Shortly after Delphi, Indiana, besties Libby German (14) and Abby Williams (13) were murdered in 2017, Libby’s sister discovered her younger sibling had been catfished by an adult male hiding behind a stolen identity and photos in an attempt to solicit child sexual abuse material (CSAM) from Libby and some of her friends. When Dateline correspondent Erin Moriarty interviewed Libby’s grandparents, Becky and Mike Patty, in “A Walk Through the Woods,” Becky replied, “I was in shock,” adding, “I kept thinking she would never do that. It was hard to accept that she had.”
For all the copypasta I see on local parenting groups warning about weird markings on cars or claims that someone was followed around Walmart, the reality is that most sex offenders and human traffickers connect with and groom their victims through social media and technology. Many traffickers lure vulnerable young victims through manipulation, coercion and/or fraud by convincing victims through romantic schemes, blackmail or promises of help and support.
And in far too many of those cases, the victims’ families express shock that strangers were able to access their child or that their child had been getting online at all.
Swimming in a Vast, Dark Ocean
As a parent of three teens bridging the Gen Z-Alpha divide who were at critical ages for socialization during the lockdown years, I often feel like I’m in uncharted territory — sort of a Beta tester for parenting in the digital era. When I reflect on my early interactions with the technology that now intersects every aspect of my life from income to politics, it sometimes feels like watching a car crash in slow motion from inside the vehicle.
I’ve always believed clear eyes and open communication go a lot further in protecting kids than trying to place them in a protective bubble, which has meant trying to fully understand the risks and engaging in serious and ongoing conversations as a family from the time my people were little. To my great relief, this has paid off too many times to count as my kids have come to me with concerns over sketchy or potentially dangerous online interactions. And now that they’re teenagers, they’ve got a lot to say about keeping younger generations safe online.
All three of my teens see online engagement as a two-way street. “It can open up a world of social circles and social interactions and passions, new interests, new shows, new people to be friends with…as long as you have parents who are involved and teach you how to use it safely,” my 13-year-old daughter Lucy insisted.
At the same time, danger is everywhere online. “It’s about having the entire internet open to them. It’s like going swimming and your boat is right next to you except you’re swimming in the open ocean,” her 17-year-old brother Noah explained. “There’s so much internet, there’s so many dangers in there that you can’t see until it’s too late.”
And it’s not just predators that parents need to be worried about. When asked about the online dangers they’d encountered personally or heard about from close friends’ experiences, my kids quickly rattled off a long list: ideological radicalization, privacy risks, internet addiction, extortion, hacks, microtransactions, scams, bullying, death threats, stalkers, and people impersonating or sexualizing minors.
“Let’s say best-case scenario, no one is trying to radicalize you, no one is trying to groom you — you still might end up getting upset because people are mean as part of the culture, and someone who doesn’t know how to handle that might end up getting too worked up and not know how to handle their feelings,” Arthur, 17, interjected. “The internet is complex — there are an infinite number of things that can help you, so much good, but for every bit of good there’s always going to be some bad.”
But knowledge is power, the teens insisted, adding that the kids who end up in real trouble are the ones who go online behind their parents’ backs.
How Digital Restrictions Can Backfire
“Banning doesn’t work because it can cause a lot of issues — strict parents make kids more rebellious,” Lucy clarified. “If the kid does get online, there’s no way to protect them because their parents aren’t aware.” Comparing digital education to sex ed or the lack thereof, she added, “I’ve noticed that some people, some children can be easily coerced. If parents don’t teach their child, they could end up secretly ‘dating’ a 40-year-old.”
And as terrifying as it is to think of, when kids go missing, parents who learn that their kids were sneaking around don’t know who their child was talking to online and can’t access their digital footprint.
It’s a frightening and yet all-too-common occurrence according to all three of my teens, who insisted they know kids with strict parents who regularly go online behind their parents’ backs. “Like people who give their children phones but give them screen restrictions, app timeouts, or genuinely ‘ban’ them from installing apps, trust me, they will find a way around it,” Lucy divulged.
