I can't believe only 19 comments were posted for this all important topic. As an older parent less familiar with technologies and chatting etc I am terrified. My daughter is 10. Parents and caregivers must LEARN how to navigate the sites their kids are learning and using...it takes time and effort. But if the internet, police, government won't and can't do it...you must. Add it to your list parents, feed, play, sleep, check computer usage.
3
How are these kids downloading the apps? I have that function blocked and the gaming equipment is all in the living room. I'm not blaming parents, but as parents, we need to be aware of any and all parental controls on this stuff. Though, I will say Microsoft irritates me but not letting me disable the MS Store. I get notices of what is downloaded but I can only block any purchases. Free apps aren't technically "purchases".
Even with all the guardrails in place, though, if you Google how to block something, you'll get more hits on how to get AROUND the blocks. There needs to be more control put in parents' hands. That should be a selling point, not a deterrent.
1
It starts at the top. Other hunting grounds for sexual predators include teen beauty contests, modeling agencies and wherever else those with wealth, power and mansions lurk. With lawyers, campaign contributions and NDAs it's amazing what they can do.
1
As these comments attest it is very easy for parents and even kids to figure out who is the creep online. Sounds like a job for AI.
With apologies for the lengthy comment above, here are further thoughts:
Possible technological solutions:
- Parents should be able to block specific apps from being installed on their child's phone / other devices. The accompanying article mentions Tinder and Grindr, really?
- Two factor authentication: if someone on a gaming site asks to chat with a child for the first time, the request goes to the parent's phone for approval.
- Subsequent texts between that "someone" and the child are cc'ed to the parent ... especially requests to move the "discusssion" to another platform such as Skype, Snapchat, etc.
And re scholarships for gaming or e-sports: I hope the schools also offer scholarships for productive activities, volunteerism, etc. Not sure what gaming adds to the campus community, but then I fortunately graduated quite a while ago.
3
The article states that the perpetrators come from all walks and professions and that this crime cuts across all lines. But that is not true. Women are not committing these crimes. Did the investigation turn up any women at all abusing children online?
2
If we want to protect kids, we need to stop prosecuting minors for creating images of themselves. Every high school student where I teach has heard stories about a girl (always a girl) whose pictures were shared and SHE got in trouble for taking the photo or video. A Maryland appeals court just upheld a child pornography charge this summer against a 16-year-old who sent a video to two friends.
Until minors no longer face consequences for taking their own pictures, children will be terrified to come forward.
7
If we cannot get our government to control social media companies from facilitating the attacks on our elections, to protect our democracy, why should we expect them to force chat venues to protect our children?
But that is what we need. Government regulates all sorts of industries for safety, as they should. Yet our government allows these companies to operate virtual spaces that offer up children to the most heinous and life-shattering attacks and abuse.
Parents alone cannot fix this. And the companies themselves clearly refuse to. If they can't run safe chat spaces, they should not be allowed to operate. It's pretty simple.
1
Platforms must be held accountable for the risk that they create and from which they reap great profit. CEOs must face jail time, and individuals must be able to sue platforms for harm.
3
I have never played a video game or been on social media, but it must be possible for these companies to create algorithms that find words like nude, naked, or pics/pictures and shut the conversation down. After all, I don’t think that these words have anything to do with a video game.
4
What a sobering piece...thank you Bowles and Keller and the Times for publishing this. Sadly, as a psychologist working with sexual predators, this offers yet a (not particularly new) twist on the folks that are referred to me as a matter of course. What, one has to ask, is going on within the culture itself that we see new(er) forms of ways in which to exploit children? I wish I could say that the pool of referrals is drying up given the full range of interventions that are being brought to bear (hah!) , but that's not at all the case...I and those colleagues of mine who have the fortitude to work with these men (and yes, even a smattering of some women) will, unfortunately, be guaranteed a life time of work. This truly is a systemic issue and yes, it does cross cultural lines since we know this is a world-wide phenomenon.
2
“It cuts across all social and racial lines, across class lines — it cuts across every line,” Ms. Hoffman said. “There is no profile.”
I think this might overlook the gender related differences. I don't think I'm making any bold claims by assuming that, for the most part, these predators are male. I don't mean this as an attack on men, though. I think this shows how important it is to teach boys what healthy sexual behaviour looks like. Hopefully we can help our boys before they resort to predatory sexual behaviours later in life.
