A message to parents — protect your children online
We need to be paying attention.
There are so many reasons to pay attention to what your kids are doing online.
We’ve all seen it and many of us have been guilty of it — just letting your kids pop on an internet-capable device and then go about your day. You see it at ballgames, in the park, at church and even at home.
As parents we’re all stressed out, trying to keep up, constantly moving and constantly working.
And that is how our kids can fall down a rabbit hole into some pretty dark places.
In Floyd County we’ve seen the arrests of numerous men who’ve come here to meet up for sex with a person they thought was underage. It’s almost daily that we see those arrest reports.
The warrants usually read something like this: (enter name here) came to Floyd County to have sex with a person he believed was 14 years old. (Enter name here) asked for or provided explicit photographs to a person he believed was a minor.
This is actually the best possible scenario, by the way. In these sting operations, the suspect never victimized a child — they chatted with a Floyd County police officer.
But these are the ones that got caught. There are so many other children who fall prey to predators in many forms.
They could be teenagers who don’t feel appreciated or loved falling prey to extremist ideas.
Three young men — ages 22, 19 and 25 — are now in jail facing serious charges because they’d gotten so swept up in extremist dogma. The white supremacist group The Base existed primarily online — but they met at a member’s property in Floyd County to conduct paramilitary training and, if police are correct, plot to instigate a race war.
A group that tracks extremists online even characterized the only local man associated with the online hate group as the “lead recruiter.” He turned from the recruited to the recruiter within a year — but did his family even know?
These three young North Georgia men are accused of taking their fantasy to overthrow the government to the next step — plotting to murder a couple they didn’t even know.
That’s when online fantasies of grandeur become real. Without that online connection and encrypted chatrooms, would they have connected with others? It’s hard to say. It certainly has happened in the past. But in this case, it appears to have been the method of their radicalization and the tool this group used for recruitment.
In other cases, it could be a kid who is coerced into running away with a person they believe cares about them — only to find out that person is ready to sell them to the highest bidder.
The horrors of the street take place every day on the internet while parents are too busy to pay attention. Groups like End Slavery Georgia and others are very familiar with the horrors children go through when they’re victimized.
We need to pay attention.
Using our constitutional rights
On another note, candidates for several offices are around town campaigning and many showed up to a pro-Second Amendment rally this past weekend — along with several hundred supporters from around the region.
Just as with a larger gathering in Virginia earlier, the rally was a peaceful expression of our area gun-owners’ First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
Along with that, we’d like to encourage you to get involved in your government and we’d also encourage anyone and everyone to vote — especially in our local elections.
Despite the allure of a congressional seat, local and state elections affect us in other ways. Our local legislators, county commissioners, constitutional officers and school board members effect change on a local level — that’s the level you and I see every day.
Decisions made by our local government are so important. We’re all enthralled by the latest spin from around the country but so many people aren’t educated about decisions made here at home. Then, we often see people act surprised when our local governments make a decision they don’t like.
How would they know what you want or don’t want locally if you’re not involved?
Get involved in the process. There are many steps before anything becomes an ordinance or decisions are made. The Rome News-Tribune is there through all of those steps. We like to let our readers know not only the changes being suggested but what the next steps are and when they’ll happen.
Thank you for reading.