001We're going to get started, guys, so we can get you out of here on time. I know everybody's had a long day. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Detective Gary. I'm one of three detectives here with you tonight from Tinley Park. One of my main roles and responsibilities in um as a detective in Tim Park is I work mostly with juvenile cases um so victims, witnesses. I work closely with schools on a lot of noncriminal related juvenile matters. So, making sure that the schools are aware of all the possible resources out there for kids, any referrals that can be helpful for kids. A lot of my investigations, as with Detective Budo and Detective Vans will tell you here in a couple minutes, they come they come back to social media, they come back
002to the internet usage, they come back to cell phones, they come back to video games. Kids are constantly connected. So today is very important to go over some of the challenges or even threats that kids are faced with today that maybe they I know they weren't there when I was a kid. Same for everybody probably in the audience as well. So with that we can be supportive of our kids. We got to get educated on these topics. Even if we don't have social media, we have to understand how it works and what some of the risks might be in allowing our kids to utilize social media. We'll talk about some guidelines, maybe some rules, some some some guides that you guys can use as you implement your own personal family strategy on how to confront
003social media. So, without further ado, I'll let the other two gentlemen here introduce themselves before we get started. >> Hi, I'm Detective Mazuko Justin. Uh, it's very thorough instructions by JP. So, uh, been a detective for like the last five years. I'm a member of the Cook County Internet Crimes against children task force. uh which is why you know us three do a lot of these presentations not just to you guys but also to uh some of the kids around uh schools around town. >> Hi, my name is Detective Van Scan uh Tinley Park PD. I also um have been a detective now for about four years and um just like Justin said, him and I are partners within the Cook County Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. Um, so we're excited to be here
004today, um, tonight to talk to you guys about some things that you can go over with your kids and we're going to talk a little bit about some stuff that, um, you know, you guys can do and watch out for, um, good practices that you guys can do to keep your kids safe. Um, only other thing I'll say, we'll have time at the end for questions if anyone has any, but um, feel free to, you know, raise your hand and ask a question, interrupt us. Um, that's totally fine. if you have a question that's uh specific to whatever we're talking about at that time. And uh thanks for coming out. >> All right, here we go. So tonight's agenda, we kind of break it down into like five segments so you're not completely overwhelmed with
005this. So we're going to go over internet safety fundamentals with that. A lot of these internet safety interchangeable with video gaming, social media, anything like that. They're fundamentals of what we can do and what we need to be prepared for. The various social media platforms, we're going to try to cover the most popular ones with kids these days. And when I say kids, I mean pre-teen, teenagers, all the way up to adulthood. Cyber bullying. We will touch on AI, which of course is everywhere now. And some practical tools for for the parents to take away from. So hopefully we'll put some tools in your tool belt and help you guys um work with your kids to make them as safe as possible online. Purpose is we're going to be trying to include some tips and
006uh explain some of the dangers really that these kids are facing. So reducing some child exploitation, preventing future victimization, educating, and then as well as supporting mental health. We'll talk about some of the risks or what the research is showing of what happens to kids that are spending a lot of time on social media or the internet. Why is it so important? Well, just as you can see up through the slide, kids are spending so much time on their devices. And so some of it can be innocent. You know, they have a Chromebook or they have an iPad for school. they need to do their homework, but that can then quickly translate to they finished their homework and now they're going to be playing video games. Now they're done with their video game console and
007now they're on their phone when they're doom scrolling. You name the social media app. So, they spend a ton of time on there. As Vincent Justin said, we talk to kids as well. Often times we ask them to raise their hands when they uh want to tell us about their screen usage. And anybody with an iPhone on Sundays, they get that screen usage report and it'll tell you how much your daily screen time is. everybody looks at and goes, "Oh, no. It can't be that way." But it is. And so, one of the things that we want to try to really emphasize with parents is that kids are always going to mimic. They're not always going to listen to us. I'm a parent. My kids don't listen to me ever, I don't think. But, uh,
008we got to make sure that we're setting the right example with the kids. So, being aware of how much time we're spending on social media, the example that we're setting for them, because if we're posting a lot on the internet or social media, Facebook, whatever it is, kids are going to see that. or if we're using our phone at the dinner table instead of eating dinner, kids are going to see that. So, we're going to talk about some habits that can be helpful to establishing really good habits for kids as they enter to teenage years and into adulthood. So, some fundamentals, the digital footprint and privacy. Privacy is one of the things we really want to hone in on and it's trying to explain to young people that how important their privacy is. And for
009any of us that have ever had our privacy violated, whether it's an identity theft or somebody hacked on your email account, we know how terrible it seems. The analogy I like to use when I'm talking to even um junior high kids is, would you like it if you looked outside your house window and you saw somebody looking in to your house? No, that wouldn't feel very good. The same premise applies to what you're putting out there on social media. Your online persona is just like a house. And if you're putting too much information out there or allowing the window to be too big where you're then allowing a bunch of strangers to look into who you are and how you're conducting yourselves on social media or the internet, that can be problematic. Password and account
010security. So kids shouldn't be sharing passwords with each other. Kids should not be logging in if if they do have Snap or Instagram. They should not be sharing devices. We explain to the kids that, hey, you might be friends with little Jimmy today, but next week might be different. and all of a sudden he has access to your staff account, he has access to your Instagram account, there's some serious risks that get posed with that because even if you know your child doesn't make the post, but it's their account that is linked to another kid's device and they post it, your kids still going to be accountable for that. They're still going to be getting questioned, you know, and if it's something that's serious that rises to the level of a school threat or something
011similar like that, you're going to be getting interviewed by the school. You might be getting interviewed by us or other people at the police department. So making sure that the kids understand at a very young age to retain their passwords to themselves with the exception of parents should always know all their kids information, their login, their passwords, everything like that. And also making sure that we're not making usernames that say, "Hey, my name is Johnny Smith." Okay, let's try to be a little bit more of u intentional about not sharing too much information too early on. Fishing scams and unsafe limbs. Kids are a vulnerable population. We can all agree with that. So they are a big target for scams and with that can be as innocent as playing a Roblox game and there's links
012to different servers on Discord and things like that where all of a sudden viruses can be downloaded on the systems whether it's a computer game or video game or they're clicking links that are sent to them via Tik Tok or Instagram. They're very vulnerable. So we got to make sure they understand that if it's too good to be true, it's too good to be true. Don't click the link. and avoiding adult websites. Of course, making sure that they not accessing websites or information that they are not ready for. Also understanding that these tech companies are not here to protect the kids. That's that's our that's our role collectively as a community is making sure that our kids are protected as much as possible. So, it may start innocently enough if a kid has access to
013an Instagram account where they um are searching, you know, fitness or they're trying to interested in working out. All of a sudden, that algorithm has a mind of its own, right? Because it's a computer, it's not a person that's safeguarding it and they are introducing a lot of content that isn't age appropriate. So, making sure that we're constantly evaluating the search history, we're seeing the kind of videos that they're exposed to because it can get quickly out of hand. your name, your identity, your reputation. Good accounts don't have anything about where you live, your team name, the the sport that the kid plays on, their user profile doesn't have a picture of them in their school shirt, doesn't have a picture of them in their Bulldogs uniform. Things like that that again may seem like