3
I only read this article because I'm interested in the societal effects of technology [among other things tech-related.]
First, this is appalling; sickening; horrifying. I can't choose an adjective.
Second, with artificial intelligence (AI) becoming more sophisticated, I can't understand how these gaming / tech companies can claim that they are unable to identify patterns of behavior / communications of their customers, and cut off the ones who demonstrate predatory behavior. If it is possible to run a sentiment analysis on a set of Twitter posts for marketing purposes, it is surely possible to identify a pattern of behavior as demonstrated in the chat texts illustrated with this article. Note that I don't see this as a free speech issue; rather, the gaming or tech company could allow the customer to re-apply [most likely under another anonymous ID, unfortunately]. At least make it more difficult for the predators.
Third, while I'm sure many parents / guardians already do this, they should explain some very basic rules to their minor children. Never give your name, age, address to anyone online. Someone who asks you to post nude pictures, means to harm you. That person might not not who they claim to be.
1
The indirect effect of creating so many controls and "protections" on such games is that the operators, creators and monitors will end up creating profiles on minor children. For their own good, of course.
One of the reasons why these children are so trusting in submitting these intimate photos is that they see teenagers and older people doing this regularly so that they may feel that "everyone does this".
1
As someone who was apart of the "Minecraft Online Chat Community," growing up I have seen so many servers that attempt to exploit children. It is incredibly difficult to ensure these adults don't exploit children because they usually have a whole community behind them. I was about 11 when I joined the Minecraft Community and at 13 I quit. These adults running these servers care nothing about the well-being of the kids playing their server, only sexual encounters, and money. I am really thankful for this article exposing the community.
11
I found a predator who was after my son before he did anything. How did I know? I monitored the comments on my son's youtube videos as he was posting every day with gaming clips. My son was proud of having over 100 followers at the time. Well this person was different. This man commented daily about how great the videos were. One day he asked my son how old he was. Though there was no personal information on this person's account, I looked him up, and could tell by his comments on other videos that he was an adult. What adult talks to a child everyday and praises him? A groomer that's who. Why ask my son's age (his voice hadn't changed yet)? Testing if he can get more personal. We caught this situation before this predator could go any further. Parents need to monitor all online interactions and take a proactive approach vs. waiting until their child gets one of these sinister messages as are the examples in this article. A message like those featured in this article are after the fact, and it's too late, the child has already been emotionally assaulted.
10
SpecialMom, good that you prevented the possible exploitation of your child, this time.
"We caught this situation before this predator could go any further. Parents need to monitor all online interactions and take a proactive approach vs. waiting until their child gets one of these sinister messages as are the examples in this article."
I do wonder, though, what has changed in recent years, so that it seems to be "normal" for minor children to post on YouTube or elsewhere online.
Perhaps someone -- not me -- could create a safer online space for children under age 18.
OK, never mind. Wishful thinking,
1
My son was about 7 when I let him play online (in the family room, screen facing me). The second day, I checked his Roblox friends list, all of four people. Three were his friends. The fourth was “Ashley’s friend.” I called Ashley’s mom. Ashley had “friends” she didn’t know in real life and her mom had absolutely no idea.
Be vigilant, parents. It took ONE DAY for a stranger to reach out to my child.
15
One of the main obstacles preventing change in this area is people's reluctance to talking about the issue. Heck, even this article - which is on the front page of the New York Times - barely has any comments compared to other NYT articles.
No one wants to talk about - or think about - child sexual abuse. In recent years, society has gotten much better at talking about a host issues that are painful and therefore uncomfortable: drug and alcohol addiction, violence against women, etc. Child sexual abuse is the most horrendous thing imaginable, and so most of us continue to avoid thinking about it. If we were able to talk about this issue as openly, loudly, and as often as we talk about other "uncomfortable" issues, gaming companies, tech corporations, and governments (federal, state, and local) would do more. Our collective silence continues to hurt so many vulnerable children.
Bravo to the New York Times for continuing to shed light on this extremely important issue.
