Increase In Teen Boys Targeted for Extortion on Social Media

[smokeyblue]

We had a terrible tragedy in my town last week. A 17 year old boy was targeted on Instagram by scammers who were pretending they were a teenage girl. They got him to provide explicit videos/photo and than demanded money or they would send them to his parents and Instagram followers. Instead of telling his parents, this young man killed himself. The parents asked the Sheriff to release a press release. In the press release it said this all transpired the course of 6 hours.

Please educate your young people about this and that there is nothing so embarrassing they cannot tell you about it. The FBI issued a warning just a week ago about the uptick in this crime against teenaged boys if anyone is interested in the read

 

[LuvOrlando]

O M G this is some twisted stuff. The poor family

Let's get this straight, we ALL gave up our rights to privacy for the greater good with the Patriot Act, which was supposed to give authorities the freedom to get ahead of threats and save us all Minority Report style and so far, what did we get exactly? We are less secure than ever, our kids are the most vulnerable being tormented online - our lives are not better and our kids are not safe. WHAT exactly is the goal if not preventing this sort of thing, someone has got to clue us all in because I get sick from reading the news daily now.

Young men have no money, what would they be being extorted for? I think I know and it just makes me more mad

 

[DLgal]

Maybe teach your teens not take or send explicit photos/video? Just a thought. They shouldn't need the threat of extortion to know this is a bad idea.

 

[brockash]

Maybe teach your teens not take or send explicit photos/video? Just a thought. They shouldn't need the threat of extortion to know this is a bad idea.

Definitely, however the reality is MANY do...they see it everywhere and glamorized. Our society is totally different than what it used to be and this is closer to the norm than not now. Obviously have the talk about internet safety, but include the talk about ppl. making mistakes and there being nothing they could do that you wouldn't be willing to help them with and still love them etc.

 

[penn19]

Maybe teach your teens not take or send explicit photos/video? Just a thought. They shouldn't need the threat of extortion to know this is a bad idea.

Or teach your kid not to be a jerk. Some kids feel they have the right to make others miserable. I thought kids back when I was young were bad. They’re gotten worse.

 

[sam_gordon]

O M G this is some twisted stuff. The poor family

Let's get this straight, we ALL gave up our rights to privacy for the greater good with the Patriot Act, which was supposed to give authorities the freedom to get ahead of threats and save us all Minority Report style and so far, what did we get exactly? We are less secure than ever, our kids are the most vulnerable being tormented online - our lives are not better and our kids are not safe. WHAT exactly is the goal if not preventing this sort of thing, someone has got to clue us all in because I get sick from reading the news daily now.

Young men have no money, what would they be being extorted for? I think I know and it just makes me more mad

Sorry, I'm not following how the Patriot Act ties into the situation in the OP. If the Patriot Act wasn't around, the kid wouldn't have been targeted/wouldn't have sent the pictures that he was ashamed of?

 

[Moliphino]

Maybe teach your teens not take or send explicit photos/video? Just a thought. They shouldn't need the threat of extortion to know this is a bad idea.

It should be rule #1: Don't share anything you wouldn't want the world seeing.

 

[Allison]

O M G this is some twisted stuff. The poor family

Let's get this straight, we ALL gave up our rights to privacy for the greater good with the Patriot Act, which was supposed to give authorities the freedom to get ahead of threats and save us all Minority Report style and so far, what did we get exactly? We are less secure than ever, our kids are the most vulnerable being tormented online - our lives are not better and our kids are not safe. WHAT exactly is the goal if not preventing this sort of thing, someone has got to clue us all in because I get sick from reading the news daily now.

Young men have no money, what would they be being extorted for? I think I know and it just makes me more mad

That's an odd tangent.

 

[brockash]

It should be rule #1: Don't share anything you wouldn't want the world seeing.

Of course it should be...however these are kids were talking about. Kids who live in a world where the more you share, the more attention you get and all of it is so twisted and mentally exhausting for them. Human decency has unfortunately just been thrown our the window by MANY and that should be rule #1.

 

[GreatLakes]

It should be rule #1: Don't share anything you wouldn't want the world seeing.

My kid is too young but as soon as he is old enough the pitfalls of anything you put online will be drilled into him. He may or may not ignore me but it won't be for lack of information.

And seriously, don't send explicit pictures to anyone. Don't text them, don't upload them, don't even take them digitally. You'd think the huge Apple iCloud breach should have drilled that into everyone's head. One poorly built API and badly implemented MFA rules made it easy to exploit people that used weak passwords.

 

[tzolkin]

Maybe teach your teens not take or send explicit photos/video? Just a thought. They shouldn't need the threat of extortion to know this is a bad idea.

