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The Edit Alaverdyan Podcast
Welcome to "The Edit Alaverdyan Podcast," the podcast where insightful conversations unfold, and the depth of the human mind is explored. In each episode, I sit down with a diverse range of individuals—thinkers, innovators, and captivating personalities—who share their unique insights and experiences. Together, we embark on a journey of discovery, unraveling the complexities of the human psyche and uncovering the untold truths that influence our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
The Edit Alaverdyan Podcast
Clayton Cranford | Digital Safety, Cyberbullying, Mental Health | The Edit Alaverdyan Podcast #34
Join us for an enlightening conversation with Sergeant Clayton Cranford, a retired officer and the author of "Parenting in the Digital World," as we navigate the complexities of keeping children safe in today's digital landscape. With his extensive experience, Clayton sheds light on the sophisticated tactics used by online predators across various platforms, from gaming to social media. We confront the serious issues of cyberbullying and the surge in youth mental health problems, underlining the crucial role of proactive parental involvement and education.
Discover practical strategies to help bridge the disconnect between online actions and real-world consequences, as we discuss the dramatic shift in technology use among children over the past decade. Clayton provides insights into how early smartphone adoption and cultural pressures contribute to a mental health crisis, particularly among young girls. By setting clear boundaries and fostering open communication, parents can help safeguard their children against online threats such as cyber extortion and exploitation.
In a world where digital engagement can heavily influence child development, Clayton emphasizes the importance of age-appropriate consequences and effective parental communication. We explore the adverse effects of pornography on youth and the need for informed parental guidance. With tools like the Cyber Safety Wizard, this episode equips you with the knowledge and resources to protect your children and nurture their mental and emotional well-being in an ever-evolving digital age.
When someone knocks on your door, you look to see who it is. You make a very simple decision Is this person okay to come into my home? And who are the two groups of people Friends and family? So that is the same rule for your digital world.
Speaker 2:Because there's always this battle for leadership right and it is. It's a battle for I'm the leader. You listen to me, this is my home and that stuff doesn't really work anymore.
Speaker 1:Every school is going to have a kid attempting suicide. Like if I go speak at a school right after something like this happens, the room is packed, but if there's nothing going on in that school, then I get like 1% of the school's parents show up.
Speaker 2:The desperation of parents. Like, seriously, look at it. Like now we're all trying to figure out apps, we're engineers. All of a sudden, you know, it's like we're all these like scientists, engineers, trying to develop all these ways to keep these freaks away from our kids.
Speaker 1:He pulls up his kids' Roblox. He looks up the chat log and he sees that his eight-year-old boy has been talking to someone on there who's saying he's also eight years old, but talking about explicit sex Stop.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone. Today's podcast was all about predators how to keep our children safe. Our guest was Sergeant Clayton Cranford, a retired sergeant and officer, author of Parenting in the Digital World and founder and owner of Cyber Safety Cop. Clayton's purpose is to teach parents on how to keep their children safe from pedophiles, predators in general abuse, and this is from all media platforms, including gaming and Discord. In this episode, we discuss predators, how they find our kids. We talk a little bit about human trafficking. We talk about abuse that's happening in our school systems. We talk about school shootings and everything and anything related to protecting our kids. Clayton is doing God's work. He's going into so many schools teaching parents on how to keep their kids safe, teaching students, teaching teachers. I think that his work is phenomenal.
Speaker 2:This podcast is definitely a trigger warning because we do talk about predators. We do talk about pedophiles. We talked a little bit about the prison systems. We talk about sexual abuse and how it runs with either with boys or with girls. In general, it was just a very interesting, heavy topic. If you're a parent, this is definitely a podcast that you want to hear, because the information that he has is phenomenal and I think it's very useful. He does mention some apps that we can utilize to track and protect our kids. We talk about you know what age is appropriate to have sex conversations with our kids. We talk about sexting. We do talk about some of these apps. Again, going back to Instagram, gaming platforms, discord we did talk about which platforms are basically targeted more, and so that was kind of interesting to hear him say.