2
If parents had their children contribute financially to the conduits to participate in gaming and using the internet (e.g. gaming consoles, tablets, computers, smartphones, and internet access), maybe there wouldn't be as much participation? Making kids be part of the process in procuring what they need to do this and educating them about the potential danger outlined in this article would put responsibility on two parties (parents and kids). Policing the gaming and chat companies would be harder. They are for profit and they don't care at whose expense they make their money. Don't be a sucker. Take responsibility and use the opportunity to educate your children so they don't fall prey.
Preventing the protection of children, tweens and teens, while enabling sexual predators is the U.S. public school system that often requires students to have an online presence for various homework assignments and to both communicate with other studetns and parents to communicate with the school.
All of American society was late to the game, pun intened, unaware and digital illiterate until approx. a decade ago, while gaming was 1980s.
The corporate news media was late to recognize and then refuse to adequately take seriously the digital tidal wave new medium in the 1990s.
There need to be international laws that enable law enforcement around the globe to detect, apprehend and prosecute digital criminls with lengthy, if not, life sentences that mean life. As we've seen with the Vatican, there is no justice for victims, only continued protection of predatory men.
There is no corner of humanity where men can be cured of their degrading sexual predation, nor are they ever going to care about their victims. Once upon a time, rape, molestation, kidnapping, were capital crimes. How is it that prior generations of mostly male cops and judges understood to lock 'em up and throw awy the key in order to protect society from deviant male predators? For the last couple of decades, women and children have been on their own as yet another and younger fungal males proudly used another tool out in the open for everyone to see.
All of the tech industry is complicit.
I disable chat on SONY and Microsoft game consoles; However but you cannot disable it 100% because some console games have their own chat system within the game.
Another in a long series of the-internet-is-evil articles in the New York Times. And this is genuine evil certainly. But these are the only articles the Times runs.
Online chat rooms have long been a source for all manner of anti-social activities. Not good, but not news.
Online multiplayer video gaming predates the adoption of the Internet as the network of choice and, in the main, remains a wholesome activity if evermore vapid as it more and more mimics single-player action games and is aimed at a younger and younger core audience.
In short, the medium is far from a monolith. And readers of the Times might understand that better if video gaming was covered the way television, film, and popular music is. If you only pay attention to it when a Fortnight appears - its popularity is beginning to fade, by the way - and in combination with this nation's penchant for sexual panic, you may have succeeded in frightening your readers without informing them.
1
Another reason not to have kids.
1
The line that got me is the one about getting Varsity points for gaming. Hey why not spinning the bottle!
To generalize, all interactive 'gaming' operates, in one way or another, on abuse. If it isn't sexual predation, it's some other kind of abuse. So first, shut down all "interactive" gaming, period. Work it out of the culture. When Putin's boys step into the void, it will be easier to spot them. (Then police the offline sex games for sadism and illegal graphics.) Next, make all "social media" legally liable for any predatory behavior conducted on its sites. First, though, you're going to have to dismiss the Ayn Rand majority on the Supreme Court.
Sexual desire cuts across all social and racial lines?? Shocking news.
Solving this issue means getting to bottom of why adults are attracted to minors in the first place--a phenomenon that has existed for all of human history. Our understanding of the mental health framework behind age-inappropriate attraction is pathetically inadequate. I guarantee you no adult chooses to harbor such attractions, but, as with all attractions, you can't just force yourself to stop. It just doesn't work. A robust clinical response is what we need. You can surveil the entire internet, you can imprison every transgressor, and you can educate gamers about online threats, but none of that will make this go away.
1
"When he brought up grooming, the panelists fell silent or changed the subject.
The audience, too, was quiet. In a festival with tens of thousands of attendees, Mr. Halpert’s talk had attracted just a half-dozen.
“People don’t want to talk about it,” he said."
You have gotten this far now consider how young school age mass murderers are groomed to commit murder. They don't play Minecraft. They are spending days playing combat killer games, as did Adam Lanza and Nikolas Cruz. Or they are interacting with who knows on chat sites like 4chan or 8chan, etc. Who would groom a person to be a killer? War vets who hate America. (Oh, we can't think that,we have to support the troops) The USA, and others, use mercenaries now. It's official policy. Or maybe you think such evil does not exist? that no one would do such a thing? Our soldiers are all good and decent people, you say. Not all of them. a significant percentage of American military vets are homeless, just to remind you that many have nothing and are full of resentment. But the guys grooming killers among us are probably well off and have money.
