Keeping Your Child Safe on Social Media
Last term, the New Zealand Herald published an article by Michael Morah about social media being a predator’s playground.
Here we have shared some of the points made by the Herald article which can be accessed at:
It is always a concern that we have students at our school using social media platforms such as Snapchat, TikTok, facebook and Instagram when the minimum age for these is 13. It means that the adults in these students’ lives have condoned them lying about their age to access these sites.
The questions these parents and caregivers should consider is:
“Are you happy with your child being exposed to everything you could possibly ever imagine on their social media? And are you happy with them talking to complete strangers all the time?”
Snapchat, for example, has been reported to have kids with access to porn, beheadings, disembowelments, torture, rape and other nasty stuff children should never be exposed to.
As a school, we are often asked to support students who have been in conflict with others through their online interactions including chat groups when not at school. We do our best but would prefer the students weren’t engaged in this until they are mature enough to be on these sites.
A much bigger problem, however, are the predators lurking on these platforms seeking to groom young people for unsavoury purposes. This often results in attempts to lure their target child to another site or server where they can message them through encrypted services.
Michael Morah reported that:
A 36-year-old has been arrested in New Zealand for posing as an 11-year-old on Snapchat. It’s alleged he convinced two girls – aged between 9 and 13 – to provide him with video of themselves engaging in sex acts.
Alerts from Snapchat about grooming and child sex abuse material have more than doubled in a year.
NZ Police received 1,549 referrals about child sex abuse material on Snapchat last year, up from 617 in 2023.
An online safety expert told the Herald the problem is probably much larger than reported.
An increasing number of complaints are also being referred to police about TikTok, which the video sharing platform put down to its growing popularity.
New Zealand police are also regularly sent information about predators scouring other platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, and the gaming site Roblox that is popular with children.
Any platform where young people are, child sexual offenders are potentially there as well
It is known that children as young as 5 years old are being targeted by online predators.
Gaming platforms such as: PlayStation and Xbox potentially open your child up to interactions with total strangers where they can be convinced to join platforms without safety measures.
As parents you may not be aware there are cases of children being “bribed” into providing sexual content in exchange for Robux, the virtual currency used in Roblox gaming platforms.
Professionals working in this field tell us that platforms like Snapchat, video platform Zoomerang and the chat app Discord are used to engage with children.
The CEO of Tautoko Mai Sexual Harm Support Julie Sach is reported as saying: “Snapchat is problematic with children making fake accounts to bully others, adults making profiles to pretend they’re kids and girls who claim to be older getting attention from men who encourage them to send nude images”.
“Another common threat used against intermediate and high school-aged children was predators demanding victims share their locations on “snapmaps” or nudes would be leaked to public Instagram sites known as “mugshot” sites.” She stated.
In our intermediate school, the emergence of AI has huge implications for child safety. We have already seen an instance where a student has posted an image of themselves on snapchat, which was modified into a sexualised image by an unknown person and reposted.
The advice we have for all parents and caregivers who allow their child to be on social media is:
Have a presence on each of the social media platforms your child is on. This means you can log in to their profile at any time. Know what they are doing on the platform, who they are interacting with and what are they posting about themselves and your family.
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