In revealing that teens are being targeted more than younger children by predators via social media, head of the Centre for the Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse (CISOCA), Superintendent Kerry-Ann Bailey, has urged parents to practise the same level of monitoring applied to toddlers.

“Supervision is key but we find where supervision is concerned, most of the parents, the parental controls are used for toddlers and not necessarily for teenagers where the bulk of the reports are coming from,” Bailey told Senior Superintendent of Police Dennis Brooks during the recent Force4Good Podcast produced by the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF).

According to Bailey, while this might be because it is felt that teenagers are more responsible, they are also more vulnerable to predators.

“For the children we may look at things like TikTok or Instagram where they’re mostly adult content, so you may ban them from that, or you may remove that from their tablet, their devices; however, you have things like Roblox that’s a popular game that is being used by a lot of children, when they interact on games like that you don’t know who is talking to them and as I said before, persons are lurking there,” Bailey warned.

Maintaining that these predators use varying cloaks to interrogate the children, she said, “We have had reports where persons ask inappropriate questions there. It’s not just about the game anymore, so if it’s not being monitored properly you find that your child might be out there sharing personal information about your family that you would not expect them to do because they you’re thinking that they’re actually in a game”.

Pointing out that “the actual monitoring and utilising the instrument of parental control is good for all ages once they are children,” the CISOCA head said, “that would help us preventing some of the perpetrators from getting to them”.

She further noted that monitoring becomes of increased importance given the penchant for teens to become secretive once they are involved in adult situations.

“Once they start getting on and having adult conversations, conversations that they should not be having, they tend to hide…so if you are not able to see or check the browser history to know what sites they have been on; what they have been doing, we may find that we’ve lost them to persons outside of family, outside of control, and that’s where you know the perpetrators will weasel their way in,” Bailey stated.

In the meantime, she said while boys are also under threat via these platforms, females are the main targets of the predators.

“Based on the reports that we are getting…more females are being pursued by these perpetrators more than boys but boys are still featuring in the numbers,” she told Brooks.

Bailey, in the meantime, said that while more and more persons are flocking to social media for various reasons, “a lot of perpetrators out there are using it for their own benefit which is negatively impacting the society”.

According to cop, as many as 22 per cent of cases begin with an online introduction.

“For example, persons will go on to share their lives. More and more we see people want…to put themselves out there especially if they think they have a skill or a talent, so people come and dance; they’ll share ideas, they have a lot of followings, it is also income generating for a number of persons so they go on with that intention but as I indicated before, there are perpetrator lurking out there who are looking for an opportunity to weasel people out of their money,” Bailey said noting that TikTok and Instagram are the preferred platforms for most individuals.

“Sometimes, from a CISOCA perspective, they are targeting these persons for sexual exploits; so when a person post a video or post videos about their lives there, someone looking on at physical features that may appeal to them; they understand how they operate and where to target and so the more they post, the more, they share, they’re opening up themselves and their lives to perpetrators out there immediately,” Bailey stated.

The Force4Good Podcast initiative is being used by the JCF to highlight issues affecting Jamaicans.