Ever talk to an experienced, persistent military recruiter? They are quite persuasive and many have killed before, and they are the good guys.
But never mind. I'm just a crazy man. ignore me. It's an unpleasant subject. Too difficult to even think about. Besides, its the NRA's fault. Everybody knows that.
In the article, you read "... those arrested came from all walks of life. Among them were a police officer, a teacher, a minister, a nurse, a bank manager, a mechanic, a waiter, a dental hygienist, a college student and a deliveryman."
It seems that the authors just assume that all these people are insane pedophiles who do these crazy things for personal reasons. But you don't really address the issue of their true motivation. Are they selling these pics they get from children? If yes, who are the buyers? Should the government target these websites that create incentives for people to sell child pornography as well? It even seems from their text messages that they use a unified script to target children. I understand that the last thing you want to do is to provide guidelines for other potential criminals but without studying this underlying motivation the article seems incomplete.
What baffles me in reading these recent articles about online sexual abuse of children is the absolute scale of it. Why are there so many people out there who want to sexually abuse children? What is wrong with our society or with human beings that so many people are sexually attracted to CHILDREN? I know pedophilia is nothing new, but the fact that there are THOUSANDS of people out there who regularly go online to sexually abuse kids is disgusting. What are we doing wrong and how can we fix this? And if we can't fix the urges, how can we fix people's moral compass so that they don't feel the need to abuse innocent kids?
2
The prosecutor in New Jersey claimed there is no profile for these predators:
“It cuts across all social and racial lines, across class lines — it cuts across every line,” Ms. Hoffman said. “There is no profile.”
She failed to mention gender. Hm.
5
Glad I'm not a parent. I would be terrible. My kids would hate me and would probably run away from home or plot to murder me. No TV, No video games, no Facebook and North Korean level of internet access. or I could become Amish, without the Bible.
1
Not just sextortion. A lot of online gaming sites have just as big a problem with white supremacy recruitment.
1
I find it remarkable that the popular opinion is that the companies, the FBI, the teachers, the cops everyone else needs to find the solution. Parents, do NOT let your kids play these games. Where is your backbone? Start the "Mean Moms" club. These games are obsessive and as we read here, dangerous. Seriously, it didn't occur to you that predators are out there reeling in kids? The colleges offering gaming scholarships should be ashamed of themselves. There isn't a company out there that actually cares about your son or daughter. Watch a 2001 Frontline documentary: The Merchants of Cool. The vehicle for pulling in your kids may have changed, the corporate goal of steaming ahead to profits has not.
The only people capable of protecting your kids is you. Stop passing the buck.
2
Child's play? And just for the sake of very pointed contrast, one should refer to the wonderful piece in today's paper on "Around the World in 5 Kid's Games, "focusing on kid's handclapping games. The psychological import of those face-to-face games are manifest in being able to help enculturate a child, as well as soothe a very real range of difficult issues. What is it exactly that computer games provide to our children, psychologically speaking?
2
If these sites/chat venues cannot be run safely, they should not allowed to run at all.
It's pretty simple.
7
They do that in Communist China.
I understand the article is focused on grooming. But why are the children so vulnerable? It is because the neighborhoods they live in have no places for children to go, and have a social life with people their age.
2
It's because men everywhere made daily life unsafe for women, then girls and now also boys. Indoors and outdoors.
1
One simple solution would be to simply turn off the chat feature in games.
Though many games have chat features, there is a distinction between gaming and chatting. When two people play chess together on a physical board in a room, there is a game whether they ever talk to one another or not. In fact, in most serious chess competitions, there is little or no talk between players during a game.
A computer game is still a game whether or not it includes chatting.
5
I had to care for my 10-year-old nephew for a couple of months a few years ago and he was obsessed with Minecraft, sneaking onto the game site against his mother's prohibition when he was supposed to be doing homework on an educational site. Once when I caught him on the Minecraft site again, I got him to show me the messages in the chat posts from his "friends." It took me seconds to recognize that one of them was an adult creep, and when I told him so, he acted cavalier about it and said he knew it, and he laughed. Whether he was pretending to know more than he did, I can't say. But I told him emphatically that he shouldn't be talking to creeps like that and that the character haunting the chat room was sick.
