Sex, Drugs, and Social Media - Part 1

This in-depth news special focuses on the dangers young people face when using smartphones, tablets, and laptops. In Part One, a federal agent, cybercrimes investigator, and former school resource officer break down the red flags parents should watch for if their children are regular consumers of apps, video games, and chat platforms, and how carelessness could lead to becoming a victim of a crime like Sextortion.Sex, Drugs, and Social Media is hosted by Steve Gregory and Araksya Karapetyan and is produced by Steve Gregory, Jacob Gonzalez, and Richie Quintero. 

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
KFI AM six forty heard everywhere onthe iHeartRadio app. According to the FBI,
more than sixty percent of young peoplethreatened online are thirteen and younger,
and fifty seven percent of kids fifteento seventeen years old have been threatened online

(00:22):
by someone they've never met. Sextortion, the act of extorting money in exchange
for sexually explicit photos or activity oncamera, is among the leading causes of
childhood depression, substance abuse, selfharm, and suicide. The FBI says
it's seen a dramatic increase in sextortioncases, with the majority of victims being

(00:43):
teenage boys between fourteen and seventeen yearsold. The offenders are usually based outside
the United States and are part ofa larger criminal enterprise set up to do
nothing but make money. For thenext two hours, we explore the dangers
of kids, social media and onlinebehavior, tied it in a studio audience
and guests from law enforcement, parentsof kids who died because of social media,

(01:06):
and experts who can help parents identifythe problems associated with sex, drugs,
and social media. I'm Steve Gregoryalong with a Roxy Carpathian with Fox
eleven joining us now is our firstguest. It is the Special Agent in
charge of the Homeland Security Investigations Divisionof Los Angeles, Agent Eddie Wong.
Agent thank you so much for beinghere. We really appreciate it. Let's

(01:29):
talk a little bit about HSI.What does it do and how does it
really help protect America? Excellent question, Steve so. Homeland Security Investigations is
the principal investigative arm for the Departmentof Homeland Security. So we enforce over
four hundred federal statutes. And myarea of jurisdiction runs all the way north

(01:51):
from San Luis Obispo County to allthe way to the southernmost tip of Orange
County, and then all the wayeast out the state line to encompass Riverside
in San Bergardino County. So wehave approximately four hundred personnel to investigate in
police the nation's second largest metropolitan areawhen it comes to the illicit movement of

(02:16):
people, goods, and finance.How long have you been with this department?
I begins. I've been with thedepartment since its inception in March of
two thousand and three, so we'rein our twenty first year of existence and
came into existence after the tragedies ofnine to eleven, where the agency was

(02:40):
formed from the investigative branches from theformer Immigration and Naturalization Service and former US
Custom Service. How does HSI differfrom FBI and CIA. The CIA is
an intelligence based organization. FBI isout of the Department of Justice. As
I said previously, HSI is theprincipal investigative arm of the Department of Homeland

(03:07):
Security. A lot of what wedo deals with security of the border,
meaning holistic goods, narcotics, contrabandcoming both in and out of the United
States. Actually, that leads meto the very question I want to ask
you about, because according to theDA cartels are responsible virtually for all of

(03:30):
the fentanyl that's coming into this country. If you could speak to that and
talk a little bit about how thathas changed over the years and why at
this point in time it is atits worst peak. So when you look
at fentanyl, you know it doeshave a medical use to it, but
the illicil use is what we're talkingabout and what's currently fueling the opioid academic

(03:57):
so fetanyl as a quote unquote recreationaldrug, probably jumped on the scene maybe
seven or eight years ago where itreally came to a head. And when
we initially found it, it wasthrough the dark net, so most of
the packages would be coming in fromChina, small amounts China coming in.

(04:21):
It wasn't until we saw a realshift in twenty nineteen when China's scheduled feentanyl
drugs fetanyl as a controlled substance inthe country, where it's sort of shifted
towards the cartels in Mexico mass producingit and thereby shipping it back into the
United States. Currently now, Chinais still very involved in the production of

(04:45):
precursor chemicals, which are the chemicalsthat are needed to produce fentanyl, in
addition to the drug component of that, which we'll discuss it in great detail
as well. But another thing thatyou cover, another tragic thing that you
cover, is the sextortion and thisdigital sort of this digital mess that's out

(05:06):
there. Everything that's sort of transnationalwith your organization, is that correct,
Anything that happens beyond the boundaries ofa city, that's correct. So most
of our investigations are transnational, meaningthat they affect not only the United States,
but some of our foreign partner countries. For example, Canada, Mexico,

(05:31):
down in Oceania, Australia, NewZealand, Europe, all over the
place. So anything that touches theUnited States that either originated from outside the
country or originates in the United Statesand then thereby is exported out of the
United States. That's where our breadand butter is. So you do cybercrime
also, absolutely, Can you talka little bit about how you sort of

(05:56):
attack that, because you were talkingabout how you handle border issues, and
you're the investigative arm of Homeland Security, so there's a lot of boots on
the ground on the border. Butwe're talking about digital and dark web,
and I mean, how do youtackle that? Well. Listen, I
think when you when you talk aboutcybercrime, it's right in our Bailey Wick
because what the digital age and whatthe Internet has done is it's virtually online

(06:21):
erased our borders, meaning you know, especially when it comes to sextortion,
you're talking about you know, socialmedia and the role that it plays in
sextortion. Social media has opened upthe world to our children, and I
think what's important is conversely that byopening up the world to our children,

(06:48):
conversely, on that flip side ofthat same coin is now the world has
now opened up, has now hasaccess to our children. Well, I'm
a parent. I have two kidsthere young at this point. One's going
to be five soon, the othereight. So sometimes I look at the
world that's going on around me,right and I'm in the news. I'm
talking about horrible stories pretty much allday long, and part of me is

(07:11):
relieved that I don't yet have todeal with some of the reality that most
people are faced with. And atthe same time, I'm also scared because
I don't even really know how togo about it. So when you talk
about protecting kids online, for example, I feel as though children are way
ahead of most adults when it comesto what they're doing online. How do
I keep up with that? Whatdo I need to do? How can

(07:33):
I play my role in a wayto protect my kids? Well, it's
simple. I think it's become moreinvolved. You have to be an expert
in what your kids are doing,experts in technology. I'm in the same
boat as you. I'm the fatherof an almost two year old and quite
frankly, what the future holds ifwe're not more active, and it scares

(07:58):
me as well. I think there'sa fine balance between you know, within
parenting what's too much and what's notenough, And I think that's an individual
parenting decision. But I think anyonethat has a child that has it would
be full in themselves if they're notat some point going to have access to
digital devices. And that scary realitymeans that we have to be more schooled

(08:26):
as parents. I think we haveto be more active in searching for tools
that will help us prevent some ofthis exploitation online. I think we have
to be more active in our schooldistricts and speaking with the school districts about
providing educational opportunities. I think oneof the great things that we do at

