Social media has taken a grip on the lives of many people, especially children.
From TikTok dances to video games, children are online and interacting with strangers, so how can parents and guardians keep them safe?
The Opening the Door campaign shows how.
Detective Trooper Carly Pitrago with the MSP Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force says “So this is nothing new necessarily to what we’ve been doing all along, but this is just a new public service announcement that we were able to get some grant funding for, to try to get the word out, more about how to keep kids safe online, provide resources to parents and guardians, and information on how to report if anything were to ever happen. ”
The Michigan State Police Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force receives over 2000 cyber tips a month from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Most victims are between 10 and 17, and are victims of a crime called sextortion.
Detective Trooper Pitrago tells us “The predators get the children to send pictures or nude images of themselves, and then they ask them to send over money or gift cards, to stop them from sharing them online. So financial sextortion has gone up and we see it affecting boys ages 13 to 17. Most and unfortunately we have had some, take their lives because of what was happening to them….And then we also see sexual sextortion. And in those cases, it typically affects girls ages 10 to 17 years old. And so some of those cases are becoming more and more prevalent, in our jobs that we’re seeing. And a lot of the sextortion is coming from applications like Instagram and Snapchat that kids are using all the time.”
Detective Trooper Pitrago recommends parents monitor their child’s phone.
For both guardians, and friends, she also recommends watching a child’s behavior, saying “whether it’s a friend at school or a parent guardian, trusted adult, if they’re seeing kids that are becoming a little more, you know, shut down, some of the signs that we see, like, physical signs, children’s moods, how they’re acting, how they’re dressing, if they’re less put together than they normally are, if they’re not talking about, you know, a relationship that they’re in where they used to talk about it all the time. ”
She says it is important if you have a friend who may be in trouble, you should tell a trusted adult.
In an age where online interactions with strangers is almost unavoidable, Detective Trooper Pitrago did share how children can keep themselves safe.
She tells us “If you’re playing in a video game where there’s a bunch of people in there, that’s okay. But if one person is saying, hey, let’s go into a private chat room, just you and I, and start talking about personal things or inappropriate things, or asking for images or videos of yourself, that’s when you should get your trusted adult, your guardian, your parent to help you figure out what’s happening, ”
And with A.I Images becoming more common, she says the best thing to do may be just keeping your circle small and your account private – for both children and adults.
Detective Trooper Pitrago says “Generative A.I child sexual abusive material is something that we’ve been seeing more of and probably expect to see more of in the future as technology advances. What people can do is keep your profiles private, have private profiles where you are only accepting friend requests and messages from people that you know you’re not out here sharing all of your information in your life online because people go online and they take those photos down and they run them through these AI generators.”