If it took me no time at all to determine that the weirdo in the chat room was no kid, why is it so damned hard for the people running these sites to do the same? One gets sick of people at these companies insulting our intelligence with their protestations of concern. All they seem to care about is the money they rake in by exploiting kids.
22
I know someone who was groomed and manipulated into sexual behavior. She told me there are You Tube channels where they proudly post videos showing acts of abuse. I was shocked. How come You Tube doesn't shut down these channels? I don't do any kind of social media so I'm ignorant about these things. How come these major companies aren't responsible for making sure their sites don't advertise abuse!
There should be social responsibility by social media companies. Anyone who is abused and it is on the Internet should be able to sue the company that allowed it to be displayed. This is filming crimes and showing it for entertainment!
5
How come PARENTS are not more responsible for their kids' well-being? Honestly; expecting some money-grubbing, faceless corp to do your parenting for you is insane. That attitude is almost as irritating as breeders pumping out kids, and then expecting the rest of us to fund their support via tax credits, school taxes, etc.
1
YouTube is owned by Google.
'Nough said.
Same as other sites and apps owned by Facebook.
1
This is horrifying. It makes me want to take a sledgehammer to every computer, device and server that connects people to the internet. I don’t care if it makes it easy for you to order toilet paper from Amazon or for me to comment on the NYT. The internet has become a dystopian nightmare. We were better off without it.
4
I don’t have kids, but I am reasonably savvy when it comes to tech issues. Hence I am the go-to guy in my department at work when someone has an issue with their phones or computers or tablets, or those of their kids.
It is astounding to me — truly astounding — how many parents let their kids loose online with absolutely no idea whatsoever what they are doing or how to even monitor their behavior. They laugh and shrug, “You know I’m terrible at this kinda stuff!” They don’t laugh so much when I reply, “Well, your lack of knowledge means your kids are prime targets for sexual predators.”
Seriously, parents: get the tools you need to protect your kids. Ignorance or claims that you’re “too old to learn” are no excuse.
16
The thing is, this is easily fixed with education - both for children and for perverts. Educating perverts would involve a couple of high-profile arrests following an attempted extortion of an FBI agent.
Seriously, the police needs to work with Kik, Discord, Steam and other platforms. They all have means to quickly find the predators - quite often these platforms will have the predators' credit card and billing addresses.
And lastly, it's probably a high time to make sure that "I'll send your pictures to your school" can not be perceived as a threat. It's shameful that schools ARE a threat to children.
2
While it is critically important that parents become sufficiently aware of the technologies to enable them to provide the supervision and guidance their kids need. Do not let them play when you're not home or play behind a closed door. Another critical part of this also needs to be addressed in the punitive phase of the criminal justice system. If, as a good amount of research suggests, pedophiles do not change then the sentencing models for these people need to change. The degree of danger these people present to society really should inform how they're sentenced and, if allowed out, how they're supervised and for how long. This isn't about deterrence, but simply removing or reducing what is an ongoing threat from a particular kind of offender who has a near certainty to reoffend.
1
How about: Do not let them play, full stop! Nobody "needs" to play video games. Most of the people who ever lived on this planet, from prehistoric times until the present day, did NOT play video games.
Parents allow kids to define a 'need' - and then the parents give in to the 'need' - and then the parents plead ignorance to what's going on with online predators! This is insanity made manifest.
2
It's not all that different when predators prowled playgrounds. At one time, we allowed (and many still do) our kids pretty free rein after school and during summer vacations. The predators were around then too. We cannot make any environment perfectly safe as much as we'd like to. The more we clamp down, the more things we give up - especially things that will make them fully functioning adults. Yes, there is risk and that risk is real, but the risk on one particular child being targeting is odds equivalent to being struck by lightning. Technology will always present new challenges and, much as we'd like to, we can't turn the clock back. I wouldn't take this away from my kids (I didn't when they were young), but we did make sure that playing was done in a public space in the house. I would NEVER let a child under the age of 12 (maybe 10) play without an adult present never an online game. But, at some point, just like we let them ride the subway or take a bus alone, they get to play in these online communities. They will in any case, either in your home with your supervision or at a friends house with maybe no supervision. It's the same as it's always been the instruments are just different.