(08:48):
HSI as a victim centric agency whenit comes to these sort of crimes is
that we place the victims first,meaning the identifications stabilization of these victims is
equally as important as the prosecution andinvestigation. So part of that process is

(09:09):
this public outreach in allowing us topresent ourselves on a platform like this here.
But also we have a public outreachand an educational component for our agency
that provides tips and tools of thetrade for parents interested community members. It's

(09:31):
called I Guardian. The department islaunching No to Protect, which is its
new child sexual exploitation initiative later thismonth. So these are all things that
we as parents should be more proactiveabout, like react. The days of
reactive parenting are over quite frankly.Now it's time to be more active and

(09:54):
lean into this. We're talking withAgent Eddie Wong with Onland Security Investigations,
Agent Wang before the break. We'retalking about two programs that HSI is rolling
out and is responsible for. Oneof them is No to Protect and that's
k n O W the number twoprotect. Talk about that. So that
is the department's effort into raising awarenesson the dangers of child sexual exploitation material

(10:20):
online as well as UH providing aplatform for engagement between the public and the
department. The second part is IGuardian is UH which is specifically run by
HSI where we provide outreach to whetherit's schools, civic organizations, non governmental

(10:41):
organizations, anyone that wants to learna little more about the dangers of sex
exploitation, child sexual abuse material online. UH. That's the that's the program
that we leverage to UH UH toto meet with our public counterparts. What
do each of these programs offer fora parent like myself, would I what

(11:03):
would I be able to do withthis? So what they do is they
give you sort of warning signs ofwhat we've seen throughout our cases, like
best best practices as far as deployingtechnology in your home. Let's say,
for instance, you know where toplace computers, laptops, all that stuff.

(11:26):
They'll also talk about specific tools thatyou might use as a parent that
would help prevent some of this potentialor prevent your children from becoming potential victims
of six sortion. Got me askyou. You're a federal organization, and

(11:48):
you know sometimes victims have a toughtime dealing with law enforcement. And it's
bad enough on a local level whena parent has to bring a child to
a station or something like that,but when you get the Feds involved,
I mean, let's face it,you can be a little intimidating. How
can you? I mean, you'resmiling, but it's true. I mean
right, I mean the Feds canbe a little intimidating. So how should

(12:11):
we take something as sensitive as sexploitationor sextortion something like that, And how
can a parent and a child becomfortable with the feds. Listen, what
I would say is when you seeus not in a public outreach arena,
it's probably going to be a prettybad day. Whether you're on the victim

(12:31):
en or you're on the offender,there's no doubt about that. I think
what I would go back to iswhat we've evolved into as an investigative agency
is a victim centric agency. Andit goes back to understanding that if the
victim is not comfortable, if thevictim is not ready to be a part

(12:56):
of that restorative justice process, thenthere is justice process. So we place
equal emphasis, as I said,on the stabilization, the identification, stabilization,
and the rescue of the victims.That way we can put them on
that path towards restorative justice. Iwill tell you we employ victim assistant specialists

(13:18):
as well as forensic interviewers, sowe understanding the sensitivity surrounding the nature of
this crime. We have specialized personnelthat are trained in dealing with children,
whether it's questioning them to elicit statementsevidence, or is it on the flip

(13:39):
side to provide the victim services right, because as parents, we don't know
what's all available to us. Infact, we don't know what we're entitled
to as victims of a crime.So that's how our Child Exploitation Investigative Unit
and program has been built around thosetwo services as the foundation, and then

(14:01):
from there building our investigations upon there. What's the youngest victim that you've worked
with me personally, the agency orthe agency? Months months months old,
months old? So how does howdo you go about in that situation if
a child is months old, incapableof really doing much or saying much.

(14:26):
Right, A lot of that isgoing to be based on digital evidence,
right, meaning the sexual abuse,the child sexual abuse has already occurred,
the offender has produced material, andwe've executed a law enforcement action on it,
meaning we've conducted a search warrant,recovered that evidence, and thereby we're

(14:48):
able to walk it back to identifythe victim right looking at who that offender
has been in contact with. Sadly, a lot of times we've seen you
know, I know there's there's aPRECONCEI notion of it's an older male living
in their mother's basement and stuff likethat. I can tell you right now
that is absolutely not true. Ithink it does a disservice to parents if

(15:11):
that's the way that we continue tothink in this digital age. An offender
could be anyone, sadly, right, it could be a relative, it
could be you know, a friend, and sadly, it could even be
a miner of using another miner,you know. Agent. One of the
reasons that we put this together isbecause it was a story you told me

(15:33):
a long time back, and itwas a story of a young boy who
had been lured into thinking that hewas communicating with a young girl. He
was thinking fourteen years old, andat some point the conversation, the dialogue
escalated, the young boy sends anude selfie. Well, it ends up

(15:54):
not being a girl at was fourteenyears old, ends up being a guy
in another country, adult male inanother country that turns around and says,
I have these photos of you nowI'm going to release them to your priest,
to your mom, your dad,your your scout master, whomever,
your teachers, and then that's whenthe sextortion begins. How bad is that

(16:18):
type of activity? How bad issextortion in this region? I'd be lying
to say, if it wasn't aproblem here, I can tell you that
we've identified dozens, dozens upon dozensof victims here in the region. You
young kids, what I would say, on the sextortion end of it,

(16:38):
the financial sex stortion end of it, they're more in the teenage, they're
still young people, yes, young, So I think there's an important distinction
here when we talk about sextortion,right. So from our investigations, we
found that there's two different types ofsextortions. First one being for power power

(17:02):
control what the kids called clout online, right, And that's one type of
sex torsion. The other type isfinancial sextors which is what you were talking
about, which is what you're referringto. So what we found there is
that it's very similar to other fournineteen West African fraud schemes, romance,

(17:22):
elder fraud. It's sort of kindof all mixed in there where the primary
goal of that is to get money. We are live in Burbank. Joining
us now is Sergeant Peter Hish fromthe Los Angeles County Sheriff's Departments Fraud in
Cybercrimes Bureau. He's also joined withAgent Eddie Wong, who is the Special
Agent charge of Homeland Security Investigations inLos Angeles. Sergeant hitch Thank you for

(17:44):
joining us, well for having youpeople. We were talking to Agent Wong
before the break about we're getting alittle deeper into the sextortion around the southern
California region now La County with itbeing so densely populated. Serious an issue
is sextortion in La County. It'sserious, It's it's prominent. We see

(18:06):
these cases coming through our department quitea bit and ages are Is it all
over the map or I would haveto say, what we're seeing predominantly is
kids in the range of twelve toseventeen in there in twelve year olds or
victims of sextortion, Yeah, twelveto seventeen. Yeah, different, there's

(18:27):
different types of sextortion. I guessreasons why people extort other people, but
yeah, from that age on,more boys or girls, I would have
to say, more boys than girls. Yes, is any particular reason why.
Well, I don't have any scientificdata to say one way or other

(18:48):
why, but I could say,just from experience and being a young boy
myself in the past, boys tendto be a little bit more involved in
online activity when it has to dowith girls and sexual type of things and
exploring that that you know, thatthing so walk us through a typical investigation.