Call it crowdsourced hacking, but kids from a young age share tricks and workarounds to website blocks and limiters, from installing LINUX so they can access banned websites to downloading third-party browsers or off-limit apps by directly accessing APKs (app files) online via links.
“I know someone whose mom banned installing things, and someone else sent them an APK. People can find APKs by just searching up ‘insert app and APK,’“ one of the teens confessed.
Even allowing a narrow range of apps is no guarantee kids will be safe since some platforms feature built-in search engines that let users access other sites.
“Even if you take away all the devices, kids will find a way around it,” Lucy says.
I’ve heard similar stories from desperate Facebook group moms who can’t seem to lock down their kids’ internet access. My conclusion? Short of going completely off the grid, there’s no way to completely insulate kids from online communication and access.
Start With Education and Engagement
I asked the teens to tell me honestly, based on their experience, what they felt parents should do to protect their kids. One thing they all immediately agreed on was parental involvement, emphasizing that the bigger the platform, the more difficulty moderators tend to have in keeping things safe for kids — especially when it comes to online gaming like Minecraft and Roblox.
“Parents need to talk about where not to go and what not to do when you’re on the internet and who to look out for,” Lucy advised, emphasizing that parents should explain the reason in age-appropriate terms as part of an ongoing conversation, so kids don’t just think they’re being strict for no reason and immediately try to get around the rules.
“A large factor in internet safety is parents — if you don’t have a parent to help teach you about internet safety, you’re not protected,” she explained.
That starts with talking about safe online interactions from an early age while closely monitoring kids’ activities to guide them. When kids are very young, the teens insist parents should watch them as much as possible when they’re online.
“People can be really predatory in certain communities, especially Roblox,” Lucy emphasized. “Moderators can’t properly moderate them, so people just need to report them as much as possible.”
“With an online game, you might actually want to monitor their interactions and know who they are talking to. You also need to look out for things like microtransactions and links to scams promising things like free Robux,” Arthur added.
“When they’re little, check on them,” Lucy added. “Young children should have parents involved in what they watch and play…show them shows that are safe and stay in their business. And never let anything autoplay.”
One danger many parents aren’t aware of, they insisted, is age-inappropriate content that slides through the YouTube algorithm — even YouTube Kids — as recommended or autoplay content. Citing a specific type of extremely sexualized, fetish and/or violent content farm video aimed at kids who like Elsa and Spider-Man several years back as the source of his concern, Arthur advised, “I would recommend things for them to watch, monitor what they watch, watch it with them, and turn off autoplay.”
Teach Online Privacy
Central to online safety, the teens continued, should be a reverence for online privacy and the awareness that you can almost never truly know if an individual you’re talking to is who you think they are.
Lucy refuses to share her real name, age, appearance or any personal information with anyone she doesn’t know IRL (in real life). She also stays in smaller online communities where she feels safe. Kids need to understand they can never be certain of someone’s true identity, the teens emphasized — which not only means they need to worry about predators, but also the impact of their own actions and speech on other users.
Talk to your kids about grooming and predators from an early age and let them know you need to know who they’re talking to for their own safety. “I’m aware of how (predators) act and what I should or should not do,” emphasized Lucy.
Advice from the Professionals
I spoke with Karen Lacy, a licensed professional counselor with Exhale Counseling and Wellness in Tulsa, and Faith Crittenden, vice president of Children’s Mental Health and Family Support with Family and Children’s Services, and both agreed that digital safety requires an ongoing conversation with kids.
“You can set up an app, but you and I know teenagers are going to do what they want to do. If they want to, they are going to find a way to do it,” Lacy told me. “The conversation has to be about how to stay safe.”
And much like conversations about consent and bodily autonomy, the digital talk should be something that starts early and continues throughout childhood and adolescence.
“Much like a talk about sex is not a talk, it should be a series of ongoing conversations with our kids, ” Crittenden emphasized. “You cannot isolate children from the internet and social media. You can’t isolate them, but you can insulate your exposure.”