There is just so much that's wrong with our culture, and it is obvious from the Ms. Bowles' reporting.
The rise of these technologies, devices, and gaming communities destroyed the typical control parents had over their children's interaction to the outside world. No sane parent would trust a complete stranger coming up to their child in public, but they permit it on the internet by giving their children access to strangers in ways and places that parents aren't controlling and accessing.
Why? It's baffling. Parents should be parents. Cut off the access!
There's no reason for gaming scholarships. If there is nothing the industry can or will do, parents have to take things into their own hands and refuse to permit their children to play these games.
None of this "well everyone is doing it, my friend X is doing it." Parents need to train their children not to follow the crowd, but to be independent minded. There's no alternative when it's clear the industry players don't always have children's well being in mind. They are about profit, nothing more.
9
This is as well-intentioned as it is unrealistic. The real solution is identification. Perhaps there should be offices everywhere where people register in person and are photographed before being able to access any game online. And then gaming companies should only permit identified people to play. It sounds a bit fascist. But it would certainly solve the problem. If you are an adult who plays games for the fun and challenge of it, why should you care if your real identity is known?
We will never outsmart -not with 100% certainty - online monsters who want to hurt, humiliate, and degrade our precious children. Nothing is stronger and more protective than teaching YOUR child why the internet - unlike their school community, neighborhood, or other places where we see the people we interact with/use judgment and intuition - is NEVER safe for developing personal relationships. I was given a copy of Gavin de Becker's "Protecting the gift: keeping children safe and parents sane" when my daughter was just 2. I initially thought - "Why do I need this? She's never alone." I learned that's the perfect age to gently but consistently help your child to develop your child's intuition and judgment skills, even in the most mundane interaction (e.g. with a cashier). How what we tell children (find a policeman) is wrong. The book has saved us twice from potentially dangerous situations. My oldest is now at college, and if there's one thing I don't worry about, it's her ability to use her finely honed intuition and judgement about people, developed and cultivated over years on the street corners, subways, and shops of the UWS. My profound thanks to Mr. de Becker. I strongly encourage all parents to read this book that does exactly what the title promises - keeps our children safe, and parents sane.
1
Whenever we have a domestic terrorist attack, which is relatively rare compared to our total gun/death injury total of app. 100k+, we increase defense, safety budgets by billions of dollars and do something about it.
After 9/11 we created Homeland security and spent trillions of dollars. As a result there has not been one foreign terrorist incident that started from abroad.
When we have an increase in sexual predators or gun death totals we do nothing or actual retrogress.
Stunning..
11
I've worked for several game companies, and protecting children from predators is not even on the radar. Game companies usually have three goals: 1. Make a fun game, 2. Get people to pay for it, 3. Get them to come back. That's it.
Parents have to be way more involved in what their kids are doing. It's horrible to have a conversation with your child about "not sending nudes," but at this point in time, that's what we have to do.
28
This is true ONLY because platforms are not held liable for the risk that they create and from which they profit. Once the first CEO rots in jail for the rest of their life, their goals will change to align with society's values.
1
It may help to remember when one was a child, or in early adolescence, the latter known as 'The Rebellious Years', according to Quentin Crisp, author of 'The Naked Civil Servant' and a transvestite.
In hindsight, he wrote in his autobiographical notes that he felt the need to be recognized, and walking down the countryside road, wearing lipstick and slap, ensured that he was noticed and beaten up by his peers.
Times may have changed and 'Look At Me!' is taking place at a distance far more sinister than in yesteryears. Earlier, steaming on memory lane, a pamphlet on an artist's exhibition in the 60s showing portraits of children, nature morte, religious themes and landscapes came to this reader's eyes.
'If asked, do not remove your clothes' was a gentle cautionary note on the part of my parent, also an artist, and at age 12, I understood that such revealing displays do not make for free spirits.
How to instill a 'sense of self-respect in children', without creating a fear and mistrust of adults, is more difficult with these extensive online hunting grounds out in the wild of cyberspace. Parents are not always in the picture, and a stronger governance policy is needed.