014standalone isn't a big deal, but we have to recognize that online and social media there are a ton of predators out there and they are just at their predators. They know how to put clues together and they know how to build profiles. So, we have to make sure that we're not putting too much standalone information out there where we are revealing too much information about the kid on them because a kid's going to get a friend request from somebody he doesn't know or she doesn't know. But they're saying, "Oh, hey, you play for Bulldogs? I I play for Park Bulldogs, too." And all of a sudden, this person, this bad actor on the internet is now gaining that kid's trust all because they just reviewed some pictures or posts that they made with them wearing
015a bulldog uniform or Bobcats or whatever it may be. Also recognizing that it's their reputation at stake and that all this stuff never goes away. Detective Razuko will talk about Snapchat here in a few minutes, but recognizing that nothing goes away. If you post it on a device that's connected to the internet, it never goes away. Kids think that with Snap messages disappear, pictures disappear. We can we can attest. We will swear under oath. We can retrieve those videos. We can retrieve those messages. We can retrieve all those pictures. All that stuff goes to the cloud, goes to those big data centers they're all building. It's retained forever. So, whatever you post on the internet is going to be there forever. And it may not seem like a big deal when your kids 11 or
01612, they're not thinking about their future. That's what we're all here for is to try to educate them and guide them on on such a topic. Privacy settings. We're going to talk a lot about not sharing information. So, turning off location GPS uh settings except for parents. Parents got to know where the kids are at. If they are pre-teen or they're teenagers and you're giving them more freedom, then they're earning more freedom. They're allowed to stay out a little later. They're allowed a bit more movement and freedom. But you're like, I still got to know where you're at. Okay. But that's where it ends. If you find yourself a parent of a pre-teen or a teen that is friends with a group of people that say, "I need to know your location. Turn on your
017location on the Snap Map." Not great. Not great at all. That is part of the problem is that kids aren't getting these boundaries that we all got when we were kids. There's no disconnect. So, their friends saying, "I need to know where you're at right now." No, you don't. I'm in my house. We just spent all day together at school. You don't need to know where I'm at. Those can cause a really big rift sometimes amongst friends, but oftent times it's just like when we're trying to teach our kids to stand up and do the right thing. If it's the hard thing to do, it's probably the right thing to do. Turning off public settings across all social media platforms, but especially Snapchat and Instagram, they they store and they share so much location data
018that if your kids snap maps are turned on, it tracks you to the foot within the set. Like when we do when we do investigations um you know not juvenile related but adult investigations we get search warrants back from Snapchat or Instagram location services are turned on it tracks it to the second all this stuff is stored and retained in perpetuity. So that doesn't feel great I mean I don't want to be followed every second of every day. Does anybody right? So we got to try to instill this logic into our kids. We're not sharing live locations with people except for our parents. And there's really no reason to post, hey, you're checking in. You know, you're at a baseball game, probably a Cubs game. Nobody goes to socks games, but um you don't need
019to check in. You know, if if you're there and you're a kid, you're with your family or you're with your friends, enjoy the moment. Likewise, parents need to be setting that example, too. You're not getting into the parking lot, you're going to go, "Hey, let me check in." So, as I talked about, kids are going to be mimicking our behavior all the time. They don't listen, but they watch. Don't share daily routines. Please advocate for your kids. There's no reason that if your kids's waiting for the bus stop every day that they're taking a selfie and posting it on whatever platform. Everybody's going to school. Everybody's going to work. And think about it. If you're taking that selfie every day, what might be in the background? Street signs. So all of a sudden, a person,
020a bad actor online is watching, is viewing these posts and they can say, "Okay, oh, they live at this intersection." It's another piece of information that a bad actor can use to gain trust with your kid. Who is looking at it? Well, the simple answer is everybody and forever. But our parents are looking, teachers, coaches, principals down the road as kids get into high school. Colleges care about this. So if you're trying to play sports, you know, there's obviously you have to have the athletic performance side of things, but you also need to have the intangibles. How are you conducting yourselves online? We've all seen the news of people making posts when they were young and it resurfacing year years later. Sure, maybe they should be giving some grace, but the fact remains this person
021is now in a situation where they have to explain things for what they posted when they were 14 years old. The better course of action is just don't post it and recognize that these posts are going to be there forever. Potential employers down the road, and I know we're kind of talking down the road since most of us are parents of young kids. This is a big one. People you don't like or who don't like you. Friends groups in junior high are great, but odds are kids are going to go to different high schools as well. So friends group friends groups that are in seventh grade and eighth grade may not be there in freshman year or sophomore year. So the kids you got to really be careful and reemphasize with your kids and say
022hey don't share these pictures don't share this sensitive information in seventh grade and it might be fine for a couple years but we're getting a lot of examples and cases of where no longer friends this person that was trusted with the sensitive picture or information is now rebroadcasting. Like we said it never goes away. Strangers and predators. On any given day on Instagram, it's estimated, this is from some 2024 research, so it's probably bigger number now, 500,000 predators on Instagram. On every sing on any single given day, Detective Booko and Detective Vans do a great job working these cases, part of the IAT task force, but they can tell you they don't work 500,000 cases a day. And sure, it might be spread out throughout the country, but that's just one platform. It's just one
023social media page. So, keeping that in the back of your mind going, there's a lot of strangers on the internet. There's billions of people in the world and the internet allows us access to all of them, but it also allows everybody to have access to us. This is a real simple the five W's of sharing. So, take with take from it what you think is going to be helpful for your kid. Who are you sharing with? If it's an inside joke or it's a funny meme that your kid wants to send to his or her best friend, okay? Is there a reason why you would need to still send that funny meme to a snap group of 20 people? No. Because what happens when we communicate with too many people at once? Odds are something's
024going to get misinterpreted, misconstrued, reposted, maybe taken out of context that was originally intended. So, who are we sharing this information with? When are you sharing it with? Techo is going to talk about it, but there's absolutely no reason why kids should be posting things at night, overnight. They're waking up, they can't sleep, they're grabbing their devices, and now they're posting on Snap or Instagram. No reason. The kids need sleep. We all need sleep, but kids really need sleep. So, what time of day? When are they posting that is really important? What are you sharing? Is there a reason for it? Is it beneficial? Or is it going to maybe be taking that person out of it enjoying something in real life? We have to make sure that our kids aren't sacrificing their real world
025experiences to try to get some social media clout, whatever that means. I don't have it. I just read about it. Um, where are you sharing it? So, if you're in school, you shouldn't be sharing anything when you're at school. You're in school. You're there to learn. Be separated from your devices if you have them. Again, why are you sharing? If you're just saying, "I'm bored." We all know that we do silly things when we're bored. Remove the devices from your kids if they're posting things out of boredom and start to work on some of these fundamentals that we're going to give you here in a little bit to ensure that there's not posts that weren't intended to be inappropriate or irresponsible, but they were posted out of boredom. We have to try to prevent them
026because once they're posted, the cat's out of the bag, the genie's out of the bottle. It's really hard to get back in. Question. What are three actions kids can take? Well, there's four, but uh can take to protect themselves online. We're going to be creative with our username profiles. We're not using our real names. We're not using our birthdays. We're not using our addresses. We're not using our social security numbers, our parents' credit card numbers, any of those things. Don't inadvertently share information about hobbies, interests, or where they go to school. As I mentioned, it can be very innocent enough, and a young person may not understand why can't they post all their own pictures of themselves in all the uniforms on the social media. But we just went over, there's a lot of bad
027actors. There's a lot of strangers out there on the internet. not sharing location or personal information with anyone over social media or the internet. 100%. And if anybody ever asks your kid, "Hey, send me your address." Nope. Absolutely. Hard full stop. Hard no. Something bad's going on. Lastly, know who you're friends with in real life. I tell kids, if you don't know them in real life, you don't know what they look like, don't add them on Snap, Instagram. Don't have Snap or Instagram, but if you have one, don't add them to, okay? It should be based on real life experiences. Life's meant to be fun, but we got to make sure that we're distinguishing the difference between internet life and real life. Oh, yep. There it is. This is one of my last slides. So,