Speaker 2:I hope you guys enjoyed this episode because it was definitely an eye-opener and some of these predators are pretty intense and I really want you guys to hone in on this podcast so you guys can protect your kids too optimally. And we did go back a little bit and talk about how during, you know, the 1990s, it was so secure and safe. And when did all of this start? These depression, the suicidal ideation, the anxiety with kids. There are so many kids committing suicide because of these bullies, because of these predators on social media. So this is something to definitely be alert about, to be worried about. But this podcast will definitely teach you a lot and it will guide you on how to really be mindful and be that protective parent. Thank you for joining me, thank you for supporting me and, to be a more optimal support. Please make sure to subscribe to the channel. Thank you, clayton, it's so nice having you on. Thank you so much for accepting my invitation.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's such an honor. I love your work. I think you're doing God's work. It really is Saving a lot of kids, helping a lot of parents. Tell us a little bit about how this idea was born.
Speaker 1:It was born out of necessity. So I'm retired. I was in law—not retired, but retired from law enforcement for more than 20 years and I was a school resource officer in a city of 14,000 students. I was the one and only school resource officer at Rancho Santa Margarita in Orange County, and this is in 2012.
Speaker 1:And this was really the time where we saw a major transition with regards to children and their technology, because, leading up to that, children had phones, teens had phones, but mostly flip phones. And then 2010,. The iPhone 4 came out with the forward-facing camera, and that kind of changed everything. Right, your relationship with your device where you could take a selfie really changed things. So we went from 2010 to, like, say, 2014. We went from 20% of teens having smartphones to about 80 plus percent, and so I was right in the middle of this and so, consequently, as a school resource officer, I was just dealing with on a daily basis with all these students kids making bad choices, bullying, threats, children who are victims of online sexual exploitation or children who are sexting other students and then were also exploited. And inevitably, you know and at the same time, I also was a parent I had two boys who were about that age, at that time as well.
Speaker 1:So what I found myself time and again in situations where I'd be sitting across from a student and we were talking about you know what happened, et cetera, and they just complete disconnect between what they're doing online and those consequences were, and it was really hard for them to kind of figure that out. So, like kids know, you don't go up to strangers and share your personal information with them. They would never do that. But online there's no's, no compunction, right. They have no problem doing this. It's because you're looking at a screen, not a human being, and therefore just makes it easy for a kid to say some really mean, hurtful or gross things or just make some bad choices. So then I'd sit down with the parent and I'd say, hey, this is what happened to your kid today, and sometimes these things were heartbreaking and a lot of times the parents are just blown away. They're like my kid doesn't say racist things, or my kid would never share a nude image of themselves, just like the things that were just mind-blowing for them. But because it was happening online, this kid ventured into an area or some behaviors that they normally wouldn't have face-to-face. So this was happening all the time and I'm like you know what and I had a background in teaching, I'm like you know what. I'm. Just I want to put something together to help parents and give them some tools. And also I wanted to probably to some degree figure out some tools for myself, for my own boys. And then I'm like, okay, I need to probably to some degree figure out some tools for myself and my own boys. And then I'm like, okay, I need to talk.
Speaker 1:And then after I did that and that was, I had parents coming from all over to hear this talk, because no one was talking about it. There was just very little out there. And then I'm like, okay, I want to talk to students, I want to talk to students about these choices and the consequences, and so that was happening. So I had people coming from all over and they were asking me to come to their school, to their city and cities outside the sheriff's jurisdiction, and so finally I realized that I needed to do that, but the sheriff's department wasn't going to pay me, and so it basically turned into a business. It was something I never planned to happen. It's been a huge blessing for me, because I mean, the thing that I loved most about law enforcement was that position as a school resource officer.
Speaker 1:I later went on to our behavioral threat assessment team, so I'd go all over Orange County and assess threats at schools. Most of those threats were happening online and yeah, so it was an. It was an opportunity to kind of continue the things I loved and I loved like today. I was at a school I talked to. We had an assembly for K through three third graders just these little guys that come in, just cute, sit on the floor crisscross applesauce, super excited, and we were talking about how to be safe and kind online and I asked them you know, raise your hand if you have your own phone. And nearly 20 to 30 percent of the hands go up.
Speaker 2:At that age.
