How to Keep Your Kids Safe Online
Experts from nonprofits say digital safety starts at home with an open dialogue that doesn’t shy away from the embarrassing — or the terrifying.
Parents of social media victims, including Amy Neville, attend a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis on January 31, 2024.
Source: Can’t Look Away
The “stranger danger” fears of the 20th century can seem quaint compared with the horror stories kids may come across in the digital world. Before the internet, parents feared sexual predators or drug dealers having physical access to their children. Now they’re just a swipe away.
Kids are growing up online, immersed in social media, obsessed with it and, in some cases, addicted to it. More than 95% of teens in the US use social media, with one-third saying they are logged on almost constantly. The fabric of their social lives has shifted from classrooms to smartphone apps, video games and chat forums — internet spaces where it can be impossible to know who you’re really talking to. And, as Bloomberg’s new documentary Can’t Look Away demonstrates, these online environments can be dangerous, and even deadly. The film, which is streaming on Jolt and in select theaters starting April 4, follows a group of attorneys fighting to hold social media companies accountable for causing devastating harm to kids: Cases where teens were ruthlessly blackmailed by international gangs of cyber-sextortionists or sold deadly counterfeit pills by drug dealers who deliver through their bedroom windows.