Predators to be warned that their 'privacy rights', in order to stalk minors online or elsewhere, carries heavy fines and sentences. Government plays a role here, and it is known as safeguarding CHILDREN'S WELFARE.
Hmm, there is always a forum for abuse, this one is not news at all. Plenty of stories about abuse on game chat. Been on game chat for years, where was the story then? Come on this is why online games are great but not for some.
Get one of the many internet monitor/protection programs the minute your kid is born. Do NOT post any of your kid's pictures to the Internet. If "familial connection" is important to you then set up a private VPN. Monitor your kid's communications on a daily basis. Yes, that means reading them.
Sorry to those hipster/boomers who are going to shriek about privacy but believe me, these predators are a lot smarter than you and will use this against not only you but your kid. No amount of "family talking" is going to stop them. Understand this -- they are smarter than you when it comes to manipulating a child. And unless you are in New Jersey, you will not be able to do anything about the inevitable predators until it is too late.
2
In the mid 1980s, when my mother turned 70, she became one of the earliest users of AOL. She laughingly remarked about having been in a chat room where someone claiming to be a 13-year-old boy started flirting. "I suppose he thinks I'm a teenager, too," she said. "I shut down the chat, would hate to disappoint him."
At the time, we both thought it was funny.
7
There's no technology sophisticated enough to filter out these creeps or their messages, and children are exposed (as they always have been) to predators in multiple situations. It's ultimately up to the parents to educate their kids about how to spot a potential predator and to not feel ashamed to alert them when they have been approached by one.
3
Of course there is technology.
Often the kids DO know it's wrong, just as they know stealing cookies and candy is wrong. Sociopath adults inherently understand how to pretend to be another kid, that the easiest ways to woo kids is to play to their emerging desire and thrill of becoming independent of parents.
Good luck. In addition to educating little kids before letting them do even one thing online, just as you would not et them play with matches and broken glass --- stop handing kids their own phone and tablets and even computers while in elementary school. Until they prove some level of responsibility, lockdown devices and even WiFi access with passcodes the offspring cannot figure out.
And don't just lecture the kid, ask them if they understand how computers and WiFi work + how easy it is for the bad guys to reach out and trick them.
1
It's not just gaming sites. It's art sites (especially those emphasizing manga), subculture sites emphasizing cosplay, and more. The sites that see this traffic, and they do see it, know who they are but keep collecting the cash. And God bless New Jersey for prosecuting these monsters. The police and judicial system in Santa Clara County in California might learn something from New Jersey, but perhaps it will take the removal of more judges than Aaron Persky (the famous "3 months for violent rape because he was a Stanford swimmer" judge) before a child victim of this kind of predation can get protection or redress.
5
I'm not saying we're immune from this kind of horrific attack, but I hope it is helpful that our kids don't have smartphones and the only place to play video games is in the living room.
9
Posting as Phyllis K Fess Baker:
“There is no profile.” I am 65 years old and have worked as a licensed clinical therapist, in three states, for about 30-50 years in state correctional hospitals, prisons, and private ventures: all dealing with sexual predators and court proceedings. Indeed, there IS a profile. It lies in the backgrounds of these clients; not the foreground.
11
There is one profile detail that narrows the field by about half. The predators are nearly all male.
Then look at the background.
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Old school video game parlours were and, where they exist today, still are areas where predators lurk. It is important to be aware.
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If you included the quote from Bubba Gaeddert to rile people up, well, it worked.
"Who's to blame--schools, society, parents?"
"Well, it's all of us."
No, it's not "all of us." I'll state the obvious: the abusers are to blame. So are the companies making a buck while doing nothing to protect their customers.
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AS A PARENT, GRANDPARENT, TEACHER and Psychologist who works primarily with kids, I'm appalled at the abuse of the anonymity of the Internet by sexual predators, who now have taken to tracking down kids using video games. I'm not savvy enough about ways to block such activities. But I believe that one way would be for kids to use the anonymous mode. It seems to me that while the websites sponsoring the games may be able to identify the kids, they would be, in theory, invisible to those outside the monitors of the online games. Of course, the monitors would require adequate clearances to ensure that it is suitable for them to have contact with children. Easier said than done! If the owners of the video games have legal exposure (which logically the would--but our world is anything but logical), the game developers would lead the charge to make games safer for kids.
