The cyber world of summer vacation

This month, schools will be letting out for the summer and for most kids, the fun begins. Swimming, riding bikes, and all the other activities that come with a few months of freedom from school.

I have mentioned before the increased danger of online perpetrators for children. During the summer, we often see a rise in these types of crime because of the extra time that a child has to spend online. Before the days when most children had access to a smart phone or computer, the dangers increased of physical contact with strangers because of the added time spent outdoors.

Although that is still a concern to keep in mind, we find we are working far more cases that include social media. It is common for the victims to say they had no idea the person they had been talking to was not who they thought, or not the age they thought. Predators turn to online methods to seek out their victims because they know how vulnerable a child can be.

As children use smart phones and computers at a younger age, there are certain apps that parents should be cautious about. Apps like Snap Chat, Whisper, Kik Messenger, and Facebook are just some of the apps we see involved in issues with children. Snap Chat is a common app children like to use because it automatically deletes the photo or message shortly after it is read. However, there are now many apps designed to capture those images (which usually end up on a website) without the sender knowing it.

Apps designed to hide or delete information from a device often encourage the child to have conversations, or even send photos, that they would normally never send. These types of apps make it easy for a predator to chat with a child, talk them into sending photos to them, and then post them to websites or send them out to other people. We have had children’s photos posted to websites that become almost impossible to remove because the sites are hosted in other countries.

The virtual world appears to be a part of our society that is here to stay, and will more than likely continue to increase. It will permeate more of our children’s lives as they grow up, much more than ours. Remember that it is okay to monitor what your child does on the computer or smart phone.

We still see far too often children who have become victimized by someone and the parents knew nothing about the app, website, or chat room their child was using to interact with people they thought were their age, and their friends. Children want to interact with other children their age, and these devices have made it very easy for them to do so, but we must make sure they are not being lured by someone who wants only to harm them. As they start their summer of fun, take just a moment to make sure you know who and where they are interacting in the cyber world.