Mike Ritland alleges rise in trafficking reports tied to phone financing

About this episode

In this 65-second Mike Drop segment, host Mike Ritland argues that a sharp rise in child trafficking reports in the early 2010s coincided with—and was enabled by—mass smartphone adoption among minors. He cites what he describes as an "846%" increase in child trafficking between 2010 and 2015 at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, then points to 2013 telecom initiatives that began financing smartphones into monthly plans with "no credit check". Ritland says smartphones had previously been expensive enough to remain largely out of children’s hands, but that carrier financing expanded access rapidly, especially among children from socioeconomically deprived backgrounds who lacked home internet access. He describes that group as particularly vulnerable to exploitation and contends that widespread smartphone availability effectively connected predators with potential victims online. The clip presents these points as causal links but does not cite underlying datasets, definitions (reports versus confirmed trafficking), or specific documentation for the statistics or the named programmes.