Sexual predators are everywhere. Be it online or offline. When your kid is using social media, they remain at the constant threat of getting in touch with an online predator. On the other hand, some predators try to get cell numbers of young kids so they can communicate with them on text messages and phone calls.
Most often, sexual predators have posed themselves as young kids, possibly of the same age as the kid they are targeting. Young and innocent kids fall for their charm and start believing they are talking to kids of their age. These predators gain their trust, become friends with them only to get their cell number or home address.
It’s easy for predators to lure young kids into giving their cell number and home address. However, it’s even easier to catch them by using a phone call tracker. If you suspect your kid is communicating with a sexual predator or talking to someone they shouldn’t, you should immediately deploy a call tracker on your kid’s phone to find out the answers. The sooner you find out, the sooner you can help your kid.
Earlier this month, we heard about a mother posing as an 11-year-old girl on Instagram to catch pedophiles red-handed. She was certain most sexual predators attack young kids on social media platforms like Instagram, so she herself decided to pose as a young girl and talk to them.
After creating an account, she posted an innocuous selfie of herself with an appealing caption. What happened next is unsettling. The woman who posed as a young girl on Instagram received two new messages from adult men in less than a minute after posting her selfie.
There’s more to that. After two hours, 15 more messages arrived in her DM, half of them contained lewd and inappropriate content. All through the night, the woman kept receiving requests for video calls and nude photos. By the end of the week, it was analyzed that a total of 52 men reached out to the woman, thinking they had established contact with an 11-year-old girl on Instagram.
The woman carried out this exercise to see how dangerous these social media platforms could be for young kids and teens. If you think your kid is in some imminent danger and you want to protect them from sexual predators, there are several things that you can do.
Here are some essential tips to keep your kids safe from the reach of sexual predators.
Allow your kids and teens to use their cell phones in front of you or at a place where you can constantly keep an eye on their phone usage. Do not let your kids use phones after bedtime. In fact, it is wise to turn off the internet connection at night.
Your kids shouldn’t be allowed to use their mobile devices in their own rooms. They should use them in a public room or someplace where you are also present most of the time.
If your kid is spending a lot of time on their mobile phones, uses social media and browses the internet, you need to have a conversation with them about potential online dangers, especially sexual predators. You should tell them that they should reach out to you immediately if or when they receive anything weird or uncomfortable from someone online.
You can explain to them about the usual behavior of a sexual predator so your kid can recognize them immediately. Tell them that most strangers start off talking to them innocently and some start interacting disguised as a kid of their age and then later they become abusive or predatory, making unreasonable and uncalled for demands.
Sometimes predators go beyond and get your kid’s number. They try to begin the conversation on text messages and over time, they move on to the phone calls. If you notice an unknown number on your kid’s contact list or see them talking to someone for long hours, you should find out who the caller is.
For this purpose, you can install a phone call tracker on your kid’s phone so you can discreetly track all their incoming and outgoing phone calls. Not only phone calls, but you can also monitor their text messages, web browsing history, and social media accounts by using a reliable monitoring app.
As we mentioned earlier, you can monitor your kid’s online activity with the help of a monitoring app like Mobistealth. The same app acts as a call tracker online and also gives you reports about your kid’s entire online activity.
All you need to do is download and install the monitoring app on your kid’s phone and allow it to log all your kid’s digital activity. From your online dashboard, you can remotely monitor your kid’s online behaviour from anywhere and at any time.
Some parental control apps help you limit screen time of your kids on their mobile phones. You can set time limits and restrict the number of hours your kid can spend on their phone. The same time limits do not let your kid use the phone during bedtime, mealtime, etc.
Undoubtedly, the digital age has made parenting tough for most parents. While the internet is a source of information and entertainment for all of us, it can also pose some serious risks to our kids. This is the reason we need to monitor their online activity constantly so we can keep them safe from potential online threats.
Having open and honest conversations with kids about online dangers and setting up monitoring and parental control apps on kids’ electronic devices, we can help reduce the risk of our kids being approached by sexual predators.
Before you can start a candid conversation with your kids, be sure to offer them enough trust and confidence so they can reach out to you if they face any problem and confide in you without the fear of being judged or punished.