Yes, your child is being targeted by online predators
By Kimberly Ells, Mercator.
For many parents, the day they find out their child is being approached, targeted, educated, and manipulated by strangers on his or her digital devices is the day they finally take seriously all the warnings and admonitions about phone and digital device use they have heard for years. By that time, often great damage has been done.
It is never too late to take action to protect your child, but the sooner you do so, the less damage will be done.
If you think that digital abuse, moral deprogramming, transgender grooming, addiction, or even trafficking can’t happen to your child (because your child comes from a good family, or your child is smarter than that, or you’ve already warned them about digital dangers), you’re wrong.
Here are three real examples from good families with smart kids who talked about digital dangers together and still faced serious digital entanglement and danger.
Jenna
Jenna needed an iPad to do some of her junior high school homework on. Her parents got her one and discussed basic digital safely with her. At first, they made sure it was used sparingly and put away every night.
Over time, the presence of the iPad became normal, and her parents forgot to stow it at night. Jenna began taking it with her into her room at night. She encountered increasingly dark and disturbing content on it. She continued to consume this content, even though she wasn’t sure why she was doing it, and over time she became increasingly despondent, irritable, and sad.
Her mother finally noted the difference in Jenna and asked her about it. By this point, Jenna was experiencing suicidal thoughts. She told her mom about the iPad and everything she’d been accessing on it, as well as her feelings of despair.
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