(19:15):
If someone were to report, likea parent were to report to you
that they they believed their child wasthe victim of sextortion, walk us through
what that process would be. Sure. So, unfortunately, just because of
the sheer or what sextortion is,it could be quite embarrassing for not only
the victim, but for the familyto come forward to law enforcement. So

(19:37):
oftentimes we see these cases coming inthat are old. They're older, and
what I say old, it justdidn't happen today or yesterday, within the
week. It's usually like maybe amonth or two down the road when the
child actually has the guts or ina position to where they go to their
parents finally, and then the familyevaluates the situation and there's a time lapse

(20:03):
there as well before they make thedecision to come to law enforcement. So
that's the first thing that we seeas that delay. It would be better
for us if we get that notificationright away while sextortion is occurring, and
we can jump at it quicker andhopefully get more evidence easier. So that's

(20:25):
how it starts. Of all thecases that you get, how successful are
you in solving the cases or findingthe perpetrator. Sure, So I guess
it comes down to what's success.And actually finding a perpetrator and putting them
in jail is very very rare,and we see that the reason for that

(20:47):
is many times the perpetrators are overseas. There are in other countries that we
can't reach out to. We partnerwith the federal government allaw HSI, we
partner with them quite well, butare limited too because some of these countries
are most of these countries where thewhere the perpetrators are aren't friendly to the
United States, So even our federalgovernment has a difficult time reaching into those

(21:11):
countries to find somebody. And keepin mind that these sextortions are not perpetrated
by one person somewhere. Usually they'rea criminal organization in another country that are
doing a lot of other scams andthis is just one of them. It's
a whole office filled with people doingthese scams, so it's not necessarily just

(21:33):
one person. Agent Wong, beforebreak, you were talking about there are
two different types of sextortion, andSergeant Hisch was talking about it too.
Can you give us a case oran example of each of those two types
of sextortion? Sure, So weare currently investigating cases into both types of
those. So I'll take them afirst one. I'll talk about the power

(21:56):
and control sex tortion. Uh.Their stated goal is to create child sexual
abuse material, to have one ofthe members of their online platform coax someone
into a suicide. UH. Sotheir their their their goals are very devious.

(22:18):
Their goal is not for anything otherthan online power so that they can
spread throughout uh. Their their theirsick community. And as Sergeant Hitch was
saying, these offenders are across theworld. In this particular investigation that we're
working with the United States Attorney's Office, UH, the top echelon of this

(22:42):
organization, they're spread throughout the world. And that's what I talk about.
What the internet and online presence hasdone is that it's created, It's knocked
down all borders, it's knocked downall of that stuff. So this is
that one community. And to thatone particular investigation, I believe we have

(23:04):
one suicide that was captured online thatwas run live time and real time to
the members so they could see it. I think there was another homicide committed
on behalf of the games, andso these individuals were forced into doing this
by people from another country. Yeah, yeah, And what was the endgame

(23:27):
was it? Was it just thesick twisted nature of what they were doing,
or was there a transaction involved?No, so this is no financial
transaction. But this was under thethreat of releasing embarrassing photographs. Right,
So that's that's the sextortion, right, that's the blackmail portion of it,
where it has nothing to do withfinancial What what would your advice then be

(23:49):
for someone who is falling into thistrap, because I mean, the more
they play along with this individual orindividuals, then game isn't going to work
in their favor anyway. So youjust have to put a stop to it
and come to law enforcement. Right. You hit the nail right on the
head, as difficult as it maysound at that time. I think all

(24:12):
of us can remember a time whenwe were adolescents thinking the world that was
five inches in front of us wasour entire world, not realizing that there
was a whole future out there.I think especially all of us as not
only parents, but community members,uncles, cousins and all that. The

(24:33):
most important thing I would say isthat you have to have to provide an
off ramp for these children that arein this because, as you said,
this will quickly spiral out of controland then the unfortunate outcomes far outweigh any
embarrassment. Sergeant Hitsh, what platformsare we talking about here? You know

(24:53):
you hear the agent talking about avery graphic situation. How are these criminals
accessing these children? Simply put anyplatform that's on the internet on your phone,
any app that has the ability tocommunicate with another person. So we
think of okay, maybe Snapchat,Facebook, Instagram, TikTok TikTok. But

(25:19):
that's not the only ones. There'seven simple chat. I don't know if
if the audience or your listeners haveexperiences in the past, but maybe gotten
a random text from somebody that says, and your name's Steve, but it
says, hey, Mike, howyou doing right? And that's it well,
hoping that you would respond back,and then from there they set the

(25:40):
hook and continue the conversation. Ohsorry, Mike, I was looking for
Steve, or vice versa, buthow's your day going? And continue and
then over days or even weeks,foster that simple communication into a sextortion incident.
And links are also a big partof that too, right. Links
can be can also the trojan horsealmost Yeah, they can be used that

(26:03):
way as well. We've been talkingwith Special Agent in Charge Eddie Wong with
onland security investigations here in Los Angeles, also Sergeant Pete Hitch he's with the
Fraud and Cybercrimes Bureau of the LosAngeles County Sheriff Department. Gentlemen, before
the break, we're getting in somevery specifics about this sextortion. What I
wanted to ask also, Sergeant,you were talking about specific platforms. Is

(26:26):
there any one platform that's more susceptibleto this kind of activity than another one.
There's one platform that's a little bitdifferent because it kind of lulls the
victim into a sense of I guessa safety and that's Snapchat. And the
reason I say that is because Snapchatallows you to take a picture, send

(26:49):
it, and the recipient only hasa certain amount of time to view it.
Right, So that would lead thesender to believe that, oh,
I'll send this picture to him,but they can't do it because it's going
to disappear after a minute, twominutes, or whatever it is. But
that's not necessarily true. Once thereceiver gets the photo on their phone.

(27:11):
They can just take another phone andtake a picture of it and now they
have it right or screenshot it.It will notify the sender that it was
screenshotted, but it's not gone foreveranything. What's important to remember about the
Internet. Anything set on the Internetat any time is on the Internet forever,
period. So snapchat can be alittle misleading, but all the apps,

(27:33):
even gaming apps that are discord andthings like that, that have an
ability to have a chat or communicationsend files are used in these primes.
And this happens all the time wherepeople even post something immediately take it down
and think, oh, it's deleted, it's gone. There's no such thing.
As you said, the digital footprintis something that exists for each person.

