My son was groomed online — I had no idea Advice for parents
Iclicked into a message on my son’s phone to find a girl had been asking him for sexual favours in exchange for money. And it wasn’t a one-way conversation, my son had been replying to the messages. I use the term ‘girl’ loosely, as we all know the dangers of talking to strangers online.
That message could well have been authored by a 60-year-old man masquerading as a 15-year-old girl.
I thought I was clued-up and across it all when I allowed my son to have an Instagram account. At 14, he’s somewhat mature, smart, has good common sense, and like the rest of his generation – techsavvy.
The account was to be used for keeping in contact with his gaming friends – there were only four of them (one is my brother) and the rest were school friends.
And a group he shares with a few of his friends in his sports teams.
His phone has a password but both me and his father have this password.
His phone is subject to random checks and it has to be charged in our rooms overnight – no exceptions.
When I asked him about the messages, he said he usually gets random messages like this.
For the most part, he ignores them. But this online relationship started off innocently enough.
They shared a few things in common, they played the same online games, they were about the same age, and they both liked sports.
But after only a week, the messages turned from being innocent to being explicit.
My teen ignored the explicit messages for the most part. He replied with question marks to a few of her requests.
She even asked if he had access to his parent’s credit card details.
He was being groomed online.
It had only been six days since I last checked my son’s phone – six days.
There were 220 messages from the girl, and just 20 from my son.
I thought I had given my kids the tools to be able to safely navigate the online world, but to be fair, the bulk of our safety messages involved situations that happened in the real world – not online.
I had to ask myself whether I could have done more. The question is yes – I could have.
While I’m glad that nothing more serious happened in this instance – what else can we do as a family to prevent this happening, and can you avoid it from happening?
I immediately looked for online resources to educate myself.
I found several concerning news articles about children being groomed online in New Zealand.
But thankfully I also found a few helpful tools around screentime in general, but I encourage parents to take some time to sit with their children and go through specific scenarios.
Netsafe has an online safety parent toolkit – a step-by-step into keeping kids online and some great informative articles.
They explain terms like catfishing, how online grooming works, and what you can do to prevent unwanted contact – exactly the information that could have come in handy exactly a week ago.
But you don’t know what you don’t know.
So many of the resources I found, however, were targeted at online gaming and addiction to screens – both equally important issues when it comes to children using devices.
■ Where to get help:
If you suspect your child is being groomed online, try to capture all of the evidence. Police: If you’re concerned about the child or someone else’s immediate safety, call 111. Netsafe: We can provide you with guidance and support seven days a week. You can fill out an online contact form, email help@netsafe.org.nz, text ‘Netsafe’ to 4282 or call us 0508 NETSAFE (0508 638 723).
DIA: The Department of Internal Affairs’ Digital Safety Group is responsible for enforcing the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993. If you are concerned about objectionable harmful content you’ve seen online, please fill in their online content complaint form. Social media sites: If grooming has happened on a social networking platform, you can report what happened using the reporting system on each platform. It’s important that before you do this that you talk to the Police or Netsafe as reporting may make it more difficult if the Police investigate.
As well as online predators, there is also the issue of excessive screentime or excessive gaming.
Mathew McMillan, an addiction clinician and director of Addiction
Advice Ltd, describes these as ‘‘an emerging youth mental health issue’’.
McMillan is typically approached by the parents of 12 to 17-year-old boys, some of whom are gaming 12 to 15 hours a day.
Problems around screentime, he said, was an issue that is going to be affecting middle class working families more and more.
The problem was, was that there was ‘‘nothing out there’’ for them – no kind of referral pathway to follow like other mental health issues.
McMillan said work was being done to look at the crossover from gambling and gaming at a bureaucratic level.
It’s not practical to remove screens altogether – especially since they’re needed for schoolwork and socialising.
I soaked up all of the advice, but there is a need for more resourcing and messaging around this type of behaviour, especially since devices and the internet have become commonplace at home and at school.
While I encourage you to do your own online reading, please click into and read the attached links.
The more we can educate ourselves and our kids, the safer they will be.
Donna-Lee Biddle is an investigator with the Criminal Cases Review Commission. She is a former journalist and regular Opinion contributor.