That's kind of a heartless thing to say when a teen has just committed suicide. "If his parents did a better job, this never would have happened." Really? Why would you assume that the parents didn't teach him that he shouldn't share explicit photos?

I would be willing to bet that a kid who has had it drilled into him over and over to never do such a thing is the exact kind of kid who would be so distraught at the threat of his parents finding out that he had done something that they find so unacceptable that he may believe that suicide would be his best option.

He may or may not ignore me but it won't be for lack of information.

And that is exactly the point. Kids (and adults) do stupid things all the time that they know they shouldn't and have been taught better.

 

[mjkacmom]

I think the majority of parents DO drill this into their heads, but kids do it anyway. One of my dd19’s ex boyfriend in high school was blackmailed by his ex over a d pic, his mom is a teacher in town, lovely involved family. Kids do dumb things, and according to my young adult kids, these incidents are common.

 

[DLgal]

That's kind of a heartless thing to say when a teen has just committed suicide. "If his parents did a better job, this never would have happened." Really? Why would you assume that the parents didn't teach him that he shouldn't share explicit photos?

I would be willing to bet that a kid who has had it drilled into him over and over to never do such a thing is the exact kind of kid who would be so distraught at the threat of his parents finding out that he had done something that they find so unacceptable that he may believe that suicide would be his best option.


And that is exactly the point. Kids (and adults) do stupid things all the time that they know they shouldn't and have been taught better.

It's not heartless. I didn't say anything about this boy's parents. Their loss is terrible.

But you can't tiptoe around people's feelings on these types of matters. The REALITY is that social media is a cesspool. Kids and teens need to be taught that there is NO SUCH THING as privacy once you are using anything connected to the internet. Everything you do can be seen by someone, potentially forever.

There ARE bad parents out there. There ARE parents who would disown their child for much less than this. We don't know these people, so who's to say this kid wasn't correct in the conclusion he came to? If a child feels that they did something "so bad" that they could never be forgiven, it's either one of two things: it's true (which is a parenting fail) or it's delusional thinking by a kid who is too emotionally immature to know better, which is tragic.

 

[Moliphino]

That's kind of a heartless thing to say when a teen has just committed suicide. "If his parents did a better job, this never would have happened." Really? Why would you assume that the parents didn't teach him that he shouldn't share explicit photos?

I would be willing to bet that a kid who has had it drilled into him over and over to never do such a thing is the exact kind of kid who would be so distraught at the threat of his parents finding out that he had done something that they find so unacceptable that he may believe that suicide would be his best option.


And that is exactly the point. Kids (and adults) do stupid things all the time that they know they shouldn't and have been taught better.

It shouldn't be a "don't do this or I'll be mad" lesson. Once you put something out there online, be it words/pictures/etc., you lose all control over it. There is no taking it back or erasing it. It should also be stressed in schools when kids start using computers there.

 

[brockash]

It shouldn't be a "don't do this or I'll be mad" lesson. Once you put something out there online, be it words/pictures/etc., you lose all control over it. There is no taking it back or erasing it. It should also be stressed in schools when kids start using computers there.

Every school I've worked at internet safety is ALWAYS taught and discussed MULTIPLE times. In large part they just don't get it or care.

 

[JeanfromBNA]

My nephew held a laser pointer to his eye and looked into it last week. Thank goodness the batteries were dead. Kids do dumb stuff. You can't always predict it.

 

[Uncle Coaster]

I think another thing to keep in mind in stories like this is that scammers are *very* good at making smart people do dumb things. I work for a bank and have seen intelligent people fall for things. Scammers can be very persuasive and intimidating.

We’re better off when victims feel anger instead of shame or guilt because then more situations can be heard and we can all learn more about what to avoid and what to teach others to avoid.

 

[pigletto]

Maybe teach your teens not take or send explicit photos/video? Just a thought. They shouldn't need the threat of extortion to know this is a bad idea.

Because no teenager has ever done anything their parents told them not to do? Why are we assuming the teen wasn’t told? Kids are impulsive and their brains aren’t fully developed. A lot of parenting is hoping to god they listened to all the warnings and lessons.

 

[DLgal]

Because no teenager has ever done anything their parents told them not to do? Why are we assuming the teen wasn’t told? Kids are impulsive and their brains aren’t fully developed. A lot of parenting is hoping to god they listened to all the warnings and lessons.

There is a difference between teaching and telling.

 

[pigletto]

There is a difference between teaching and telling.

And I still think the more important lesson is that kids have to be able to come to you with horrible shameful stuff. Of course I don’t expect it, and of course I‘m teaching. But I’m also not naive enough to believe that every lesson I gave will sink in 100% of the time. If my child is feeling so horrible about anything that they are considering suicide I hope the most important lesson I taught was that together we can fix things.