(27:56):
Now. That is the reality welive in. So you have to
be careful, especially for young people, because once they start having a digital
footprint, it follows them forever andit can impact their future, whether they're
trying to get a job later orjust whatever it is they're trying to do.
This follows them forever. You're absolutelycorrect, and that's very important that
you just pointed out that just becauseit happened now when you're twenty two,

(28:18):
twenty three, twenty four, andyou're trying to get a job, especially
in a big company. They alldo social media reviews and they pull these
things out. And keep in mindthat although it may not you may have
deleted it off of Instagram or Facebook, there are companies out there that go
and scrape this information and store it. So once it's out there, this
company, this independent company, goesout and scrapes outice and stores it.

(28:41):
So now it's available to be putback on the Internet at any time.
Let's go to the audience. Nowwe have the ability to ask some questions
here of our guests and Jacob,who we've got in the back. Hi,
when day Lyle from Hacienda Heights.I'm a high school teacher and I
see kids on their phones constant throughoutthe day through our classes. And you

(29:03):
mentioned Agent Wang about educating our parentswhen these children are very young. I
feel like the message may be taught, but it's not carried out through all
of these years when they enter highschool, get to high school, and
my question is, I guess whatwould be a good way to educate these

(29:32):
kids now that they're with us inhigh school. So the great thing about
I guardian is that the agency isunderstood exactly what you're talking about. So
there's separate tracks for each one ofthose programs, geared towards each one of
those audiences. I think it's there'sone for the very young and one for

(29:55):
those gaining getting into adolescents and stufflike that, and there are two different
things because I think there's the Ithink Sergeant hitch talked about it, and
I think you talked about it earlierabout having that digital footprint that stays there
forever. Yes, that is true. But there's some very innovative programs right

(30:18):
now that you know. One ofthe leaders in this area of the National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children,there's a program out there right now.
It's called take It Down. Sowhat it is is it's the ability for
self generated child sexual abuse materials.So what we were talking about earlier.

(30:38):
You know, if you're pretending,if you're sending compromising photographs of yourself to
someone else, and you generated thatyourself and the individual happens to place it
on the Internet. There's a cooperativeagreement among some of the electronic service providers
where if we provide them with theimage or the child or the adolescent provides

(31:03):
them with that image. They cango to those providers and they can track
it down and then take them down. But it doesn't do any good if
it's scraped already, right. Sothat's one of the things that is evolving.
So that's one of the things thatwe would really really like to get
out to the high school students.Right. It's the first measure. The

(31:26):
first point, the most important pointis prevention, and the second point is,
hey, it's not the ultimate thing. There are things that we can
do to try and help out.Yes, sir, Yeah, my name's
David from Temecula. Question is forSergeant Hitch and also Agent Wong. I
get the text messages probably every dayfrom somebody random that's fishing for Hey,

(31:48):
hey Claire, are we having lunchon Thursday? Right? You know,
and obviously I just send them straightto junk. But we've all seen the
to Catch Up Predator shows, right, and there's you know, a team
that is specifically set up to poseas victims and hopefully try and track down
these bad guys. My question toeither of you is is there a federal

(32:08):
program or a state or local programthat has a team of people that do
this that specifically poses young people totry to capture, you know, these
bad guys. If so, howsuccessful has it been and if not,
why not? Well we'll go first. Yeah, sure, there's there's certainly
a lot of efforts that HSI LosAngeles and HSI offices all across the country

(32:32):
employee, including the use of undercoverdecoys. We work very closely with the
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department to dothis. As far as success, it's
all successful. Right. Anytime thatwe're able to take a predator off the
street for any period of time issuccessful. The problem here is the volume

(32:53):
of these leads and tips. Sowhat I'll tell you is what we've seen
from COVID, especially during the lockdown, the isolation of kids and then the
need to have validation or acceptance.We've seen the number of cyber tips that
we get explode. So, forinstance, let's say in I think it

(33:16):
was calendar Ar twenty twenty, actuallytwenty nineteen, there were sixteen million cyber
tip leads, way too many,I think in twenty twenty one. In
twenty twenty, it's right when COVIDstarted and increased a lot, but we

(33:38):
really saw the rapid increase in calendaryear twenty twenty one, where it went
up to just under thirty million,And now we're in calendar year twenty twenty
two, the National Center for MissingExploded Children captured thirty two millions tip leads,

(34:00):
so the number is not going down. The problem here is that law
enforcement we're only part of the solution, right, and with thirty two million
leads, we're not going to arrestour way out of this. Before the
break, we were taking questions fromthe audience, and Agent Wong had answered
from his perspective. Now Sergeant Hisha chance to answer. It was a

(34:21):
question about using decoys. You know, how do you use them? Is
it effective? If not? Why? Right? And I just want to
kind of elaborate a little bit moreon what especially as Wong was talking about
regarding resources, there are millions ofleads. We get them, we tips
all the time. Hey look atthis, I got this email, I

(34:43):
got this text and all kinds ofthings. The victims are the receivers of
these texts. No, it's ait's a it's a it's a fraud or
a scam. But they so,but they wouldn't report it to us.
Anyways, so we get those butover the last few years four years or
so, our resources in law enforcement, especially in La County, have been

(35:05):
degraded quite a bit. So theresources that we have right now to put
into investigating these things is very limited. We have to really pick and choose
and see out of all these thingsthat we have to investigate, what can
we latch onto and be successful with. And unfortunately it's a very very small

(35:25):
percentage of the overall crime that's beingcommitted. Let's go back to questions in
the audience. Hi, Yvonne seemValley. I'm also apparent to an eight
and a six year old, sothank you for your question. I'm not
quite there yet. But to thetwo gentlemen, I'm also a nurse pre
profession and I work as a schoolnurse as well with middle school, and

(35:49):
i have been witnessed to things thathave happened, and I'm curious how cooperative
are school districts. I'm kind ofasking for venture accounty, but how cooperative
our school districts and helping you bothaccomplish what needs to be accomplished because it's
happening on campuses school districts. Icould talk about one case that we've we've

(36:10):
taken in rather recently, and ithas to do not necessarily with sex stortion,
but it's more of a bullying andthreat type of thing that's happened on
social media, and the Education Codemandates the school districts to have some kind
of a bullying anti bullying policy andprocedure, right, So they look at

(36:35):
it from an administrative standpoint, whichis good because that gives the school districts
more teeth if they're able to identifythe uh, the perpetrator, to suspend
them if they're a student, andthose types of things, which which is
good. As far as them cooperatingwith us, it's it's fairly good for
the most part. It's just Ithink there's two different I guess perspectives on

(37:02):
how something should be dealt with.If we get involved, it goes a
completely different way. Now you're talkingcriminal, right, and now you know
you got minors because these are middleschool children that are under eighteen, and
then you have parents and sometimes itcome to me first say hey, can
you assess this child and see ifyou see any signs, and then you