Speaker 1:At that age and that was never. That wasn't a thing. When I started this, like 10 years ago, it was unusual. And then we had the fourth through sixth graders come in and we're giving them a bit more serious talk, you know, and they have, and then maybe 60, 70 percent have phones, but they all have social media. That's the interesting thing, even the littles. They're all playing Roblox or Minecraft. They're playing with other people, they're playing with another human being, and that is social media.
Speaker 2:It is.
Speaker 1:So that's kind of what's happening, and parents are just overwhelmed, as parents are, and and then the other thing that's going on is and I don't mean and because it's happening so incrementally, I don't know if people are really kind of thinking about this, but maybe they are now but the amount of depression, anxiety, that our children are suffering with um is a direct result of this technology, and parents are giving their children phones at early and earlier ages because they think it's making them safe, and it's actually doing the exact opposite.
Speaker 2:What do you think? So? There's definitely a misunderstanding there. How do you think that they think these phones are keeping their children safe? Safe from what?
Speaker 1:Exactly so. There is just a misunderstanding of where their attention, where their concern, needs to lie, and I've done some research. I've done reading and research about this because I find it kind of to some degree kind of perplexing but fascinating at the same time. So my generation of parents who are in their 50s, whatever we grew up with parents who weren't overly engaged with us, right Like my parents, had no idea where I was. They were like my parents. My dad was a World War II and Korean War veteran. You know my mom was raised in the 40s and 50s, you know. So like they just have a very different perspective on parenting. They were great parents and they came to all my football games Like they were very in that way, but in terms of my day-to-day Safety.
Speaker 1:How was I doing in school? Like they weren't checking my grades. When I went to college, they didn't know how well I was doing until I came home and handed them the report card. I mean that the mail, right. When the report card came in the mail, you know you'd want to beat your parents to the mailbox sometimes, but they had no idea.
Speaker 1:So we, and maybe we're overcompensating as parents today because of the way our parents raised us, so we feel like we need to be there for our kids. We need to be much more involved, to the point where it's like a bit of over-involvement. Now we have, you know, the helicopter parent and we have the bulldozer parent, but also, I think we also grew up in a 24-hour news cycle and you have in 2002, there was a rash of child abductions in the United States that were well publicized and at that time, like, my first child was like one or two right. So you as a parent, that's horrifying the idea of someone taking your child, and so you see these things and you're thinking, oh well, this could really happen to my kid. Like Samantha Runyon was here in Orange County out of Garden Grove, who I know, her mom, who's a wonderful woman who's an advocate for child safety.
Speaker 1:But if a parent is concerned about their child being taken by a stranger, the chances of your child being abducted by a stranger mostly children are abducted by a parent, usually custodial abductions. There's a couple hundred a year, less than a hundred, like 80 or 90, maybe a year of of of adductions by strangers. So, yes, for those 80 or 90 families, of course, in the vast majority of them, almost 90% come back within a few hours, safe. But if you're that family, that's your, that's your world, that's your life, right, you? You're like Aaron Runyon, like that changed her in that community.
Speaker 1:But if you're a parent and you're worried about your child being abducted by a stranger and you're giving them a phone because you think this is going to keep them safe, well, it's like .0006% of children, or like 1 in 3.8 million, are going to be abducted by a stranger. But 20% of teens are thinking about suicide on a regular basis. Yes, we have thousands of children who are attempting suicide every year. The amount of children who are suffering from depression between 2010 and today, that percentage is up like 160% for girls and like 150% for girls 162, something like that percent for boys. So if you were to have a graph like the line for the objections would be just a little sliver. And then you have this big bar over here which would be suicide, depression, self-harm. Girls, children, girls who are um go to the er for non-suicidal self-injury uh, since 2010 is up 300, so, okay, so I understand the fear. It's just not reasonable. Uh, your child involved in a school shooting? Now we just we just had one today in Georgia, which is heartbreaking.
Speaker 2:Today.
Speaker 1:Today, yeah, this morning. Oh, no, sorry, yesterday. I beg your pardon, it was yesterday.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 1:Yeah, four people were killed and dozens were injured, and so again, for that community, everything's changed. But if you look in the last 20 years of school shootings, how many people have been injured? Like less than 300. So we have like 70 million children in the United States. Less than 300 were injured in a school shooting. So the chance of your child being injured in a school shooting is very low. Right, it's actually a lot less than being abducted by a stranger and if you're giving them a phone because you want them to be able to call you if they're in a school shooting, well, I can tell you because I teach how to deal with school shootings.
