Social exposure

Would you let a 40-year-old stranger visit your 13-year-old, alone in her room, for three hours unattended?

“Absolutely not, but if you’re not monitoring and the computer is in the bedroom, what’s the difference?” asked Officer John Barnes at a cyber awareness forum for parents. “You have no idea who she is talking to, who she is sending pictures to, who she is receiving pictures from or what kind of inappropriate communication is going back and forth.”

In the past 10 years, the cyber world of apps and social media has created an opening for sexual predators and child pornography among middle and high school students. In response to the concerns of parents, Hoover City Schools hosted a cyber citizenship forum to discuss the latest trends in social media and the dangers associated with them. 

“Our girls have just started middle school, so I think we are all concerned about social media,” said Sue Collins, who attended the Aug. 26 meeting at Spain Park High School. “We want to learn. We aren’t as up on things as our teenagers are right now, so we are trying to get up to speed about what’s available and what’s out there.”   

Sexting 

Sergeant Mac Hardy began the session with a scenario and the phrase, “Never say never.” 

“Johnny asked Sally for a picture,” he said. “Sally takes a picture of herself and sends it to Johnny. Is Johnny going to keep that picture to himself? No, he gives it to his friend, and his friend looks at it and gives it to another friend.”

In this scenario, Johnny and Sally have both committed felonies. According to Alabama state law, child pornography is defined as nude images of a child under the age of 17, and it is a crime to possess, manufacture or transmit any form of child pornography. 

What this example is also describing is a trend called sexting, which exploded as a result of cellphone cameras and mass media coverage, according to Hardy. A few years ago, Hardy was working the child pornography sector of juvenile investigations, and he saw how many pictures there are out there. 

“People are searching for these pictures constantly — grown people,” Hardy said. “These laws were written to protect our children, not to prosecute our children for things of adolescence.” 

Hardy said there are 116,000 requests for child pornography daily. Fifty percent of 15- to 17-year-olds have already had exposure to hard-core pornography, and 30 percent of 8- to 16-year-olds watch pornography while doing homework. 

“Think about how important it is to know what is on the device — that you own — that you allow your children to use,” Hardy said. “Who owns that phone? The parents.”

Hardy stressed that parents should look through their child’s phone and know the passwords associated with it. Barnes also added that children should not be allowed to have their phones with them at night. 

“Letting the kids charge their phones in their rooms is the new pornography,” Barnes said. “That’s the title it has been given. You’ve got to be that parent.”

Sexual predators 

There are about 50,000 sexual predators online who are experts at countering the intelligence of the police force. 

Because of that, about one in five children will be sexually proposed to online daily. 

Barnes read dozens of newspaper clippings about predators being arrested for sexual crimes directed at children. He also told the story of a fellow police officer whose daughter was kidnapped, molested and murdered by a sexual predator. 

“The more ‘connected’ a child is, the more availability for that child to experience negative online experiences,” Barnes said. 

That is because there are dangers associated with social media. If the user settings are not on private, anyone can see posts, pictures cannot be controlled once posted and statuses can be used for stalking purposes. Tags online can also reveal location and time, which can be used to gather information about a person. 

Most predators average about 250 victims in their life, and when 23 million kids use instant messaging, Barnes said it makes it easy for predators to “groom” them. The predator will agree with everything a child says and relate to every problem they have. 

When 86 percent of kids chat without their parent’s knowledge, it’s easy for predators to find an opening. 

“I ask them,‘Why do you do that?’” Barnes said, referring to the number of children online without the knowledge of their parent. “They never fail to respond, ‘Well, I don’t want them to see what we are saying,’ or ‘I don’t want them to see what we are putting out there.’” 

Precautionary measures 

Barnes said if parents can monitor their kids’ social networks, they will have a greater understanding of who the kids hang out with, where they go, who they are dating and whether they participate in alcohol or drug use or sexual conduct. 

He also stressed that parents need to have access to and an understanding of every app their children are using, such as Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, Twitter, Ask.fm, Friendster, Flickr, GroupMe, Instagram, Meetup, ooVoo, Kik and Yik Yak. 

He directly mentioned Snapchat, an app that allows you to send photos on a timer that will be deleted when the timer runs out, as a popular new trend among children. 

“I don’t know what it is,” Barnes said. “They are infatuated by it. Even the ones that are not bad kids are sending bad pictures, but they are infatuated by their number.” 

Barnes also warned about an app called ooVoo.  He explained that if you see ooVoo on your child’s phone, they are doing something very wrong. OoVoo allows people to meet online and exchange graphic content. After 9 p.m. there is no monitoring or filtering. 

Barnes recommended a monitoring system, My Mobile Watchdog, for parents to use on smartphones. It allows parents to control settings, get notifications from their child’s phone and turn the phone off at a certain time. This system is not fully compatible with iPhones. 

Monitoring devices for the computer, such as Blaster, allow parents to block certain websites, track keystrokes and personalize filters for each user profile on the computer. Barnes also said keeping the computer in a common area is helpful. 

“I’m so thankful, in a lot of ways, that I didn’t have to deal with, as a child, the things that these kids do,” Barnes said. “I don’t think I could have handled it.”