(37:22):
have to get parents involved. It'sa very flexing talking about parents involved,
that's the best circumstance. I thinkparents have a lot more power and ability
to get things done and to benefittheir children with the school districts than law
enforcement does. When we get involved, we're looking at it from a very
narrow through a very narrow lens.That's criminal. Okay. Did the elements

(37:45):
of this crime occur? Yes orno? Is there evidence? Yes?
No? Is there a victim asuspect? Yes or no? Put that
all together, give it to theprosecutor to prosecute. Right. It's a
very linear type of us with us. But when parents get involved, and
if they believe that the school districtis not complying with that education code or

(38:08):
not doing the things they need todo in the schools to ensure their child's
safety, then I think parents wouldget very, very loud with the school
districts to get them on board.In my opinion, the parents in this
case have a lot more power andability to get things done than we do.
Excellent, if I can actually addto this, it seems as though,

(38:30):
you know, obviously the saying ittakes a village right to do anything,
especially with raising kids, but alsowhen we're dealing with these different aspects.
For example, something that happened ina home where these girls were friends.
This is actually a recent new story. These girls were friends, there
was some argument when you know,they had falling out. One of them
went to take a shower. Thatother girl went took pictures of for a

(38:51):
while she was in the shower.Then at school spread the image of this
girl. So now you're talking aboutsomething that happened in a home, but
now you're talking about how to dealwith this on campus where other children are
having access to this image. Right, So there's so many, so many
things are happening now where it's notjust one situation, one place, one
scenario. Now more people are involvedand you're dealing with different places. How

(39:15):
do you go about dealing with somethinglike this. Well, in that case,
we have to break it down toits most simplest terms. One,
something happened in the home, rightright, with that child a minor.
If yes, then a crime wascommitted in the home. That's productive child
pornography at home, right. Butthen that person took it to the school.
In the school, they spread it. That's the distribution of chi pornography

(39:37):
in the school. So it happenedin both places. So you have two
separate crimes happen in two different places. From a law enforces perspective, we're
going to look at that and investigateit like that. From the home aspect,
the parents need to be involved athome to see what their children are

(39:57):
doing at home. And the schoolit means to jump on if that victim
reported to our teacher this is happening, the school district would jump on that
right away, pull the parents in, pull us in, and get that
taken care of immediately. So it'sfrom our perspective, it's one thing happened
in two places, but there aretwo different sides of the prevention. But

(40:19):
when do the FEDS get involved insomething like this? When does it escalate
to your desk? So when wetalk about cheer numbers, I think start
and hitch talk about it. Icould put every single special agent that works
for me working child sexual abuse materialinvestigations and we'd still have way too many

(40:40):
leads to go after. So fromour perspective, where we get involved is
so we house the Los Angeles PoliceDepartments Internet Crimes against Children's Task Force in
our in our office in Long Beach. From there will take cases that have

(41:00):
international nexus whether the offender is aUS citizen that's committing child exploitation or sexual
assault defenses in foreign places, orthat there's a foreign nexus to it.
I think we do a lot moreof the production and hands on offenses because

(41:22):
when you look at it from theperspective of sentencing, right, so actually
holding offenders accountable, this is wherethe federal system really comes in, and
that's where a lot of times it'sadvantageous to have, whether it's Homeland Security
investigations or another federal entity looking atit, because the sentencing guidelines are that

(41:45):
much higher. So when we workwith the US Attorney's Office, you know,
on the state side, it maybe possibly a wobbler between a misdemeanor
or felony. With us, it'sa felony, yeah, and you're doing
a felony fed time. You're gonnado real time, and you can probably
probably do upwards of eighty five percentof that time. So that's that that's

(42:07):
where we're brought in as more ofthe hammer when we look at these investigations.
I think we have time for onemore question for this segment. Ins
Hi. This is James from onthe Pointe. A lot of these crimes
have obviously been committed online and usethrough technology. Has there been any use
of AI in terms of tracking downthese criminals? Has that been uh?

(42:30):
You know, has AI been inany any help or been used up in
any real world scenario and catching thesecriminals a lot faster and tracking them down.
So artificial intelligence is evolving. We'retrying to keep up with that sort
of technology. Uh, we're certainlyuh speaking with industry experts when it comes
to what what tools are available andwhat the future holds. I would say,

(42:57):
you know, for that question likehey, what are we doing?
What can AI do to help?I think we also have to consider the
other flip side of the coin whenit comes to AI and what AI has
done on the child sex abuse materialfront, where now you can create images,
pornographic images, whether it's actual childsexual abuse material and then swapping faces

(43:21):
and there. So you know,that's the scary part of anything with technology.
Yes, it does make life better, but there's there's a CD underside
to that where we have to becareful about deploying that sort of technology and
understanding what that technology is capable of. Gentlemen, we're gonna have to stop

(43:43):
it. There and we thank youvery much for being with us and your
perspective on this much appreciated Sargent PeteHish, Agent Eddie Long. Our next
guest now is the owner of CyberSafety. Cop Clayton Cranford joins us now
remotely. Clayton, thank you somuch for being here. Thanks for having
me. Clayton, let's talk aboutthis because you're law enforcement, So tell
us a little bit about your careerbecause it's very interesting and I think it
fits perfectly for what we're talking about. Yeah, I was a law enforcement

(44:07):
officer for twenty years. I workedfor the Orange County Shrif's department. I
was a school resource officer, ajuvenile detective. I was on our county's
behavioral threat Assessment team, and asa sergeant, I ran our drug education
program, and all of those thingsall had the Internet involved. But as
a school resource officer back in twentytwelve, I was faced daily with students

(44:30):
and with parents who were in situationsand they weren't prepared for them. Usually
the situations were really, really horrible, as your earlier segment kind of outlined,
and so I wanted to come upwith an idea that we could help
students and parents to better manage thesesituations and maybe prevent them. So what
does cybersecurity cop do. So wetravel all of the United States and we

(44:53):
talked to students and assemblies K throughtwelve, and we also speak to parents
and parent education and we try todo it in a way where we are
impacting those students on a really emotionallevel. So what we've realized is that
after doing this for twelve years,it's not what kids. No. Kids
know everything. They know all theInternet safety rules. If you ask them,

(45:15):
give them quotes on internes safety,they're going to pass one hundred percent.
The problem is what they believe,and they believe that the real world
and their digital world are two differentworlds. So we try to talk to
them in a way and tell themstories that kind of hits them down more
and here and so they maybe changesthe way they think about it. And
then the other part is parents.We need parents to get radically involved in

(45:38):
their child's digital world, so wewant to give them the tools and resources
to do that. You know,we had a question from the audience with
our previous guests talking about the interactionwith school districts and parents, and you
know, this is a time nowwhere parents seem to be either overly aggressively
involved in what's going on at theirschools or their still pretty passive about it.

