Richard Hogan: Child exploitation thrives online. We need to teach our kids to recognise red flags

Owning a phone with access to the internet leaves children vulnerable to abuse and grooming

There is immense pressure on parents to give their children access to mobile phones, especially when the child enters the teenage years.

For many parents of children moving from primary school into secondary school, this is the last summer they will spend with their children without smartphones in their lives. Many parents, like myself, decide not to give their children smartphones until they are in  secondary school. While it is crucial to have a policy with clear parameters for technology use in the home, it is also vitally important to think about the child in front of you. 

You should always analyse the maturity levels of your children. Have they displayed, over the years, poor impulse control and risk averse thinking? Will they be able to manage all that a smartphone brings into their life? Because the moment your child takes a smartphone into their hands, they are taking everything that phone has to offer into their life. That should not be taken lightly.

Over the summer, it is important that you talk to your child about the smartphone they will receive as they move into secondary school. There is no doubt about it, many of your child’s friends will have had smartphones long before secondary school, and that places incredible pressure on parents. 

But just because some parents give their children phones doesn’t mean we just collapse on our principles. I experienced this pressure last year. My eldest daughter is in 5th class. I personally believe that is too young to have a smartphone so my daughter didn’t get one, but there was a lot of persuasive language used to motivate us to buy her one. 

My daughter told me she was being left out of things because she didn’t have access to Snapchat. This was very hard to hear, and really made me think about my blanket policy. Hannah is a very mature and responsible child. I believe, as much as I can know, she wouldn’t engage in risky behaviour on her smartphone. 

I asked myself; 'why are you keeping to this blanket ban when she is clearly mature enough to manage the responsibility of the phone?' So, I compromised. I bought her a phone but it wasn’t a smartphone. She could get WhatsApp and connect with her friends that way. We must understand that communication has irrevocably changed over the last 13 years since the smartphone arrived. It is how teenagers now communicate. We must not fear smartphones, but we still have to parent our children.

Punitive measures such as confiscating mobile phones can sometimes drive a wedge between parent and child.

One of the biggest mistakes parents can make with smartphones is using them arbitrarily as a punishment tool. Let’s just say the child comes home late, and the parents decide to confiscate the phone. We have to be careful about this, because if we use the phone like that our children will not come to us if they have a problem online. 

We must always watch our reaction when our children fall short, or tell us about what is going on in their lives. We must listen calmly even if the content of what we are hearing is troubling, we have to control our response. If we don’t, and we overreact, we are ensuring that our children will never come to us in the future. That can have devastating consequences for the entire family unit. 

Children often don’t have the capacity to think themselves out of a particular problem but refuse to seek parental advice because of a parent's previous reaction. Children need to be able to talk to an adult they feel safe with. 

When the world fell into lockdown two years ago, a new type of victim emerged for predators to exploit; the bored, lonely online child. Children were forced online more and perhaps without supervision. In the US, there was a 26% increase in online child abuse reported in the first month of March 2020, during lockdown. 

In Ireland, we are still waiting for the data, but personally, working clinically with families I have seen an increase in families seeking out theory because their child was exploited online. In my experience, the following happens: I’m going to use a girl as the victim in this example but it happens to boys also.

A girl is sent a friend request on a social media platform from a boy she doesn’t know, so she checks to see if they have friends in common, they do, and so she accepts the request. A friendship now slowly develops and eventually, the teenage boy sends an image to the girl. He asks for an explicit photo in return, feeling pressured and obligated, she sends it, and now he requests more explicit images. Once she refuses, his true identity is revealed as he threatens to send the image she has sent to all her friends and family. Now she is caught in a terrible bind, one she is far too immature to be able to think her way out of. 

It is crucial in this type of scenario that the child doesn’t experience this in silence. It is in those silent spaces that abuse thrives. We must prepare our children for the online world, we shouldn’t scare them but explain scenarios that can arise and how to manage friend requests from people they do not know. We must foster relationships that are open and honest with our children so they can come to us when they experience something troubling. 

The brave new world of the 'screenager' is coming into your life. We have to allow our teenagers to venture into it, whilst also being vigilant.