028what makes you feel unsafe? Creepy white fan. What do you think? Thumbs up, thumbs down. Yeah. Not great. We were all told at one point, I'm sure some of the kids in this room have been getting told, "Hey, you can go to the park after school. You know, we have a nice couple days here. Finally, maybe spring is coming." You go to a park and you see something, you see a person, you see something that's creepy, kind of makes your spidey senses go off. What do you tell them to do? Run home, call the police, run home, tell me, we'll call the police. Any of these things. So, albeit a white panel man is not illegal or bad, we kind of teach our kids to be aware of stranger danger early on, right? And so
029with that, we want to try to be reemphasizing that message with the internet and social media. Essentially, the internet's just full of creepy white fans. We don't know who these people are. We can't see into the car. We don't know what their intentions are. They may be fine. They might just be working 100% all good. But the fact remains there's so many potential bad action on there. We have to be on the defensive. So we have to teach our kids to trust their instincts. If something doesn't feel right, remove yourself from the situation. Come home. Tell me. If we need to talk to the police, we'll talk to the police. if they need to make a report, if they just want to make a community announcement. Any of those things can happen, but we have
030to start to instill in our kids the right trust. Oh, I did see that. Yeah, that that truck or that van was circling park for a while. They didn't get out. They were just driving really slow and looking around at us. You go, what? Why didn't you tell me? So, all these things, they go, "Oh, I didn't think it was a big deal." We have to explain to the young people and say, "Hey, this is a big deal." It doesn't mean by you telling me that you saw this that this person that was driving the van did something illegal, but it's probably worth a second or a third look and detective. All right. Uh so next we're going to go kind of more into specific social media apps. Um we didn't say it during the
031introduction, I don't think, but thank you all for being here. Uh you're probably not the parents that need to be here since you're actually and our message is not going to be received by parents in content, but I do appreciate that you guys are all here. Um, and this presentation is kind of more tailored towards uh teaching parents. So, uh, forgive me. Some uncomfortable topics are probably going to get brought up. I'll try to water it down, but I still want the message to, uh, be received. And although we talk to the kids and stuff, we as adults aren't immune from a lot of the stuff that we're talking about with social media. Um, how often do you post and do you feel the need to constantly check in? I'm sure some of us because
032I have my watch, we all have our phones. If we're getting notifications, you know, do you feel that like urge that like somebody texts me like I should probably check that. I have a Snapchat notification. I need to check that. Um, that's kind of we're talking about like that is like a form of addiction, right? It's not a substance. It's not a drug or alcohol. But if you're feeling compelled that you have to look at your phone, I'm guilty of it too sometimes. It's that's what we're trying to produce, right? And Vince is going to talk more about some screen time limits we can implement. Uh that's part of what we're going to be talking about with the how often we post. Um you should control social media, not the other way around. Remember that
033social media, having a phone, all this technology, um it's a convenience, it's a privilege, right? It's not an obligation. Uh I heard JP mention about the setting boundaries with your kids and their friends. When we give these presentations and we talk about this part, I know I'm on track because the kids look at each other and laugh, but kids will legitimately get upset with their friends because they didn't respond to their snap fast enough. Hey, I posted that story and you didn't like it on Instagram or something like that. That is a real conversation these kids are having. And that is just an unhealthy uh way to have a relationship if people are genuinely getting upset with you because you're not responding fast enough. It's a phone. It's a convenience. I will respond to you
034when I have time. your text message is not the most important thing in the world. And that's kind of a message we try to tell our kids of when they have these relationship with their friends or, you know, down the road dating relationships of setting that boundary that you're not tied to your phone. You're not on anybody else's time when it comes to responding to them. Um, how many accounts do we have? I the only social media I still have is Snapchat for some reason, which I'll talk to my own downfall about that later. Um, but I have one Snapchat account. I don't have multiple. I have work accounts for stuff. That's a different purpose. We and our kids should really only have if you're going to have an Instagram, have one Instagram. Why do
035your kids need multiple Instagram accounts? Why does really anybody have multiple uh Instagram accounts? There's usually a reason behind that. Whether again Vince would talk later about a cyber bullying aspect or potential predators on the internet. Those are the type of people that have multiple accounts. So if you allow your kid to have these social media accounts, it should be one. They shouldn't be having hidden Snapchat accounts or anything like that that you're not aware of. Uh, can anyone see anything at any time? The one of the most basic rules of social media and internet safety is for kids is make sure your account is private. Only your friends can see it, right? We don't need uh I know if you ask kids apparently now, they want to be like influencers. Like that's apparently an
036actual aspiration in life now. So, we want to be famous on the internet. God help us all. Um, but that's a real thing that they say. And maybe it's just like when people tell kids they're not going to play in the NBA, you're probably not going to be a famous Tik Tocker, right? So, you don't need these public stories. The world doesn't need to see what you're up to creating this stuff. Um, because JP touched on is there are bad people in the world unfortunately who looked for that stuff and everything's a piece of a puzzle. Are we proud of what we post? Um, you know, looking back, do you ever I'm sure we've all had regrets that we've said to somebody. You know, we said something to one of our friends or a family
037member that looking back like, you know what, I probably shouldn't have felt I shouldn't have said that. You feel bad about it. Just it's the same concept we said. Now it's on the internet and people could have screenshot it. They could have documented it and it's a simple apology. The person you offended is no good anymore because the world can see whatever it is that you regretted. So, just make sure that uh you're happy, you're proud of yourself for what you're putting out there. And we're going to talk about parents rules. Hopefully, kids who have social media, you listen to your kid uh your parents rules and the agreements you have in place to have social media because those should exist in your household. I don't know what that is. Um all right. So, this
038is not an all-inclusive list. These are some of the more popular social media platforms and apps that we are encountering. Roblox. I don't play Roblox. I understand it's some form of um video game with an ingame chat system, which to my knowledge is actually fairly well monitored by the Roblox um servers. Again, all these are all third party apps. They all have some sort of monitoring system in there to try to protect kids online, but it's not a perfect system. uh Snapchat, Instagram, Discord, YouTube, Tik Tok. I'm going to break these down a little more individually on each slide. Uh Discord, this is kind of um becoming more popular. It exists as a chat platform for video games. That was kind of the initial concept of uh if I play Xbox and someone else plays
039PlayStation, we couldn't interact. But now some games you can play on both PlayStation and Xbox together. And this platform allows you to communicate. um off the game on a third party app, which is okay sometimes. Like I believe that all these social media platforms and apps were developed with good intentions, but unfortunately bad people use the internet just like we do. So if your kids are playing Xbox, PlayStation, whatever online, um that's fine. I don't think they should be voice chatting with anyone who's not their friend. So, if your kid's going to hop on Fortnite or something for a little bit, maybe check with them. Hey, who are you playing with? And if they're playing by themselves, you shouldn't hear any them talking to people, right? Because they don't know who they're talking to. We
040shouldn't be accepting friend requests from people we don't know. Um, that's another internet safety rule 101 is don't accept random friend requests. So, Discord is also uh unfortunately a way that predators it's like a first step. They meet a kid on Roblox or something which is known to be heavily monitor. However, also the majority of their users are kids like young kids. So, they have to figure out a way to get them off Roblox where they can talk to them more freely. This is very commonly that way is Discord. Um, so again, it's safe for your kid to use Roblox and interact with their friends and stuff like that, but they shouldn't be adding people that they met on Roblox that they don't know in real life on Discord. Um, and aside from that, the
041how we mentioned by the introduction, I remember the internet crimes against uh children task force for Cook County, we are seeing an uptick with um offenders, predators uh who are switching to Discord. uh that seems to be uh the new trend for them to uh talk to kids online. So, there is a legitimate purpose for it. I don't think a lot of kids should be having it because if you're playing video games with your friends, you can probably talk to them in game. Uh just if they have this, just monitor their friends list and have an idea of who they're talking to. All right, Snapchat. Um some statistics. parents in the room, if any of you heard the term sextor tortion, I think I recognized it from our presentation last year. So, welcome back. Um,
042Vince will touch on like the definition of sextorion, what it is um in his portion of this, but 51% of the kids on the platform became targets. That's alarming. Um, and 23% were actually sorted successfully. Uh so Snapchat is kind of the uh bane of our existence. Every uh case with school threats or inappropriate pictures getting sent around all stems to Snapchat. There Snapchat been around for probably like I don't know 10 12 years or so. And when it started the whole you send a picture in 10 seconds it's gone and everyone was like oh this is gone forever. Well no it's not. Obviously screenshots and screen recording exists. you get notified if that happens. But the pictures, the videos, the messages that are sent on here are all retained in the Snapchat servers. Um,
043and like JP mentioned, us and others do have access to get that stuff back. Along with that idea that sending something and it goes away on Snapchat, I think also fuels the activity on Snapchat. Kids think if I send this stupid picture or video, it's there. It's gone. no repercussions, right? And that is very rarely the case. What I mean by that is uh one, the inappropriate pictures and videos, they think if I just send them out, it's there, it's gone, and no one can get it again. However, Snapchat also does have uh some a decent monitor built-in monitoring system that flags uh you know for like school thread stuff or the inappropriate pictures of videos of kids to where they alert law enforcement if something like that comes across their servers. Snapchat also, this
044is where I'm guilty uh because it's the one I still have. If you guys are not familiar um with Snap Streak, how many days in a row that you communicated with someone on Snapchat, you sent them a picture or video. Uh I myself have like a 3,000 day streak with one of my friends. Uh so I don't pop me kettle, but uh that does fuel the need for these kids to check it at least once a day. I know I do every day Snapchat Steve some picture of something because you know we got to keep the street going. So, if I as a 32-y old band feel that need, I guarantee you your young kids are also feeling compelled to keep that Snapchat streak going, right? And that's what we're talking about is it's all
045about getting the user to come back to their platform. And that is a genius built-in way to get people to keep interacting with their platform. Um, JP also touched on uh one of the basics of internet safety is the the location data sharing uh your exact coordinates. For whatever reason, people feel the need to do that. And I mentioned not be accepting friend requests from random people on my Snapchat account. I get weekly friend requests from people that I have no idea who they are. Luckily, I'm very smart with my internet safety and I don't accept any of these friend requests. But when we do these presentations in the schools and we ask how many you guys share your location on Snapchat, you know, at least half the room puts their hand up. And then
046we say how many of you guys are getting these random friend requests? Again, almost everybody raised their hand. And how many of you guys accept these friend requests? and a certain percentage of those people raise their hand. So you have these kids who are accepting random friend requests from people that they do not know who they are and they're also sharing their snap locations on their map. So you're just broadcasting to whoever adds on Snapchat, this is where I am literally right now. And is that a problem? Yes, of course it is. Um so I encourage you if you don't have Snapchat, really not just Snapchat, but um any of these social media platforms in general, you should if your kid has it, you should have it. You should download it. You should go through
047it. Most of these companies have some sort of parental guideline safety feature that you should review and have an understanding of how the app works and what's it designed for. So, you better know how to protect your kid of what they're allowed to do and what they're not allowed to do. Um, you should also, if they're going to have Snapchat or something, you should be their friend, right? one of your rules. If you're going to have this, you are my friend and I have to be able to not just you should have their password and access the account, but also be their friend so you can see what does everyone else see when they look at my kids profile. Um, also a lot of crime is facilitated on Snapchat. In the top left there, you
048see the display name, username. Uh, display name for example would be uh Justin. Like for my I'm a contact phone, it's just going to be Justin. and then my username whatever uh JR12345. If something happens on Snapchat where you need to come to law enforcement to report something that happened uh we need that that username. You have to actually click on the account and find the username. It'll sometimes have an at symbol before it. That's the information we need to actually get account information so that you know we can help you with whatever the problem is. Um Instagram. This one is less popular when we do these presentations with schools that we pull the kids. Not too many of them. Like a decent amount of them have Instagram, but it's not the most popular. YouTube,
049Tik Tok, and I think statistically Snapchat's number three. But again, uh Instagram has the the feature of the stories. Um and I think JP is going to talk a book about a book a little bit later with actual hard statistics, but Instagram I believe is kind of increasing the rate of anxiety and depression in kids. Everyone's familiar with the influencer lifestyle that people want to be. You had the the fitness models with the lip injections and all this stuff. Or you had the the guy influencers who are all jacked up on steroids and trying to sell you some sort of supplement product because if you take this, you can look like me. And unfortunately, our very impressionable views of society look at that man or woman and say, "I want to be like that. I
050want to look like that. I want to have that lifestyle." they start comparing themselves to what they're seeing on Instagram, which is not reality. There's actual companies uh I've seen videos of you can like rent the inside of a private jet to film a video or post a story so you get that clout where it looks like you're on private jets, but you're really not. But kids see that and they say, "Well, I want to be on a jet. I want to have that car." You know, they compare themselves and when they realize that that's not where they are and other people are, they feel worse about themselves. Oh, I'm not as good-looking as him. I'm not as pretty as her. not as in good of shape as that and it affects them mentally. They
051get depressed, you develop anxiety about those type of things and really the addiction to the internet is kind of uh harming the mental health of the kids in our society. So again with that the private accounts don't no one's going to be Instagram famous, right? we don't need to be posting all these pictures of what we're doing all the time, trying to get likes and things like that because again, when these kids post a picture on Instagram that doesn't get as many likes as they would hope, they feel worse about themselves. Oh, that was a picture of me. Why didn't people like that? Do they not like me? And when you're chasing that internet clout and you're putting yourself out in the open of the internet, there's six billion people in the world. Uh people
052are mean, right? You post a picture of yourself, you think you look great, people might comment and try to bring you down. has to constantly post multiple accounts where people make accounts just for the sake of cyber bullying or bringing down others and now you're putting yourself out there in the world and you're getting rejected by strangers over the internet again fueling that depression anxiety that our kids are uh developing now as a result. All right, Tik Tok and YouTube again there's that keep yourself private don't need to be posting public stories, public videos and I know JP talked about the uh little bits of information If uh if you're allowing your kid to post and create Tik Toks with their dances or whatever else, you should be reviewing whatever it is that they want
053to put out there. You should be watching it before they post it. And think about the small things. Are they wearing their Central Middle School Twisters or tornadoes or whatever the school is mascot? Are they wearing that shirt? Are they wearing their Tony Park Bulldog shirt? What information from watching that video could you figure out if you were a stranger about the kid posting that video? Um, and then YouTube. Again, Jacob's going to talk about the AI stuff. Just be careful what's out there. Uh, because when you're doom scrolling and the algorithm to keep you engaged kicks in, you don't know what rabbit hole your kid's going to go down about whatever terrible things exist in the world or conspiracy theories or whatever. It can be a long dark road of what they're exper uh
054exposing themselves to because that's exactly how the app is designed to keep feeding you the stuff you're looking at to keep you engaged because they need to keep you on your platform for them to make money. And going to show this to you again because it's that important that you need to be monitoring their screen time. You need to limit what they're doing, what they're allowed to use. Familiarize yourself with that stuff. If you're new, new new apps are always coming out. We try to keep ourselves up to date as much as possible, but it's an uphill battle because new features, new updates are constantly coming out. So stay informed. We're already doing the right thing because you guys are here listening on this Tuesday night. Uh it's just it's you got to be very
