes Meri jalti jawani maange paani paani. A young girl, not more than 12 years old is dressed in a bright pink lehenga and a royal blue velvet blouse.

Young teenage girls modeling panties