(46:00):
What are you experiencing with school districtsthat, once you've counseled about,
you know that interaction between the districtand the parent, because sometimes those two
things never align. Well. Ithink parents just don't know what they don't
know. And maybe that's the biggestissue. Because it's not mandatory. They
don't have to bring me or myinstructors to their school and targeting the parents.
Many do because they're concerned about thisissue. But the problem is that

(46:24):
even when they have these opportunities,parents aren't coming. Parents don't think this
is a problem. They don't thinktheir child's going to be a victim,
and this is a fundamental misbelief theyneed to understand. Every parent needs to
understand that you have a great kid, but under the rights to a circumstances
online, they can be a victim. Well, I was just talking interesting

(46:46):
left to one of our audience membersof about the fact that as a parent
you control what you can control,right, and you feel like, Okay,
I'm raising my kid right, I'velaid the foundation. I've armed them
with what they need to do whenthey're out in the real world. What
becomes complicated and difficult and scary allin one is when outside forces now have

(47:07):
influence over your child and that youcan't control right. So now you're in
a situation where maybe you did everythingright, but out there in the world
they can easily take the wrong path. I know a lot of parents who
did everything right and their child wasa victim. You know what I mean
by everything right is that they lovetheir child, they talk to their kid,
but they're missing a couple of pieces. So one thing is have a

(47:30):
conversation with your child so that theyfeel that they can talk to you and
ask for help. But also youneed to cover certain issues about sexteing,
what are these sex stortion looks like? You need to have those conversations.
And the other piece is understand what'sactually happening. So turn on controls,
you know, install an application ontheir device that runs in the background and

(47:52):
looks for problems. We recommend anapp called Our Pact. It's one of
the simplest and most important things youcan do as a parent because your kid
could be in a situation, makeone bad choice, right, they send
that image they shouldn't send. Nowthey can't get it back. And I've
had a parent who had a kidwho did that at ten PM and because

(48:16):
they were bombarded with messages from thisextorter for hours, by six am,
their child took their own life.That parent could have made a difference if
they knew what was going on.So it's beyond just what your child knows
or those conversations you had, whichare important, but you need to be
able to intercede, and maybe theonly way to do that is having that

(48:37):
kind of firsthand knowledge what's going onwith their device. Clayton, talk about
that you made reference to a Isit an app or software? Yeah,
it's an app. It's called ourpack and spell that. Can you spell
that place? Yeah? Ou arepact? Got it? And it's really
a no brainer, Like literally,for the cost of one Starbucks run a

(48:58):
month, you can keep your kidssafe. It'll grab screenshots, it will
analyze what they're doing, it willlet you know, and maybe that's the
most important thing. All of mystories boil down to a good kid who
made a bad choice and a parentwho did not know what was going on
well. I think also, youknow, technology is developing at a rapid
pace, faster than we could keepup with, right, and so now

(49:21):
we're exposed to so much more atsuch a level that it's hard to fathom
what's happening and understand what's happening.And so what happens is sometimes You're right,
we become passive or we think itwon't happen to us until it does.
So I think the theme that I'venoticed with the guests we've had thus
far is that we can't wait forsomething to happen and then react to it.
We have to really take this proactiveapproach and prevent anything before it actually

(49:45):
happens. And that comes on usas parents. That's our job now to
arm ourselves with the tools that areout there, and many of the things
that we're mentioned today, I haveto admit that I'm not even familiar with
most of this. So if I'mnot even famili with it, and I'm
in the news and I'm pretty muchto think of myself as knowing a little
bit about what's going on, it'spretty scary to be sitting here and hearing

(50:07):
these things for the very first time. There's always something new and right.
This is the challenge. So Iwould encourage parents go to my website cyber
safetycop dot com. You can signup for a free membership. We will
send you an email every other weekabout something you need to know, a
new app, new technology, howto talk to your kid about it.

(50:27):
We have resources for you and yourchild because one of the others, just
too is not just awareness, butactually making a child who is resilient.
Your child needs to know what theproblems look like, but also what to
do if they get into it again, into some situation of trouble, they
don't know how to get out ofit. They need to know what to
do. You know. I keptthinking back to when I was in high

(50:49):
school, back when pagers were allthe range. But when I think about
the smartphone now and I think abouthow valuable that tool is. Especially unfortunate
we have to deal with active shooterscenarios, we have to deal with other
scenarios that are going on that communicationsbetween the parent and the child is pretty
critical, pretty crucial, I thinknow we've parents are used to having that

(51:15):
connection, but at the same timethose phones have turned into sort of a
nightmare, right But without a doubt. Yeah. Yeah, so, and
I'm trying to think back to whenI was in school, and now that's
a whole host of new problems.Yeah, we have parents giving their children
phones at younger and younger ages.We never used to do like a through

(51:36):
three presentation when I started doing thistwelve years ago, and it was a
handful of years ago, maybe fiveor years ago. We started doing it
because these kids have phones. Parentsare giving the children phones because I think
this is making my child more safe. But what they don't realize that they
open up this world to their childthat would never have been available to them
without that device. So I'm mymay Perhaps my most important like tip I

(52:00):
can give a parent is weight aslong as you can do, not give
them a phone until they actually needit. Don't give them social media until
maybe they're in high school. There'sno downside to doing In fact, there's
a huge upside, and we knowthat through lots of research that the earlier
you give a child device and theearlier they get social media, the more
negatively impacts their mental health and itopens them up to drug access through drug

(52:23):
dealers. The number one cause ofdeath for young children is drug overdose.
Number two is suicide. And we'reshoving phones in our children's hands at much
too young ages and we're not thinkingabout the consequences. So what age would
you recommend someone give their child thephone. I'm thinking back, I think
I didn't get one until I learnedhow to drive. That's not a bad

(52:45):
call. In fact, I wouldencourage a parent to wait, and if
you want to wait till you're childsixteen, I don't think that's a bad
call. What I did in myhome was when my boys are in middle
school, I gave them a clipphone. It gave me the ability to
call them and text them, butthey didn't have access. It's the Internet.
A lot of parents are choosing Internetor our film connected watches like an

(53:05):
Apple device Apple Watch. This isa choice that would allow you to call
your kid and track them without havinggiving them access to the Internet or a
phone with a camera. We've beentalking with Clayton Cranford. He's the owner
of Cyber Safety Cop great information aboutthe counseling he does and the consulting he
does with school districts around the country. He is also a former law enforcement,
school resource officer, a juvenile investigator, threat Assessment officer as well.