055proactive with this stuff of being informed and being the best parent that you can be to protect them in this interesting time to be uh raising these kids. And now we'll take >> Hi again everyone. Um like I said earlier, my name is Vince and just like Justin, I'm a member of the Cook County Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. Um couple of caveats. We don't have tons of time left, so I'm going to try and get through this pretty quick. Um again, like he said, this presentation is really geared towards parents. I'm glad that there's kids in the audience because the kids need to hear this stuff just as much as parents, too, right? Um, I'm going to talk about some dark stuff. Um, everything that I talk about is from personal experience. This
056isn't stuff that I do research on or hear in the news. Um, this is stuff that we deal with here in Tinley Park and a lot of stuff that we definitely deal with on the countywide task force. Okay. So, with that being said, um, if something is on the screen or if I talk start talking about something that you don't want your kid to hear, um, I got no problem if you raise your hand, I'll stop. We see a ton of this in the schools. Um, it's not just here in Tinley. It's not just the school district. This is all over the country. Okay, I'm not going to harp on this too much because everybody knows what bullying is. All of our kids know what bullying is. Um, but we're to the point now where
057the research and the data is coming out with kids who have been victims of cyber bullying, right? And what it's saying is that being the victim of cyber bullying is just as bad, if not worse, than being the victim of actually being bullied. Right? Um, in some severe cases, we've seen where kids are being cyberbullied to the point where it is driving them to self harm and in some really unfortunate situations even suicide. Okay. Um, so we all know what bullying is, right? I'm 34. It wasn't that long ago when I was in school. If you were the victim of a b if you were the victim of bullying, it was your typical bullying, right? People were picking on you, knocking your books out of your hands, stuffing you in the locker, taking your lunch
058money, all that stuff that we all know what is bullying, right? But what's the biggest difference between bullying back in the day and cyber bullying now? Kids got a break from it. They got to go home at the end of the day and get away from their bully. They got to go home and, you know, hang out with their parents, hang out with their friends, people who aren't bullying them, and they got a break. That's a big deal for the emotional and mental well-being for a kid. Getting that break, right? Even they know they might have to deal with it again after the weekend or deal with it tomorrow, at least they were getting that break. Now, what we're seeing with cyber bullying is kids aren't getting a break. Okay? We were just in a
059different school a couple weeks ago and we asked the kids, "How many of you check your phone before you go to bed?" And just about all of them raised their hand. We said, "How many of you kids are checking your phones first thing in the morning?" Just about all of them raise their hand. Some of them even wake up in the middle of the night to check their phone. Okay? So, they're being the victim of cyber bullying. They're being bullied right before they go to bed. are being bullied in the middle of the night being and waking up and being bullied and they're being victimized again first thing in the morning when they look at their phone and they see that Snapchat and they see that group chat going on and they're being made fun
060of. Okay, the mental and emotional toll that this is taking on the kids is it's it's really sad. Um so we encourage you guys as parents and we encourage the kids too. If your kid is being the victim of uh cyber bullying, obviously talk to them about it. come to us if you feel like it's to the point where law enforcement needs to get involved. Don't think that you're being um an overprotective parent if you think it's gotten to that point. We've had many cases like this where um you know things that we the way we handle things with kids is obviously different than adults, but we've had cases where law enforcement has rightly gotten involved because the bullying has gotten so bad. Okay. Um, and then obviously if you're monitoring your kids's phone usage,
061social media usage, um, and they're the ones being the bully or maybe they're aware of it and they're not doing anything about it. Obviously, that's a conversation that you need to have um, with your kids. Maybe get us involved if you feel like it's to that point, too. Um, but we bring this up because we see it all the time and it's sad and um, we're just doing everything that we can to try and minimize this in our community, right? Obviously, we all know that all the stuff on the screen, this is all aspects of cyber bullying that our kids shouldn't be um partaking in. Um the two things that I want to touch on on this slide before we move on is the threats. Okay? Unfortunately, we still get a handful of these every
062single year. Okay? Someone decides for whatever reason they're going to make some sort of ambiguous threat about bringing a weapon to school or harming kids at school. whatever it may be. Okay, we do not have the luxury of trying to determine which threat is legitimate and which threat is a joke or was just meant and good fun, whatever the excuses, right? We have to take them all extremely seriously. So, when we get woken up in the middle of the night or we come into the office and we say, "Hey, we got to deal with this." It's full-blown scorched earth until we figure out who was behind that Snapchat message um to determine who did it, right? And we tell this to the kids, too. This is one of the few crimes that you can commit
063as a juvenile in the state of Illinois and Cook County where you will at least spend one night overnight at the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center. Okay? And you should see the the kids faces when we tell them that. They're, "Oh, boy." Okay. Um, they don't want to go there. You don't want your kid to go there. Okay? There's a lot of kids at the juvenile detention center um who have done horrific things, right? Like, we don't we don't want our kids spending the night there. We don't know who their roommate is going to be. Okay. Perfect example of this. We've had some legit ones, but this is the perfect example. Kid wakes upset that school didn't get cancelled because of a snow day. Okay. Now, this kid, straight A student, involved in all sorts
064of different clubs and extracurricular activities. We have no idea who he is because he's about as good as a kid as it gets. Okay. Awesome. Awesome kid. He wakes up in the morning and sees that school's not going to be cancelled. And he, and I do believe him in this situation, sent a joke saying making a very ambiguous school threat. Okay, he did it over Snapchat. Now, again, like Justin said, Snapchat's monitoring all this stuff. When we click that box saying that we accept the terms and conditions of that social media app, we are giving them permission to full-blown spy on us. Okay, there's no better way to put it. It happened at about 6:37 in the morning. Okay. At about 9:00 a.m., our department gets a phone call from the FBI because they had
065already put two and two together. Okay. Okay, by 9:30 I have kids entire Snapchat account sitting on my desk. Okay, that's how quick this stuff happens. Unfortunately for that kid, extremely remorseful. I like the kid. Really good kid. Okay, never been in trouble. I go through my process. Unfortunately, like I said, kid had to spend a night the uh Cook County Juvenile Detention Center. We kept his phone for a while. I had to go through his whole phone. Unfortunately for him, we know how detrimental this is to our kids. I had to wipe his entire phone, factory reset it. Whatever he didn't have backed up or saved, he never got back. Okay, that kid learned his lesson. I have zero doubt that that kid will become a very good uh contributing member to society and
066will probably go on to do great things and he will learn from what happened. But that's just a perfect example of how um serious this stuff is taken. Okay? So, we say this stuff to the kids and we want you guys to monitor the stuff and drive it home to your kids, too. It's not funny. It's taken extremely seriously, okay? And for good reason. And then the other thing on this slide that I want to touch on, revealing or suggestive images, okay? We all know what that is, but the biggest difference now um is the uh good folks, whatever your opinion is of them down in Springfield, they passed the new obscenity law. Okay? So couple years ago when stuff was AI generated, there wasn't a lot that we could do with it. Now they've
067included this AI generated stuff and this new obscenity law where if kid one has a legit photo of kid 2 and changes it with AI to make it, you know, explicit or suggestive in some case they can be criminally charged for that. Okay, we see that with cyber bullying all the time. Kids know how to use chat GPT. They know how to use Google Gemini. They know how to use these different AIs that are on Discord server. All this stuff. So they think like, "Oh, I could do this and I might get in trouble with the school, but like I'm not going to get in trouble with the cops." Not anymore. So make sure if your kids are using AI, AI can be used for good and wonderful things, but monitor what they're doing on
