Social dangers

Keep your kids safe while using social media.

Derek Bogenschutz, sergeant at Jay County Sheriff’s Office, shared information on social media and the danger it presents to children during a public seminar Wednesday at Jay County High School.

Bogenschutz designs cell phone applications, websites and software for businesses. He conducts digital forensics with the sheriff’s office on digital devices, including cell phone hacking, computer analysis, network tracking and location tracking. 

Nearly 80% of Americans and about 4.89 billion people worldwide utilize social media, said Bogenschutz. 

In 2008, only about 10% of the population used social media.

“Social media’s getting so big now, it’s intertwining into our lifestyles,” he said. 

“Everything we do is posted, shared, broadcasted on some sort of social media platform,” he added. “For a lot of people, their entire life story is also on social media.”

Negative effects that may impact children using social media include cyberbullying, social addiction, depression, suicidal tendencies, changes in home behaviors and declining school performance. Children could also be the potential victim of an online scam or sex crime.

Bogenschutz showed a slide displaying 16 mug shots of convicted child predators who have been arrested by Jay County Sheriff’s Office.

“The reason why I show you these faces is not to show hate toward them, but I want you to be aware that sexual predators are in your neighborhoods every single day,” he said.

More than 500,000 child predators are active online daily, he continued, and more than 50% of victims are between 10 and 15 years old. Approximately 1 in 4 children will experience a sexual predator in some way during their lifetime, said Bogenschutz. That statistic is expected to increase to 1 in 3 children by as soon as next year.

Bogenschutz talked about different ways children are manipulated, including grooming, child sex trafficking, revenge pornography — it’s typically done by teenagers sending nude images of someone else to others — and sextortion, which is gaining access to someone’s nude images or videos and holding them “ransom” for money or other goods with threats to send them to others if the victim doesn’t comply with their wishes. (He also mentioned child kidnapping and abduction, pointing out one person in Jay County had been arrested and charged with attempted kidnapping in the last few years.)

Child solicitation — a grown adult enticing a child and meeting up with them for sex — is one area Bogenschutz investigates.

“There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes things that you guys really don’t see and understand with social media and how dangerous it is for your children because we’re usually trying to get it and get it taken care of,” Bogenschutz said.

Predators may engage in “secret conversations” through end-to-end encrypted chat, which means no one beyond the message sender and recipient, including the service provider or third parties such as police, may view content sent in this manner.

Photos and videos online can also be unsafe in more than one way. Besides giving away a person’s visible surroundings, data can be taken from a photo or video via “image hashing” that can be used to track a person’s location. (Police use this method to track down victims and perpetrators.)

Bogenschutz is a part of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force Program, which is “dedicated to investigating, prosecuting and developing effective responses to internet crimes against children.” 

Internet service providers such as Facebook or Snapchat monitor chats and posts, either via artificial intelligence or by a live person, explained Bogenschutz. Questionable content gets reported via “cyber tip” to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. (Tips can also be submitted by the general public at report.cybertip.org.)

The local Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force Program group is then contacted and begins tracking Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, look into connected emails and social media, uncover victims and perpetrators and investigate further from there, he said.

“It’s kind of like the internet police, in a way,” said Bogenschutz. “We deal with all the internet crimes that involve your kids.”

He encouraged adults to educate themselves about the social media applications their children may use, learn their social media habits, know and understand which devices they use, talk with them children about the dangers of the social media applications they use, watch for behavior changes such as eating or sleeping habits, and produce a game plan for the what-if scenario.

“What do your kids do when they come across any type of unwanted solicitation?” he said. “Who do they contact? Who do they go to? Make a game plan of who they can turn to.”

Child sexual abuse crimes may be reported to police or school staff, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at report.cybertip.org or at the “Say Something” anonymous reporting system promoted by Jay School Corporation, which is available at the bottom left corner of the school’s website or via direct link at bit.ly/3QK89cI.