(53:30):
Clayton, in your role doing threatassessment, what were some of the biggest
red flags that you were noticing inschools? What are in what ages?
There was a stat one time Iwas doing a story with the La County
Department of Mental Health and there wasat one time when I went to do
the story, there were forty onecredible threats with young people in school districts,

(53:54):
whether they were harming themselves or harmingothers, there were forty one credible
threats at that time that they didn'twant the public to know about. Talk
about some of the threat assessment thatyou do in how that is involved in
the school districts. Yeah, andactually I travel all the United States training
school districts how to do behavioral threatassessments. So probably the number one sign

(54:19):
is going to be leakage. They'regoing to be talking about homicidal thoughts and
sometimes sometimes suicidal cloth and those thingswill be produced in social media conversations with
people not being pinted victim and soit's just just things that are you know,
you know, words or images ofconcern is usually what gets somebody on

(54:39):
our radar. And then once westart digging in, we tend to see
someone who's very interested in weapons.Maybe they have a grievance, there's an
issue going on that they feel likeviolence is their solution. And often there's
an interest in other past school shooters, and we find out a lot of

(55:00):
that by digging into their social mediaand looking into their internets search history.
We have a question in the audience. Now, Hi, I'm a teacher
in La County and I guess twopart twofold. Is your outreach beyond Orange
County and can you describe a littlebit about your outreach. Is it to

(55:23):
the administration of districts, Is itto students within school districts and schools?
Professional development for teachers, et cetera. Yes, well, we go everywhere,
so we travel all of the UnitedStates, and when it comes to
our training, we do an educationalpiece for educators and administrations, so professional

(55:45):
development, but we also then docommunity outreach presentations for students and for parents,
and we can do those at schools, you might do them at a
church. And when we talk tostudents about social media, we also do
a presentation about me being marijuana andfentanyl. But we talk about social media,
we talk about three big ideas.Number one, the real world and

(56:07):
the digital order the same world.We talk about sextortion and texting and the
reputation consequences and the potential issues,and then we talk about threats, and
then lastly we talk about how tocreate a positive online reputation. So try
to take it and with a positivebecause our children are going to get going
to be given social media at somepoint, and we need to make sure

(56:29):
that they understand that they're digital footprintmatters. Well, you were mentioning some
of the topics and how you presentthe research that you have to students.
You said you tried to tell themstories that actually gets them I guess emotionally,
right. Can you give some examplesof what that would look like?

(56:49):
Yeah, I mean all the storieswe're telling our stories from our experiences as
investigators, as counselors. But youknow, when we talk about you know,
we're talking to a group of highschool students and we're talking about not
sending an intimate image of yourself toanother person, someone you know or don't
know, but often they're sending topeople they do know and those images get
out. So we just say,you know, like, look, if

(57:10):
you're in high school and you're datingsomebody, is that a relationship's going to
last forever? And everybody in theaudience, you know, I got a
gymnasum. The inner students are allcracking up. I'm like, yeah,
sooner or later, you're gonna breakup. I don't want to run the
romance, but it's not gonna workout. But if that image is given
to that person, that image doesn'tbreak up, it goes on forever.

(57:30):
So you need to ask yourself kindof a grown up question, which is
what do I have to lose?And a couple of years ago, we
had a young girl, actually ayoung woman just graduate college, reaches out
to me and she says, Igave up an image to my college boyfriend
because I loved him. We brokeup, and now that image is on
a website. She contacted that website. She said, this is my image.

(57:52):
You don't have permission take it down, and they said, we'll take
it down for a thousand dollars.And she called me, she said,
can you help me? I said, well, where's this website And as
it turns out, it's in adifferent country. So I said, ultimately,
law enforcem we can do nothing foryou. And then she asked should
I give them the money? AndI'll ask high school students should she give
them the money? And they allsay no. So she's lucked with a

(58:16):
situation that she cannot fix. Andthe question our students going to be asking
themselves is what does this mean tome? What do I have to lose?
And this poor young woman in theend said maybe I can change my
name. Oh are you seeing thata lot? Then, Clayton, that's

(58:36):
pretty interesting to mean. We justhad someone from Homeland Security Investigations on and
we were talking about transnational crime andhow this sort of fits into that mold.
And are you saying that there ourfederal government wouldn't be able to intervene
or help in that situation? No, because if it's if it's the this
isn't a government that's not friendly tous, like you know, the Ivory

(58:57):
Coast or something like that. Theycan't do a whole lot. So I
think in fact, this one wasin I think in a Southeast Asian country.
But the point is is that gettingsomething down is going to be nearly
impossible, and the problems our childrencan't think about what's happening next they're thinking
about what how do I feel rightnow? They have undeveloped proofineral cortexes.

(59:20):
They're really kind of bound up withtheir people, mean, like what makes
me feel good right now and what'sexhilarating. And they're more likely make bad
decisions because they're taking risks and chances, and unfortunately these risks and chances now
last forever. Well. Most ofthe time, young people are living for
the present right, very few ofthem are thinking long term in the future.

(59:42):
But Steve mentioned the pagers, andit made me think about when I
was growing up and in junior highin high school, we had the program
DARE And I'm sure you're familiar withDARE, being former law enforcement yourself,
and what a program that was,and how much that has changed to now
what you're going to schools and talkingto them about well, And the most
exciting thing for us was we hadone of our students who had a cigar

(01:00:06):
burn, I remember, on hisarm, and so he would show these
younger students when we go to speakto the kids about you know, don't
smoke, don't do drugs, don'tdrink, that was the extent of it.
He would show his little cigar burn, and everyone would be just so
shocked by it, and it wasenough to seal the deal, like maybe
you should stay away from cigarettes andsmoking. But now we're talking about something
completely different, and it's almost hardto understand how to approach it because we

(01:00:30):
never dealt with this. Most ofus in this room have no idea.
Still, what's going on out there? I had polaroids, yeah, or
you did things you know when you'rea kid, and now it's just a
rumor as social media. When wewere kids. Now, the message of
dare which was meant in the bestpossible way, which was just don't do
drugs, it didn't work. Ifyou tell a child drugs are bad the

(01:00:54):
first time they tried drugs, that'snot their experience. Their experiencing that they're
amazing. Right. The reason peopledo drugs is because they feel good.
The reason why people share nut imageswith other people online is because it's exciting.
There's a lot of dopamine happening here. The conversation we have with our
children is not is a real conversation, which is immediately this is the payoff.

