SAFETY TIP OF THE WEEK

Know when your child is sharing their location with peers on their various apps. They may be giving their location to people you don’t know or trust.

TODAY’S TOPIC

From Digital Stardom to Cyberstalking

When we connect with new people today, we often add them on social media before even exchanging phone numbers. Like a digital resume, our Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok accounts show our new friends and colleagues who we are and what we like. Our online personae have become ingrained in the way we connect with each other. 

While we might think of these tools as harmless, natural parts of how we meet new people, they can pose real dangers when bad actors exploit them. A person can cultivate a positive online appearance while still having malicious intentions against the people they connect with. Tools like location tracking can be a fun way of checking in on our friends, but they can also help cyberstalkers make physical contact with their prey. A new connection on social media might make us feel seen and appreciated, when we are in reality the object of a stranger’s obsession. 

In 2021, a 13 year-old girl was stalked online after her TikTok began to get a large following. The 18 year-old stalker drove from Maryland to Florida with a firearm, intent on taking her from her home by force. He directly messaged her followers on TikTok in order to find her precise location, then attempted twice to reach her with the gun before her father fatally shot him on their property. Even after taking steps to throw the stalker off, such as blocking him on various apps, he was nevertheless able to find her.

_{WHAT CAN YOU DO?}

The information that we put online can have truly dire consequences: it is imperative that your child shares their information only with people you trust. Cyberstalkers are often able to gather more information about us than we realize we are sharing. Follow these tips for preventing your child’s information from getting into the hands of cyberstalkers:

• Know Who Is Able to See Your Child’s Location: Apple products, Google Maps, and Snapchat have location sharing services that you can regulate on your devices. Make sure to check in with your child to know when they are sharing their location with people you don’t know. 

• Monitor Your Child’s Social Media Posts for Location Sharing: Apps like Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat allow you to tag locations in posts. While this can seem harmless, cyberstalkers can use this information to find your child’s location and follow them.

• Monitor Your Child’s Posts for Inappropriate Content: Gen Z and Gen Alpha kids are growing up in a world where being an influencer feels like an easy way to make a career and become popular. When trying to get more likes on their posts, they may try posting things that are not age appropriate, and this can solicit attention from the wrong people. Talk to your child about the dangers of putting too much of their information online. 

Sometimes conversations about these tools feel like fighting a losing battle. Social media and other technologies exert a lot of social and emotional pressure on children to pull them in. The companies behind these apps have the resources and the freedom to push themselves on kids, and we would be hard pressed to draw their attention away from their apps. At the end of the day, we all want and need human connection, especially from the people closest to us. Honesty, authenticity, and quality time are the best ways to encourage openness with your child: be sure to prioritize these small gestures, as they can help your child realize that you are in their corner and only want the best for them.

▶ Slang Word of the Week: “Lurk” v. – stalking a social media page to get to know as much as possible about the creator of the page without making direct contact with the creator. Usually lurking involves surreptitiously stalking a person’s stories, though it is not necessarily a malicious activity.