PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Kids’ screen time nearly doubled during the pandemic — and they are on more gaming consoles and social media apps, and in chat rooms, communicating with friends and strangers alike. Lurking among them are predators, disguised as kids, authorities warn.
A new episode of the KYW Newsradio original podcast In Depth contains some tips for keeping kids safe online, and how to monitor them, while also giving them privacy.
Listen here:
“They are hunting, and they are going to hunt where they know kids are,” Philadelphia Police Det. Kate Gordon said. “They know that kids are on games. They know that kids are on the depression sites. They know they’re on Snapchat. They know they are on Instagram.”
Gordon works trafficking cases involving children in the Police Department’s special victims unit. She says online predators try to connect with kids any way they can, slowly building trust and an online friendship.
“They mimic that child’s things that they like, their interests, their hobbies,” Gordon said.
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She says the SVU has investigated hundreds of cases in which kids are picked up by adults from other states — or the kids use ride-sharing apps to go meet with them — without their parents knowing.
She says the predators are focused. “Predators will pay more attention to your child than [the person] you had that child with,” Gordon said.
Officer Stephanie Rosenbaum, with the department’s human trafficking unit, says it doesn’t matter where the kids are from, their race or gender, or their socio-economic background — kids from all walks of life have fallen for the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
“They’ll play games together. They’ll get into their groups and then they’ll start chatting off to the side. And typically these people are complete strangers who may identify themselves as being a 13-year-old girl, and really they are a 60-year-old man,” Rosenbaum said.
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“They start asking personal questions, they start asking where [the children] go to school. They start asking about personal experiences, boyfriend/girlfriend stuff. ‘Oh, I had a girlfriend. I am upset. We broke up.’ And then, ‘Did that ever happen to you?’ And then this level of trust that builds over time.”
Gordon advises parents to stay involved in kids’ digital lives: Connect their devices to yours and actively monitor activity, while also keeping open lines of communication, so they are aware olf the dangers to avoid online.
To learn more about how to keep your kids safe online — including some things you might not have thought about — listen to the KYW Newsradio ‘In Depth’ episode, “The Hidden Face of Human Trafficking,” now available on the Audacy app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Listen here: