“Beware of Strangers” is a phrase almost everyone has heard before. We know how unsafe it can be for a child to wander in a grocery store, trolley station, or even their own neighborhood. But what happens when a minor decides to explore online?
Recent Trends Regarding Online Dangers
In the past year, the average age of entry into trafficking in the United States changed from 16 years old to 12 years old. With Life360 location monitoring services and advanced technology to ensure children are safe, the major shift in age of trafficking seems to go against the development of protection measures; or does it?
Stanford Medicine conducted a study and discovered the average age individuals in America receive their first smartphone (not including other electronics like iPads) is between the ages of 11 and 13. Predators, unfortunately, have recognized the presence of youth online and have used it to their advantage. There has been a growing number of online exploitation cases since the 1990s, and now exploitation online doubles in frequency of exploitation in person.
With online interactions access is easier, witnesses are fewer, and many predators look for signs that a child’s online presence is going unmonitored. Without supervision, predators can build long term, trust-based relationships with minors for months or years before exploitation begins. With an estimated 90% of survivors reporting that they knew their trafficker before exploitation occurred, this unmonitored time to build relationships is a critical period for intervention and protection.
Because online exploitation is so common in the youth we serve, we regularly lead Online Safety workshops to raise awareness about online dangers for the youth in our program. This Spring we showed youth different social media accounts and artificial online conversations and asked them to identify why these profiles and messages were red flags. Few youth recognized what was concerning. Additionally, youth in our program expressed strong emotions about online dangers because, by learning about risk factors and online exploitation, they realized they themselves had been exploited and didn’t even know. Multiple girls in our GRACE programs have been exploited on social media; online exploitation is closer than you think.
How To Keep Your Children Safe
Parents, we understand how hard it can be to keep up with the digital news. Access to technology is almost inevitable, especially as schools introduce required computers at lower grade levels. There are protection options available, but many kids have learned how to outsmart the system. Our vision is to see the end of child exploitation, and one of the first steps in this process is raising awareness and educating guardians on how to protect their youth.
We created a downloadable document with all of the information you need to ensure your children are safe online. Our Protective Parents: Online Safety Guide is designed to make complex information easy to understand and enforce. We discuss warning signs and abnormal behaviors, common factors that would make a child a higher-risk for exploitation, the most frequently used apps and the blockers that can be used to secure safety.
This guide is free to use, easy to share, and meant to prevent exploitation in the next generation. The most common apps we see exploitation occurring on include Discord, Roblox, Minecraft, Snapchat and Instagram. Discord was recently cited as the primary tool traffickers used to lure children into trafficking schemes, as noted by the United States Attorney’s Office. If you know your child is engaging in online activity on these apps, the first step is a conversation on what information and images need to stay private. If your child has been exploited online, please review our referral form if you would like additional support. Through our program we hope that every child will realize their worth and value and be given opportunities that will guide, encourage, and inspire them as they choose their path in life.