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I am in my thirties and grew up in the first stages of the mainstream internet. I met some great people, but I also inadvertently viewed some disturbing images in the course of otherwise innocent internet surfing and gaming. I was never blackmailed or threatened, but one or two instances came close, and I'm a guy. I do not yet have children, but if I do, they will not have access to online games until they are older, and we will have "the talk" about what appropriate internet interactions are and where the dangers lie. It's a dangerous world out there.
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I hope Pulitzer is keeping their eye on Mr. Keller.
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Yes, because the 2% of kids targeted by online predators is a far greater safety concern than the 98% of kids molested every day by their family relatives, neighbors, priests, teachers, etc. If a Pulitzer Prize is awarded to Michael Keller, I hope the prize-givers refer to his news piece as "Stranger Danger: The Sequel."
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This goes beyond the internet. The internet is just a tool that makes it easier for predators. Parents need to teach their children about the correct body parts so they can accurately name any inappropriate touching, about sex, so children understand they can talk to their parents and ask questions as they are curious, and about tricky people. And they need to teach their children these things about four years earlier than they think, around 7-9. Most parents I know are too afraid to talk about sex/body parts with their children, putting their children more at risk to be taking advantage of.
I'm a teacher and a parent, and one of the best tools I have every seen to help children and parents navigate predators is Pattie Fitzgerald's book, "No Trespassing -- This is MY Body!" It introduces the concept of "tricky people" rather than "stranger danger." Stranger danger doesn't work because we ask children to talk to strangers all the time -- at the bank, at a new school, when Mom and Dad run into a colleague. This book teaches kids rules to identify "tricky people," people that are pretending to be your friend but aren't. One of the rules, for example, is that a grown-up should never ask a child for help if there are other grown-ups around; this is a sign that that person is a "tricky person."
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This is so true, I remember trying to explain stranger danger to my 2 year old 25 years ago. He kept asking questions, is this person a strange, is that person a stranger. Finally, in exasperation, I just said, look if anyone tries to touch you inappropriately, or asks you to go with them or help them you just scream your head off. He stopped asking questions, but a half an hour later came back and asked me if his head would actually come off if he started screaming. I'm just glad that we were dealing with actual playgrounds and not virtual ones.
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I was a moderator of teen games for 5 years. This is tame. However, it is important to note that predators start out with an innocuous phrase, such as, "Hi. How are you." Filters are getting more sophisticated in connecting innocuous phrases with someone's age, frequency of targeting the same kind of person, etc. I would be surprised if predators speak this way on the online game service, which they know is being watched like a hawk. They want to get the kids off these sites and onto Messenger or some other non-monitored platform.
What you are describing is when a predator already has the kid. Then he does things like ask him if he has had sex with his father, thereby being unfaithful to him. Or ask a boy to put on makeup and a dress. Their goal is to drive a wedge of trust between the child and his/her parents. Also, predators do not target only one kid. They target as many as they can, across gender and geographical barriers. They have many different accounts, and are on at least one of them all the time.
When you're dealing with text alone, the job is to convince police officers to spend the money to do a sting, where they can search the home, find the computer, and have a good likelihood of finding child pornography on that computer. That is against the law in the United States. The text you have at the top of this article is currently not against the law.
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Predators targeting children have ALWAYS been present in society. What changes is their methods of stalking and baiting the children.
As always, it is incumbent on parents to remain vigilant in terms of what their children are doing, where they are, and who they are interacting with. It was true 50 years ago, and it remains true today. It's just that today.. the "candy" they offer is largely virtual, an not being teased from the open door of a van or car.
Not understanding the technology at play here, or the fact that the new generation of children are highly integrated into the internet and social media channels is no excuse.
Stay on target..and ALWAYS assume someone is reaching out for your child. Educate your child and build a trust relationship with there where they are OK with you keeping tabs on their online communications. If the child balks or refuses... severely cut back on their access until you are sure they get the seriousness of this issue.
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They are, for the most part, not "offering" anything. They are threatening, blackmailing, extorting.
Those are crimes. And if the operators of these chats cannot curtail them, they should not be allowed to operate.