“Good, open, ongoing communication is the most important thing you can have with your children when it comes to protecting them from anything,” Lacy advised. “I think it has to be an ongoing conversation and do those check-ins. Letting them know if they made a mistake, let’s talk about it, let’s find out how to fix it. Kids are going to make mistakes, they need the freedom to make mistakes — if they have a parent to guide them. Keeping that communication open with your kids and making them aware of the dangers that are out there.”
“It creates these ports of entry for us to have a learning moment with our kids,” Crittenden told me.
As for what those conversations need to include, Lacy emphasized limiting kids’ screen time and talking to them about why it’s important.
The conversation should also address the potential long-term consequences of online behavior. “Teenagers are incredibly impulsive and don’t have long-term thinking skills or framework because their little amygdalas are just so fuzzy,” Lacy advised. “So they don’t think about how a choice they make today could affect them six months down the road. To say my child would never? Just don’t even go there.”
Emphasizing that the human brain doesn’t stop growing until a person’s mid-20s, Lacy continued, “Don’t ever assume that your kids have these critical thinking skills or that they know better. As a parent it is up to you to do that critical thinking and guide those critical thinking skills. You can’t just stick your head in the sand.”
Lacy also emphasized the importance of teaching kids to vet information every time they engage with new information, skills that could help protect them from scammers, predators, and cults or radicalization. “Making sure they have those critical thinking skills and questioning anytime they read an article somewhere,” Lacy suggested. “What’s the source, what’s that person’s agenda, who’s funding this? What’s this person’s motivation? There is so much misinformation and disinformation, you gotta use those critical thinking skills.”
It’s also important to talk about online bullying, Lacy added, and the fact that online identities aren’t the whole picture. “When I create a profile, it’s a curated version of myself. It’s an avatar. When people attack me online, I see the difference. They don’t know me as a person; they are responding to this identity, this avatar I have created.”
Kids, Lacy emphasized, can’t always tell the difference. “Kids don’t make that differentiation; being attacked online is the same thing as being attacked when they are in person. That’s why cyberbullying has such a huge impact.”
Crittenden advised discussing the good and bad of online interactions. “There are healthy things that happen on social media and on the internet,” Crittenden noted. “Affirming their identity, getting a larger circumference of social support.”
“And then there’s all of the negative things that we talk about,” she added. “Isolating, bullying, we know that kids that have long-term exposure, it interferes with their sleep patterns, it can create depression.”
Like Lacy, Crittenden emphasized adolescence is a time for experimentation and boundary-pushing as part of kids’ natural development, adding that the safest way for kids to experiment is having a safe way to evaluate their experiences.
Crittenden suggests taking an “I wonder if” approach to encourage kids to think through scenarios before they play out with real-world consequences. “‘I wonder if’ — what if behind that profile is someone who is looking to steal your game tokens?”
Ask kids to consider a variety of possibilities. “Wondering with them creates bridges for deeper, more reflective thought processes and opens discussions surrounding safety when we’re dealing with something that’s just a part of life,” Crittenden says.
As much as we might want to, parents living in the digital age can’t close Pandora’s box. But taking the time to understand the real risks kids — and all of us, for that matter — face online and engage in meaningful ongoing conversations with children about things like privacy, boundaries, consent, and online situational awareness are all part of the armor kids need to get by safely in the digital age.
Online safety tips
- Explain to kids that they should never give out personal information (name, age, address, phone number, social security number) or photos.
- Explain to kids that they should never meet an online stranger in person. Talk to parents or another adult if they are invited to do this.
- Never invite a stranger to come to their home or call.
- Research and use digital controls but do so alongside ongoing conversations with your kids.
- Tell kids not to respond to a threatening email, post or text. Share with a parent or trusted adult if they feel threatened.
- Encourage kids to talk to a parent or trusted adult about any communication they find unsettling, confusing or scary.
- Check your credit card and phone bills for unfamiliar charges.
- Listen to your child and take what they say seriously.
- Keep an open, nonjudgmental line of communication open with your kids.
- Teach kids to never share passwords with others.
- Ask your kids/teens about their online experiences, apps they use, etc. and listen to them.
Kristi Roe Owen is a full-time freelance writer and mom of three teens.
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