Internet Safety Month Highlights Growing Threats to Children Online

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning. Let’s keep our kids safe? And who works hard at it? Well we have Lynn shaw Lyn’swarriors dot org and Lynn, what are you doing to keep our kids safe this week?

0:14 Speaker 2 Good morning, John. June is Internet Safety Month. You know we have a month, but it should be Internet safety every single day, but June is designated as the Internet Safety Month. And I want to talk today about three different apps that most children are on. Their parents caregivers have approved. But you know what, they don’t understand how

0:37 dangerous these three apps are. And that’s Kick, Kik, Discord and Roadblocks. Now Roadblocks and I ask parents that are like, wow, that’s kids making games and coding and creating. That’s gaming. Then we have Kick and Discord. Those are messaging apps.

0:53 So I want to sound the alarm about this because kids are spending hours a day on these apps. We’ve got millions of millions of American kids. And although people will fight and say, well, you know, they offer entertainment, they offer opportunities for connection, they also expose our kids to significant risks, which is the grooming, exploitation, sex stortion,

1:15 sexual content, predatory behavior. John, Remember wherever the kids are, so are the predators. So the one thing I want to drill, you know, into everybody’s minds is parents and grandparents and caregivers think if something is a popular app, then it must be safe. And we’re here to say those three things. Kick, Discord, messaging apps, and the gaming

1:38 roadblocks are not safe because they rely on self reported ages. John, So a twelve year old could sign on and say yeah, I’m eighteen years old, and there’s no you know, cross verification, which means all these bad actors, these predators can just sign on and say yeah, I’m a twelve year old kid, and they create false accounts, false identities, and nobody’s checking

1:58 on anything. John. Children are far more vulnerable than any of us even realize. So again we want to bring awareness of the warriors. It’s not about fear. Parents must understand and also grandparents must understand that their children are spending online so much time and communicating what could be these predators. So again it’s called Discord, a messaging app, roadblocks,

2:22 and Kick. And we have many documented cases where kids are talking to adults, they are being groomed with this sexual content, and we even have kids going out to meet these strangers in real time. So you know, we think that this social interaction that the big tech companies keep telling us, yeah, it’s for our kids, it’s social interaction,

2:41 But there’s no illness, John, on the big tech to take any safety measures. Again, they’re leading it up to parents, grandparents and caregivers. So most of the time, a lot of it’s harmless, but you know what, there’s a lot that’s not harmless. So wherever the kids are, when there are unknown adults we know lurking as fellow you know,

2:59 other kids, we have to call them out. And these three platforms kick discord and roadblocks have been called out, have been brought to the table, have been brought in front of Congress, and they still have done nothing to help any of us. So I think John, the thing is parents again, have to know what app your kids

3:17 are using. Privacy settings always on the devices, Talk to your kids. We say this every week. Keep devices out of bedrooms at night, let kids sleep, lock them away. Teach kids never to share their personal information. John, I can’t stress this.

3:31 Speaker 1 It’s hard to teach them. You know, when you get to be fourteen or fifteen, they become you know, their own souls.

3:39 Speaker 2 They think they know everything. They’re the smartest. But you know what they’re learning from these strangers online, So let them learn things from us, because parents will say to me, I don’t want to open the can of worms if I talk about pornography east extortion. I’m here to say, you’d better talk about it because they’re learning it anyway

3:55 from strangers online on these three apps again, Roadblocks, Court and Kick Okay, And what they do is they get the kids to go to the dms, the direct messages, and that’s where you know they’ll say, come come over here to the DM and let me talk more to you, because you’re doing such a great thing.

4:12 Speaker 1 Joe there. Let me ask you, if I’m a parent and you are the collector of problems in the world, if you have a website, I can send you my problems so then you consolidate the problems and report them to the powers of beat.

4:27 Speaker 2 Yeah, we have an excellent website. It is my great colleague Chris McKenna. It is called Protect young Eyes dot com. Protect young Eyes dot Com. What Chris does he abrogates. He has taken every app and John. These are popping up on a daily basis. It is hard for even the experts such as Chris McKenna, to keep up with

4:44 the warriors, to keep up with we do our best. Again, they’re popping up every day. You go to protect young eyes dot com. You can look at the list every single app, what has just been announced that day, the day before. Chris will give you directions on how you put safety measures, how you deal with it, also the

5:01 resources for if there is a problem. But again, any of these problems with big tech, John, it is a chain of keeping records and that is local law enforcement, I dare say, because they are overburdened in a lot of the cities especially, you have to go right to your local FBI office and report anything sexual and they

5:23 will take the case.

5:24 Speaker 1 From They have a website too. They have a hotline, don’t they.

5:32 Speaker 2 It’s like, you know, I have to look it up exactly. It’s like one eight hundred call FBI, I think is what it is. But everybody has. People don’t realize this, John, there are local FBI offices across the United States. That is where you’ve got to go and make a report and get them involved with this. Because I used to

5:48 say nine listen.

5:49 Speaker 1 Let’s repeat, let’s repeat those the other days. One call FBI you feel is the FBI line in the other one.

5:56 Speaker 2 The FBI, John, local FBI local FBI.

6:00 Speaker 1 And what was the other one that you said about reporting your websites.

6:04 Speaker 2 The greatest one is to put safety measures and to understand these apps and gaming is protect young eyes dot com and that young eyes.

6:12 Speaker 1 Young eyes dot com.

6:14 Speaker 2 Dot com it’s you know, eighteen and under, so minors. He’s got everything laid out. Not only that, our friend Chris McKenna, we worked extensively with him a lot in DC, you know, across the country. You can email him and he will answer any questions. He’s excellent about all of this.

6:30 Thank you our resources out there.

6:32 Speaker 1 We’re out of time, but thank you very much. Protect young eyes dot com and we’ll talk to you again real soon. Thank you so much.

6:42 Speaker 2 Thank you, John,