(01:01:15):
The payoffic is dopamine. But thelong term consequences, those are what
we need to talk about the restof that story, and we share a
story with students where we give themthe rest of that story, and maybe
that's how we can kind of changethe way they think about it. We've
been speaking with Clayton krant For,the owner of Cyber Safety Copies, also

(01:01:36):
the author of the book Parenting inthe Digital World. Clayton before the break,
we were talking a little bit aboutsome of the challenges you have in
schools and trying to get that messageinto young people underdeveloped minds. Tell us
a story, or do you havea case study where a success story where
you had a situation where a youngperson was kind of on the cliff or

(01:01:57):
on edge and then you were ableto reach that person. Yeah. So
we've had a student who she hada sixth grade boyfriend who asked her to
send him a nude image to proveshe was in a committed relationship, and
unfortunately she did that. The resultof that was that image then being shared

(01:02:19):
with multiple boys at that school,and the night leading up to her first
day in seventh grade, she gotmultiple messages from those voice sayings, we
have this image of you, nowsend us an image. So in a
way, she's being sex storted hereby her peers. So she shows up
at school the next day and shewent into my office because I was the

(01:02:42):
school resource officer in that school andI had a relationship with those students,
and she came in there she says, I made a mistake. I need
help. Our kids are going tomake bad choices, like that's a give
in, but they need to knowwhat to do, Like how do I
manage this situation that I'm in.I want us to know that they're not
alone. So whether that's a parent, hopefully it's a parent, but maybe

(01:03:05):
another adult in your child's life.And I think parents should sit down with
their kid and have a conversation withthem and say, look, if you
make a mistake, In fact,I kind of expect you to, no
matter what it is, no matterhow embarrassing it is, I want you
to come to me and ask forhelp, and maybe ask your student if
it wasn't me, if it wassomething that you didn't feel comfortable talking to

(01:03:27):
me about because you're afraid or spared, is there another adult that you have
at that school that you trust thatyou could go to. Because our parents
love our kids, but there aresome things your child may not feel comfortable
talking to you about they're afraid thatthey're going to disappoint you. So I
hope your child has another adult atthat school that they can do that with.

(01:03:50):
From your experience, what is thenumber one thing or situation that you're
constantly dealing with. Is there onespecific type of a case that repeats itself
like a trend? Well, yeah, I mean there's just a lot of
mean, rude, and negative stuffhappening online. And this is what children

(01:04:10):
called the drama. Like if youask you know what's going on, they'll
say, well, it's just abunch of drama. So no child online,
no child on social media is goingto be unaffected. You think,
well, my kid doesn't have youknow, Snapchat builds all this stuff.
But if they're online, they areswimming around in this stuff and it is
going to affect them, and sothey need to be able to they'll talk
to them, They need to talkto somebody about it, but then it

(01:04:32):
can escalate into some pretty rough stuff. And then we also are dealing with
threats. There's a lot of threateningbehavior happening online and I investigated a lot
of them and most of them didn'tamount to a credible threat, but it
does create a fear response in thatstudent, and it's really difficult to be

(01:04:54):
educated when you're in fear. Andour children today, more than any other
time in twenty years, are struggledmental health area anxious, and they're scared
and depressed. And social media islike carosing being thrown on that fire.
How many schools do you talk toon average in a year or in a
month. We probably talk to threehundred schools in a year. We have

(01:05:15):
five or six instructors, and we'respeaking at a school almost literally every day
of the week. And are younoticing this problem or the series of problems
in any particular part of the countrymore than any other part. No,
I think it's a it's across akind of a global issue. I speak
to students on the East Coast andthe West Coast and the problems are all

(01:05:36):
the same. And again, aparent who is engaged in their child's life,
not in their digital world, ismissing a huge problem. The chances
of your child being a victim ofphysical violence is lower now than it ever
has, but nearly eighty three percentof all human trafficking in sexual explotation cases

(01:05:58):
begin on a child's device. Sowe need to kind of take our eyeballs
as a parent and turn them inon our child's digital world and be involved
in that. I'm sorry, yousaid eighty three percent of human traveling.
Yeah, in twenty twenty two,all active human trafficking and sexual explication cases
began on a mobile device. Wow, what was the youngest age? You're

(01:06:20):
aware of that this has occurred withvery young So I have students we'll see
about every week. I have aparent calling me and asking for advice.
So I had a parent call menot too long ago. His seven year
old is on Roadblocks, which isan online game. It's similar to similar

(01:06:40):
Minecraft, and he's messaging with anotherplayer who he thinks is someone his age,
but it turns out it's an adultwho's having a very sexually explicit conversation
with their child. And that parentdid not know about this until they went
to my presentation and I said,you need to be looking into your child's
gaming and they're chatting with He goeshome and looks at his child's will Blocks

(01:07:03):
chat history, and his life ischattered. So there's a lot going on
even with our very little kids thatwe need to kind of grab our brains
around and my website will give youthe tools to do that. My book
will walk you through. It's stepby step. You don't have to be
an expert, you just have tobe engaged. Well, I'm glad you

(01:07:26):
mentioned gaming because one of our audiencemembers was asking about that very topic.
And so the question is they havea sixteen year old boy and they want
to know how to be aware ofthe dangers of gaming. How do they,
as parents know what he's up to. How do they, I guess,
walk that fine line where they don't. He doesn't feel like you're watching
and hovering over him. At thesame time, you kind of are without

(01:07:48):
him knowing what's going on, soyou're trying to keep him safe and be
aware all in one. I encourageparents to invade their child's privacy. If
you don't want your child's private ifyou want to house privacy, be zero.
It should be like you have themore ill legal right to do it,
so you can blame me. It'stotally fine with regards to social or

(01:08:11):
regards of gaming. Almost all thesegames have pernal controls. So I would
encourage you to go to my website. I have a page in my website
that rates and reviews games. Mybook and also my website has step by
step guides on the pronal controls,especially Fortnite and Roadblocks and Minecraft. Common
Sense Media dot org also has excellentresources and tools for you that would help

(01:08:36):
kind of fill in the gaps thatI don't have. But when it comes
to some games like Call of Duty, you're not going to have as much
control because those games are supposed tobe for teens and those games don't build
that in So Roadblocks and Minecraft theyhave a reason to create more pronal controls
in there and to protect children becauseit's really skewing to a younger age.

(01:08:59):
When my boys, who are nowin college, when they're playing Minecraft,
I had that dialed pretty tightly.I knew what was going on. I
could control who can communicate with them, But when they're playing Call of Duty,
I didn't have that level of control. So what I would do is
I would pop in in the areathat they're playing this game and listen to
what's going on. You might beconcerned at the kind of things that people

(01:09:24):
are seeing in these gaming environments.It can be very very caustic, but
also you need also be comfortable withyour child in those environments and understand that,
or more importantly, that they understandthat they cannot be sharing their personal
information with the people that they're playingif they're playing in an open kind of
gaming environment. Clayton, I appreciateyour time very much. We have gotten
a lot from this, this amazinginformation. Again, that's Clayton Cranford,

(01:09:46):
owner of Cyber Safety Cop and he'sgot a book called Parenting in a Digital
World and you can get in touchwith them through cyber safetycop dot com.
Clayton, thank you so much foryour time. Much appreciate it. Thank
you everybody else, thank you forjoining us for Part one of Sex,
Drugs and Social Media. This KFINews special is a production of the KFI
News Department for iHeartMedia, Los Angeles. Robin Bertolucci Program director Chris Little,

(01:10:12):
news Director. The program is producedby Steve Gregory, Jacob Gonzalez, and
Richie Cantero. Our technical director isRicardo Soadaviia, the sound engineer as Tony
Sorrentino, and our video director isVincent Hernandez. Tune in next Sunday at
two pm for Part two of Sex, Drugs and Social Media. This is
kfi AM six forty