068AI. If you see this type of stuff where maybe they're altering videos and images and maybe it's not that bad, but it's like they think it's funny but it's not, have a conversation with them about it and make sure that they know that even though they might be using AI, um there could be consequences for it, right? We harp on this with the kids big time, right? What should we do as parents and what should the kids do if you see cyber bullying? Um, obviously the easiest thing is show support for your kid or show support for um, you know, maybe your kid's friend or tell them to do it. Number two is the biggest one. Refuse to join in. I really, really, really encourage the kids to be the bigger person and not to
069refuse to join in. I understand that maybe not every kid has the courage to tell the bully to stop or directly, you know, stand in and try and put an end to it. But if at least if enough kids refuse to join in, the bullying will eventually slow down or stop. Right? Bullies are doing this for attention, they're doing it because they think it's funny. If they're bullying one kid and the other 30 kids are like like this isn't funny anymore. Like just stop doing it. You know, they're not laughing. They refuse to join in. The bully will stop, right? Kids need to stand up for each other. And um that last one there, we always encourage the kid to, you know, be the be the bigger kid. Take the higher road. Be a leader,
070not a follower. If you can already as young as encourage your kids in fifth, sixth, and seventh grade to start being leaders and not followers, they're going to be so much further ahead than so many other kids in life. Um, and they'll go where they want to go. And again, dangers of posting all this false stuff and dangers of really kind of stoking the fire of this cyber bullying, right? Even if the kid themselves is not being the bully, but they're spreading these rumors and spreading false information, it comes back on them and it hurts their reputation. This is really starting to resound with kids, especially when we talk to seventh and eighth graders and we tell them about how whether they're going to Tinley Park High School, going to Andrew High School, you want
071to play football, you want to be in band, you want to be in theater, you want to be in drama, they're trying to hold their organizations up to a high standard and they want a good public image of their football team or the band, right? if you're sharing the stuff and you are um participating in these different types of bullying that's going on like it might prohibit them from playing or being a member of that club or that team, right? Encourage your kids to always think before they share. Even if they are not the direct bully, if they are not putting an end to this stuff and they're stoking the fire and spreading this stuff, um the consequences for them can sometimes be just as severe as if they were the bully themselves. Right? Okay.
072So, more fun dark stuff. Um, online predators. Again, I said it when I started. This is not me talking from a point of research. This is not me talking from what I've heard about or what I've seen. This is me talking about from personal experience. Okay? This stuff happens in Tim. It obviously happens in Cook County. So, JP put that wonderful slide up there of the white panel ban. I'm going to reiterate what he said. That stuff still does happen. Okay? It's not quite as common as maybe in the 80s or the '90s. Um, our kids should be very aware and should be very mindful of the stranger danger thing, right? But for one, every one white panel creepy van that's out there in the real physical world, not exaggerating, there's 10 million of them
073online, okay? This is where I'm going to encourage you as parents. Do everything you can to build that relationship of trust with your kid so that if something happens to them and you're not aware of it, they know that they can come to you in a position of trust in a position of love and they can share that with you and then you can deal with it properly to protect your child. Okay. We have seen cases where kids are becoming victims of certain things and they did not go to a trusted adult. They did not go to their parent, coach, older sibling, whoever it may be, because they felt like that they were going to get in trouble themselves and they felt like they were going to be judged. Okay? Get up in your kids
074phones and social media, please. Please monitor it. Know what they're doing. Know who they're talking to. Know what apps they're using. I know that sounds tough, but Justin said it earlier, having a phone, having social media is not a right. They are not entitled to these things. Just as quick as they have them, we as the parents can take them away. Okay? So, that means we should be up in all of their stuff. We should be like dogs on raw meat, knowing who they're talking to and knowing what they're doing. when they're responsible enough, give them more freedom in the actual physical world to maybe do something that they've earned the right to do. Okay? These phones are portals to the deepest, darkest, nastiest things and most harmful people that the world has to offer.
075Not overexaggerating this stuff, okay? Because we've seen it all. Things to look out for if you're monitoring your kids stuff. If you see them talking to somebody and it's getting too personal too fast, right? All this stuff is obvious. Gifts is a huge red flag. Okay, that might be one of the biggest red flags on there. I like getting gifts and presents just as much as anybody. But if somebody that you don't know or somebody that your kid thinks that they know is offering to send them presents or gifts and wants to keep things secrets, please, I'll leave my card out here before we leave. Call me. Call 911. Okay, that is not being overprotective. That is not uh you know going too far. That's the appropriate response to something like that. Okay, obviously if
076they want to share appropriate pictures and if they're talking about adult things, violence, all this stuff, these are all huge red flags. Okay, that's your typical online predator. For whatever reason, they have some sort of motive to exploit either you or your children. Um this is stuff that should not be going on. Okay, so who are these people? We've seen it before where maybe they're just hackers and identity thefts. Okay? They're trying to get more information on your 12, 13 year old kid. Um, not because they want to exploit them in some sort of way, but they want to exploit you. They want to get enough information where they can get uh mom and dad's credit opened up so they can go buy a $90,000 Mercedes. Okay, that does happen. That's best case scenario, but
077that does happen, right? Sometimes they're bullies, but most of the time, like I said, they're usually creeps and they're strangers. And for some reason, they're out there to exploit, in some cases, adults, but more cases than other. Um, they're out there to exploit children for whatever moment that they have. Okay? So, what should we do? We tell the kids this exact same thing. We tell you guys, too. What to do when you see this stuff. Tell your kids to block them. We shouldn't be accepting friend requests from people that we don't know in the first place, right? There's a lot of kids out there that play video games with people that they don't know. In some certain situations, that's okay. But that's why we tell parents and we tell the kids, make sure you're not
078sharing personal information with these people. If it's just some other kid that you like to play, you know, Call of Duty or Fortnite or Roblox with and the only thing you ever talk about is Call of Duty, Fortnite, or Roblox, that's okay. But we shouldn't be sharing personal information with people that we don't know, right? Huge one. Please don't meet up with people, okay? And I've seen this. There are people out there that are eventually going to get to the point with these kids that they've met online where they are going to ask them to meet up with them. Okay? Only God knows what's going to happen after that. But this does happen. Kids need to know. You might have been talking to this person for 3 years and the only thing you ever talk
079about is Roblox. But for whatever reason, today they're like, "Hey, where do you live? We should meet up. We should hang out. You sound like a good time. You know, let's play basketball at the park." No, no, no, no. very bad, not great. Do not send anything that they're asking you to send. Right? And again, we tell the kids this, tell a trusted adult, whoever that is in your life, please tell a trusted adult. And sometimes we've seen situations with the kids where they're sent something and they are immediately taken back by what they're seeing. If that happens, turn the screen off. Don't continue to traumatize yourself by looking or looking at or clicking on whatever they sent you. Right? If it makes you feel gross, turn off the screen. So like I said there
080are situations where it does happen where that is worst case scenario with the online predators right it's a little bit more rare than this but it does happen this is what we deal with way way way more often right this term of sextortion we all know what extortion is um so we can all put two and two together to really figure out what this is but we see this all the time. Okay, this is people out there who want to take advantage and exploit adults and kids and they never actually have any intention to meet up, but because of what they're sharing back and forth online or on social media, they get into a position of trust where they get certain information and they get things from kids where now they are able to have
081leverage over them and extort them. Okay. Um, I always like to pick on the boys and girls in two different situations for what we see most often. So, I'll tell you guys this is how it normally goes, right? With the boys. I was a 12, 13, 14y old boy at 1.2, right? All the men, we were all boys when we were younger. What we're seeing is these boys are getting direct messages or friend requests um from 18 to 25 year old girls and they start talking to them and boys think, "Oh man, I'm a big deal. line. Cool. I'm 13, 14, but you know, I'm starting to hit the weights and these uh you know, this 21-year-old girl on Instagram's taking a liking to me for whatever reason. I don't know why, but I'm cool.