Speaker 1:I teach people how to do threat assessments. So I realize this is a real threat and I take it seriously. Your child should not be on their phone. Their phones need to be turned off and they need to be looking at their teacher and listening for instruction if they're in a lockdown. So I've surveyed tens of thousands of parents over the last more than a dozen years and these are the kind of things I'm hearing. But then I ask parents do you know a family that has a kid who's not suffering from anxiety, depression? Do you even know a family Like it's hard and maybe if you don't know it's because you haven't talked to the parent and they tell you the inside story, like yeah, my kid actually on the outside looks like they got it together, but really they struggle.
Speaker 2:I don't know a single family like that. I don't. I don't either. I don't know a parent that doesn't have that anxiety either. Everyone is.
Speaker 1:I think everybody's struggling to some degree. Yes, but our kids? If you look at what it looked like prior to 2010, leading up to 2010, it was very stable. The amount of children who are saying that they're anxious or depressed, it didn't change a whole lot. It was kind of flat. And then 2010, it does this. So there's and the good news, however, is that, like we can turn this around. It's just going to require parents to think very differently about this. It makes them very different decisions, and I make it when I have parents sitting in my presentation. I put it on them. I'm like this is what's going on. These are decisions you need to change or make, and sometimes you have parents who kind of cross their arms and they're just like I can't do that.
Speaker 2:Well, here's the issue the danger is in the home now. Yeah, you know, when you're talking about the later years, it was outside, it wasn't reachable, it wasn't like nothing like that. Now it's in your home, so there's something to be really, you know, worried about there, that you know these phones are such a danger now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like these apps are a danger, Right? Well, you and I were kids and we came home and the door and clothes locked behind us and you're in for the night. Your parents are like we survived another one. They can stop thinking about it, because the world was like, literally locked outside. That barrier of your wall kept it from happening, but that barrier is gone.
Speaker 2:It is gone, and the bedrooms. Now it's a bedroom.
Speaker 1:I had a kiddo middle schooler sitting next to mom inches away on the couch on their phone being groomed by a predator, like happening right there. And this is a. This is a family. That was my most idyllic, you know scenario you can come up with, like mom and dad in the home, you know, uh, socionomically, you know, well-off family.
Speaker 1:They had all the advantages, they had all you know, all the things that you could want going to church every day, kids in church group, whatever and this kid gets manipulated into a relationship with an online person, which included him sending nude images, and so this was going on, and it wasn't until the kid just all the behavior started coming to the surface and they realized, oh, we have a problem here, and they started digging. So it can happen in any family, it doesn't?
Speaker 2:matter Exactly Now. Here's my question how did these predators attack the kids? Where do they find them? What platform specifically?
Speaker 1:Okay. So whenever parents ask me, clay, what's the most dangerous app for kids to be on, the answer is always the same. However, the apps change and the answer is the app that all the kids are on. So anytime you have a place where kids are hanging out, you're going to have predators. So TikTok is super popular with predators Gaming platforms.
Speaker 2:Like Discord and all those and Discord, yeah, actually, I have a lot of parents calling about Discord.
Speaker 1:So, as far as Discord goes, I recommend parents do not let their children have Discord that's for people 18 and over Just based on stranger interaction and the adult material that you have access to there. If you want your child exposed to pornography okay, which can be found just about everywhere on the internet, but what about your child being exposed to really hateful, racist, just nasty, caustic language and behavior? You're going to find it on Discord and gaming sites, so it's not even difficult really. You have a kid who's needy. Basically, all children are looking for two things. They're looking for love and acceptance, right?
Speaker 2:That's interesting. I guess all human beings are right yeah.
Speaker 1:But kids are really needy and so they'll even put it out there, like I just need someone to care about me.
Speaker 1:I mean not so many words, that's what they're saying and whether it's the image that they're producing and putting out there.
