If as a parent you elect to forbid your child from using Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok, you should be commended for putting your child's health and safety ahead of Internet fads.
But if you do let them on those sites, well, all we can say is, keep a razor-sharp eye over what they're doing and who they're talking to on there:
A missing 13-year-old girl from Dallas has been rescued from a locked shed nearly 1,000 miles away from where she disappeared in Lexington, North Carolina.
The girl was found on property belonging to Jorge Camacho, 34, who has been arrested and charged with multiple offenses including rape, child abduction and human trafficking.
Apropos of nothing, I was musing that it might be time to bring back firing squads. Just a random thought. What do you think?
But this article is about keeping anyone like him from doing this again, so let's focus on that.
Camacho was arrested after police discovered he had used a social media messenger to groom and lure the abducted girl from her home.
According to police, these crimes started when the suspect messaged the girl on social media and convinced her to leave her house.
Sheriff Simmons said the conversations between Camacho and the girl were 'consistent with grooming and enticement.'
Camacho is understood to have encouraged the girl to leave her home and picked her up.
Here's a local news report with more details:
Children are more vulnerable online than you'd think — and crimes against them via social media happen far more often than you'd imagine. If you think your kid would resist the same type of grooming from strangers, you'd only be right 30% of the time.
The FBI received 365,348 reports of missing children in 2020.
According to background check company Screen & Reveal, 70% of children in the US would accept a friend request regardless of who sent it.
It kinda makes you wonder what percentage fall prey to grooming from trusted authority figures, like, say, teachers that want to convince a girl she's a boy.
Meanwhile, more than 4 in 5 cases of child sex crimes start online these days
As many as 82% of child sex crimes in the US have started on social media.