082You know, I'm going to tell my friends about it. All the friends are like, "Oh, man, you're so cool. This girl's talking to you. Where's she from?" You know, they want to know more, right? What happens next? The girl starts sharing things with the kid that they shouldn't be sharing, right? We all know what I'm talking about. She starts sending pictures and videos and then they say, "Hey, I sent one of me. Why don't you send one back?" And what do 13, 14, 15 year old boys do the majority of the time? They send stuff back. Okay. Now, that person who's not actually that 18 to 25 year old female, they have all the leverage on the kid. Okay. Now, the relationship completely changes. Now, it's, "Hey, send me $1,000 in Apple gift cards. or
083I'm going to blast this out to all your friends in your school and all your family. So the kid does it. Now it's, hey, send me more. Send me this. Send me more. And it goes on and on and on. And these kids are scared to tell somebody because now they're embarrassed. Now they think the word's going to get out and this person's going to blast their stuff all over the internet. They're never going to get it back. Right? This is a really, really, really bad situation. And again to reiterate the point, we deal with this type of stuff in Tinley all the time. It's really unfortunate. It's sad. These people are out there taking advantage of kids and they know how to get these kids to tick and they know how to get these
084kids to comply with them. Right? Again, this is just like the cyber bullying with the boys. Sometimes this gets so bad and they keep it all bottled up inside and it gets to the point where they begin to self harm and even commit suicide. Um, with the girls, now I do say this in front of the kids. So, I'm going to say it in front of you guys, too. 12, 13, 14y old girls. They are a little bit smarter, a little bit wiser, can use a little bit better judgment than boys do at their age. Okay? So, we see that exact same scenario happen with girls as it does with boys, but it's not quite as common. It's a little bit more rare. With the girls, it's usually more on a personal level. I always
085tell the girls, I don't care how much you love your boyfriend. I don't care how much you uh like this boy that you're talking to. When he says it's just for him and he's not going to send it out to anybody else, he is flat out lying to you. Okay? He's going to share it and the whole school and the whole school district and the whole town is going to have it soon. And then me and Justin are going to spend the next three days knocking on doors, taking kids phones, and wiping them and eventually giving them back and somebody's going to get in trouble. Okay? So, reiterate these things with your kids, please. Um, and we tell the kids too, it's all these things that you guys can talk to your kids about, right?
086Don't comply. 90% of the time, if you just stop complying and you ignore these people, they'll go away because they don't actually have intentions to come meet up with you, right? Report it. Don't delete the don't delete the account. I want to know and see the account because we would like to find these people, right? Um, take screenshots, preserve all the stuff for us if we can't get to it first. Um, and then other things here like take it down, right? This is a great website. I share this with people all the time. If you find yourself in a situation where your kid sent something out and now it's out on the internet, if we have a copy or original copy of the or the original file, we can upload it into this website. And
087not to bore you guys with digital forensic stuff, but in 10 seconds, every photo and video that we take has an MD5 or a hash value attached to it. It's basically a serial number for that photo or that video. Okay? We can upload that image with the MD5 and the hash value into this website and everywhere the it finds on the internet where that MD5 or that hash value matches it will wipe it off the internet. It's not a completely foolproof system because it's very very easy to change an MD5 or a hash value but a lot of time at least with kids um they don't know that. So a lot of times this is very useful um and it's a good way good tool to get the ball rolling on how to get this
088stuff off the internet. And I say that with the understanding of we don't want to not um push the point that once something goes on the internet, it is there for forever. Okay, this isn't a foolproof system. It's not guaranteed, but it is a useful tool, right? And then obviously if you or your kids find yourself in a situation like this, um most ESPs because of laws that have been passed are really really good at getting this stuff reported. National Center for Missing Schoolated Children eventually comes to us, but you can always report it straight to Nickmick yourself if you want. And eventually it will get to either Justin or Ryan and then we can deal from it from there. >> All right guys, hang with us. Got about 10 minutes left. Sorry for going
089over. I know we're being super positive and happy, but uh I wanted to talk about something. I know a couple people were here last year. We're here this year. Uh we did not talk about AI last year. This is something this landscape is evolving before our very eyes. >> Pretty cool, pretty terrifying. As another Spider-Man reference goes, with great power comes great responsibility, right? But thing is within this landscape is evolving and advancing so quickly. It's not regulated yet. The government moves pretty slow on everything and they are very far behind which means the burden falls on us as parents and as community leaders to try to get ahead of this to try to instill the right habits into kids using AI. Kids in junior high are definitely using AI already. Some is fine. However,
090kids are using it to cheat on homework. Albeit I am a detective and not an educator. I can tell when a 12-year-old writes a paper versus chat GPT. A lot of big words, right? And it's 42 pages long. So, that's a pretty innocent example of it. But we're getting a lot of the photoshopping, the videos, pictures, and we're tormenting each other with all the video generation that's coming. And every single day there seems to be one in the news that's getting in trouble for exploitation of people. It's copyright infringement. All these things that are going with AI. It's a really, really dangerous landscape. However, even if we don't use it for our job, we have to be aware of it and the potential of it. Full disclosure, I used AI to make this PowerPoint lot
091crisper this year, right? Um, there's a lot of cool utilities for it and it can really help with research and things like that. However, we have to understand that AI is not 100%. So, if kids are using it for research in an innocent purpose, make sure they're cross-referencing it with their teacher in their textbooks or with you. Right? Understand that we cannot blindly trust AI. Just as we have to be careful we post on Instagram or Snapchat, we have to be super careful what we feed into AI. The crux of AI is that it's a data training model. It needs data. It's going to continue to train. It's going to continue to train itself. That data goes nowhere. We tal I mentioned about the data centers that are popping up all over the country. Doesn't
092seem to be a trend that's ending anytime soon. We have to be very careful what we're feeding into AI. Likewise, one of the really most dangerous aspects of AI that we're seeing, especially with young people, but even with adults, we have this underlying desire for companionship as human beings. That's normal. Not a not a psychologist that just pretend to be one, but we understand that we want to talk to somebody. And it's nice when you start chatting with an AI bot that all of a sudden is just reemphasizing or reinforcing all your own beliefs. It's not giving you a hard time. It's not making fun of you. It's not saying, "Oh, I didn't like your shirt today." It's feeding you all these things that you want to hear. With that is the dangerous side of
093it. There's no safeguards in there. Kids are being radicalized pretty quickly with that. It's giving them ideas on maybe self harm or anything else related to that. AI needs to be extremely extremely regulated, but it's going to be a lot. And we have to take that burden on ourselves to help make sure that we are ushering this new age quickly so we can protect our children with that. Same thing with the AI. your kids are or social media or gaming, they're spending too much time on it. You got to separate that screen time. So, just a couple more minutes here. This book, if you take nothing else away from myself, Justin, or Vince, just buy this book. I promise it's worth it. Uh you can probably read it in four to five hours. If you