Speaker 1:They're looking for validation, and so the predators just swoop in and fill that need. And so you have a kid who's performing on TikTok, let's say, and it's probably on a public platform. They're not private because they want lots of likes and views, so they're going to get exposed to strangers. And so the predator sees this kid, comes in just as a follower and says wow, you're really talented and beautiful, I love what you did here, you know whatever. So this goes on for a little while, not very long, and now that follower is now a friend, right? The kid's like this person likes me, they're really nice to me, and then finally they're more than a friend. And then that predator will manipulate that child by putting them in more private conversation situations, whether it's the private chat, or they're like hey, download Telegram, which is a messaging app that has end-to-end encryption. Let's talk there, because that predator knows that law enforcement can't get that information if it's encrypted on that platform.
Speaker 2:On Telegram.
Speaker 1:You can't write a search warrant to get you can. You'll just get a bunch of gobbledygook. It'll be completely scrambled, so yeah, so that's where it's at, or on Snapchat.
Speaker 2:Snapchat's really popular, especially with older teens, so the deleted messages and all of that popular, especially with older teens.
Speaker 1:So the deleted messages and all of that which don't go away, snapchat does hang on to them.
Speaker 2:Good to know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a little search warrant, we just pull it all down.
Speaker 2:I love that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot of kids don't know that. When I tell high schoolers especially, I'm like, hey, whatever you sent on Snapchat and it disappeared off the other person's phone.
Speaker 2:Snapchat has it.
Speaker 1:And they own this.
Speaker 2:So does TikTok right yeah.
Speaker 1:And you see some kids' heads looking around. They're like what?
Speaker 2:That's good. That's good for the parents to know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Unfortunately you won't know until the search warrant right, it's a little late at that point.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:If you want to know what's going on. I mean, there are things you can do as a parent.
Speaker 2:Now, as far as Snapchat goes, I tell parents your child should not have Snapchat until they're in college.
Speaker 1:So what is the proper age for parents to give the phone to their kids? What do you think Okay? So I don't think children should have a phone any earlier than middle school like seventh and eighth grade and that phone should not be a smartphone, it should be a phone. That phone should not be a smartphone. It should be a phone that has no internet or app capability. So, whether it's a flip phone or something like that, a smartphone should not land in your child's pocket until high school. Now a lot of parents would be like, okay, that sounds pretty reasonable to me. Then I say your child shouldn't have social media until they're 16. And that's when you have some parents pushing back and they're like wait a minute, how do I do that?
Speaker 2:Yes, teach Guide us.
Speaker 1:When my kid goes to school and every other kid has it, what do I do? I'm like, yeah, there's lots of social pressure for sure.
Speaker 2:There is.
Speaker 1:So this is what I'm talking about in terms of thinking differently about this. So, when we look at the data and we look at the kids who suffer, when the iPhone came out at 2010 to 2014 period, everybody got the phone at the same time. It wasn't just the kids in middle school, right, the older cohort, the millennials, who got it, who were basically in their 20s at that point. Their mental health didn't change a whole lot. And actually when you strike this for age the older cohorts you get the brackets, you go up for age less and less change in mental health. And actually, the people in their 50s my age, actually our mental health, our anxiety, has actually gotten a little better. Actually, somehow we've improved, actually, somehow we've improved, but anyway.
Speaker 1:But the point is, is that why was it so hard on these younger, the teens and the preteens? It's because I think, to some degree, their brain development, their adolescence, the puberty, all the things happening right there, and so I'm kind of saying 16 actually is to some degree like a compromise, like I kind of feel like it should even be later, but at least 16, you know, you cross some of those, some of those that bridge, you know, from preteen to teen. You know puberty and so forth, and I think 16 is not a bad place to start. So what we need is all parents, kind of collectively, get together and say we are going to wait until 16 for social media.
Speaker 2:I'd say 18.
Speaker 1:I would love 18.
Speaker 2:You know I'd have to argue because, look, that stage is the identity versus role confusion stage.
Speaker 2:Who am I? Why am I here? Then you give them a phone at like 15, 16. Then there's like skinny girls, muscular guys, all these, like you know, as I was watching a podcast where she was talking about, like you know, at our days we'd have to actually drive to the mall. Now the mall's in your phone, it's just constantly swipe by, this swipe by. So there's a lot that causes a lot of psychological damage. So I'd love that too, but I know it's just not possible now.
