In the Communications Department at Elijah Rising, we spend a lot of time staying informed on recent trends in trafficking. Recently, we’ve seen more and more articles, court cases, and data focused on online predators. Many of us on staff have children ourselves. In light of what we know, we frequently ask the question “How do we keep our kids safe in a world of social media?” As we research and learn, we thought it would be helpful to share our findings.
Who is this series for?
These posts will contain information useful to parents with children of any age, adults who plan to have children, adults invested in the life of a child (grandparents, guardians, aunts/uncles, etc), educators, ministry workers, counselors, teenagers.. basically anyone who wants to become better educated about safety for children and teens in a social media-driven world.
What will we cover?
In this series, we will cover potential traps youth easily fall into regarding technology and social media. Some of the information included is from the book The Tech Trap by Deborah Berry. We will go over the use of pornography in teens and the impact of technology on the brain. We will also talk about how to recognize online predators and much more. One post per month will be released through December.
“I hear it all the time: ‘This is terrible that this is happening, but it doesn’t really affect us,’ and I always come back and say, ‘Well, does your child have a cell phone?’ That right there is all it takes.”
Source: Crime Stoppers of Houston
We want to be clear, we are not here to shame anyone or the parenting choices they have made. Raising children in a world of social media is new to all of us. We are learning as we go.
At the end of the series, we will hold a webinar in January to answer questions and share stories from our experience fighting trafficking. We will further expand on how to keep kids safe on social media. If you have any questions you would like answered in the webinar, feel free to leave them in comments on the posts in these series.
If you want to watch the last webinar we did in 2021, “Human Trafficking in Houston”, you can find it here. It is not specific to technology but does contain a lot of information about the way trafficking works, what needs to be done to prevent it, and much more.
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