094don't want to read it, it's on Spotify premium. You can listen to it in about four hours. It gives some real guidelines. We we get questions like, "Hey, when when should we give our kids a phone?" And, you know, we used I used to be a little bit more PC about it. Oh, you know, whenever you think's best, the best answer is delay it as long as you possibly can. And if you do have already given to them, maybe roll back some of the privileges that you gave them. Also recognizing that the kids' first phone does not need to be an iPhone. There are simple phones. So, the foot phones are finally starting to make a comeback because the research is showing the young people are even saying, "I'm more socially inadequate at 20 than
095I was at 13." And that's not the trend we want from our young people as we usher them into adults. So, a few bits of information. Depression rates among, and this is from the doctor who wrote the book, not me, the pretend doctor. Um, depression rates among US teens doubled between 2011 and 2019. That's the same exact time as smartphones became mainstream and everybody started getting access to it. Heavy social media users, which is categorized of at least 5 hours a day, which is pretty common for kids, are twice as likely to be depressed. Between 2010 and 2011, the share of 10th to 12th graders sleeping fewer than seven hours a night rose from less than one quarter to nearly 1/ half. We all recognize the importance of sleep, young and old. These devices and
096phones are prohibiting us from getting our sleep. And really this is very concerning is the emergency room visits for self harm amongst girls suicidal ideation rates and completed suicide rates all increased sharply since 2012 the year that smartphone ownership crossed 50% in this country. And lastly in the most recent data 22% of 10th grade report girls reported spending 7 hours or more per day on social media leaving little room for anything else. So what can we do again? Buy that book. If nothing else, you listen to this, buy this book or listen to it for free on Spotify. What this book suggests is a list of rules. One of the things I really want to talk about is going to just be sleep hygiene. So, separating the phone. Don't let your kid have the phone
097in their room. Plug it into the kitchen. You keep it in your room. If your kid is checking their phone before they're going to the bathroom, brushing their teeth, eating breakfast, your kid is now prioritizing their cell phone higher amongst the most basic human needs. breaking it down. That's that's kind of terrifying. So, what can we do? It really starts to we always say, "Hey, talk to your kids." That's true. Create a framework. Create a media agreement with your kids and say, "Hey, these are the rules. If you prove that you can listen to these rules, I can give you more freedom. I can give you more screen time as you get older. However, set the rules. Set the expectations so they know what it is. So then they can meet it. Go through talk
098about the apps they can or they can't use. And when they're 14, those apps they can use are going to be different from when they're 16 or they're 17. Life 360. I'm going to give you guys a couple examples before I get you out of here. This is a really good app. Pretty common. You can use it for location sharing. It's really good for family service or like family niche things so you know where each others are at. You check in. The minimum age to get your driver's license is 16 still. Um, and I think that with that along the way we said, "Hey, young people don't make great decisions when they're young. Driving a car is a big responsibility. I think there's a really big parallel between driving a car and having a smartphone
099connected to the internet. So, think about that age restriction. However, if they are driving, you want to know, hey, how are they driving? Well, this can actually track their speed, location, give you alerts right away. You can categorize it or customize it to your own family's needs. It's just a tool that's out there. Another tool is going to be a Bark phone. Sounds kind of funny, but it's it comes the software comes installed on the hardware. So, you don't have to worry about getting a a a phone that you're like, well, I have to go through. I have to change all these parental settings, things like that. It comes with the software built on the hardware. It's a cheaper service. It works just the same way as it can. However, there's monitoring built into the
100software that's already on the hardware. It can really offer parents a more streamlined way to optimize and to be able to control what your kids are watching, put you in. Screen time limits. we talked about in the beginning. We're all terrified of it. Here's a quick example for those that aren't really savvy. Just go through your settings, set those time restrictions for how specific apps for YouTube, Tik Tok, whatever it is. Making sure that our kids are not doom scrolling or brain rot. Do you guys know that's actually a term in the dictionary now? Brain rot. >> Kids know it, too. Oh, brain rot. Oh my god. We're watching the attention span on kids shrink. And we know as parents that's really hard. We're trying to get them to do their homework. We're trying to
101get them to focus, to listen. These phones enable or accelerate that uh attention decrease. So, be very careful. Please take this seriously as far as setting screen time limits. Oh, brick. So, has anyone ever heard of brick? No. Okay. I have I have one in my house and it's been awesome. My wife got it and I was like, "Oh, that's a good idea." And so, what all it really is is you tap it up. You can tape it. Mine's taped up to my fridge. which is that little device right there in that picture. You tap it up and it essentially locks your phone out except for phone calls. Cool. And it may seem like, oh, that's silly. I would just untap it. But making that obstacle of just tapping it and your phone's being locked
102kind of creates a game. And we've learned that this gamification is what makes kids so addicted and adults addicted to their phones. It tracks how many hours you're bricked up. It shows how many hours per month you save. In January, my phone was bricked up for 88 hours. I got almost four days back because even though you might still be multitasking, odds are you're doing two tasks so far versus you're like, "Hey, I need to lock in for an hour. I'm going to go break my phone for an hour." You get your work done on the same parallel. Your kids can get their school work done. You say, "Hey, go break your phone for an hour, do your homework, and then you can go outside and play." We want to try to create the obstacles
103to the access the kids have with their smartphones. Brick's a super simple thing. I think it's 30 or $40. It's just self-contained, so you don't have to order another subscription or anything like that. It tracks it and it really, really does help with folks. I find it myself. We have two phones. We have a work phone. We have a personal phone. I have been an investigator. I first became an investigator in 2016. I had one computer screen. Now I have three computer screens. I have three computer screens and I have two phones. It's safe to say that my attention span is also decreasing. So, I'm cognizant of that and I'm trying to work on that as we all are. As I mentioned in the beginning of this and I want what I want to wrap
104up with the kids are going to mimic what we do. They don't listen to us but they always watch us. So this is something super easy. If you take nothing else away like hey I can set that example. You can create challenges with your family too. Hey whoever spent had their phones riked up the most gets XYZ reward a higher allowance whatever it may be. That's for you guys to work together with your family creating what works best for you guys. I told you 10 minutes. I think I was at 11. Um, we'll stick around for any questions. Thank you so much for coming here. As Vince said and Justin said, you guys are great for coming out. We're gladly I could have kept you here till midnight to talk about this stuff. As depressing
105as it may be, we really believe that this is so important that we want to tell everybody that will listen and those who won't this information. If there's anything that you want to follow up with us, let us know and we'll be glad to help out. Thank you.