Speaker 1:I tell parents no child is unaffected. Any child online is going to be affected.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And some kids… get obliterated. Some kids are horribly victimized. Some kids, their mental health is just collapsed because of it. Some of the kids are more resilient than others, but no one's unaffected. And, yes, I think the longer you go the better, but then what I would say is the better. But then what I would say is you know, as a parent, you also need a balance.
Speaker 1:So when you say yes at 16, let's say at the early stage for social media, then you also need to have limits right and you should have a kid who's you know expressing themselves in other ways in the real world, whether it's music, drama, sports, some other outlets that are like real life outlets, not digital outlets. And if we can do that then I think we can kind of minimize some of the issues. But I agree with you 1 million percent. It's just. It's like.
Speaker 1:But again, parents are giving children phones at earlier and earlier and earlier ages and on top of the mental health crisis that we're in which I feel like I guess at some point parents are going to can't not pay attention to this. Like it's going to get so bad that every school is going to have a kid attempting suicide, and when that happens, people tend to have a kid attempting suicide. And when that happens, people tend to like kind of pay attention. Like if I go speak at a school right after something like this happens, the room is packed, just wall to wall, people standing in the back, like every parent is like okay, we need to hear this message, but if there's nothing going on in that school, then I get like 1% of the school's parents show up or 2%, so at some point it's going to be something they can't ignore anymore, and then I'm afraid, every parent is going to be struggling with this. And so why wait? Let's not wait, it's bad enough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just wanted to add to that here's. Here's my, because you know, as as a therapist, I always try to like kind of like process of what's happening in the world and the changes. I'm 40 okay, during my years there was never a need for that much dopamine. Okay, like, I feel like this these apps and the, the selfies and the Instagram and all these social platforms, they're digital dopamine.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and gaming.
Speaker 2:And gaming. Yeah, there's just something about children wanting just constant gratification constant. I want to feel good, I want to feel special. I never had the need for that growing up, and I know that the relatives and the friends that I had around my age neither did they. So I want to know what happened that there's just this need to constantly feel good all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this is interesting. So I think part of its culture and part of it is biochemistry, right. So you know that when you have things that are dumping dopamine in your brain, like large amounts of dopamine, your brain turns down the volume, right. It down-regulates the receptors, kind of dry up, and so you need more and more dopamine to get that feeling. So you have a kid who's gaming, let's say, and they get a lot of dopamine from gaming, and then you're like, hey, I need you to get off your game and go outside and touch the grass, right, I need you to go.
Speaker 2:I love that explanation though.
Speaker 1:Get on a bicycle ride around the neighborhood three times, like whatever you're telling them to do. So when they get off they're outside doing those and actually they're getting the appropriate amount of dopamine.
Speaker 2:They are.
Speaker 1:But their brain's not taking it up right. So then they got to go back and have these experiences online to get the same dopamine. The other problem is, I feel like our culture feels like negative emotions are bad. So shame, guilt, fear the negative emotions. They come from the amygdala, so you should never experience this. This is what our culture is saying. This is bad for you. Well, unfortunately I mean fortunately you should actually that's right.
Speaker 1:It's not a bug, it's a feature, right, the reason that you're feeling shame? There's a reason why you feel that. There's a reason why you're feeling anxious because you've put off studying for your test and now it's getting close and now you're feeling anxious. Listen to those feelings and regulate your feelings. Deal with them.
Speaker 1:Instead, our kids are picking up phones and doom scrolling on their phones or playing a game and those things, through brain scans, we know it basically shuts down that area of the brain. So, just like for a lot of people, you say why do you game? And one of the especially for adults, one of the number one answers you're going to get because they're better at articulating. But I think it's the same for kids. I do it to decompress, to wind down. It makes me feel good. Yeah, because it's deadening the amygdala. It's the stress and things that you have from work kind of go away while you're gaming, and so it feels. It's soothing, just like going to the bar after work, right, drinking some alcohol. It does that too. Our kids are doing this in early and early ages, when your little baby is crying in the stroller. How many times have you seen a kid in a stroller cruise by holding an iPad?
Speaker 2:Oh, so many.
Speaker 1:All the time In restaurants Right in restaurants, mom and dad have a great meal. Yeah, a great meal, yeah, a great combo, right. But this child is never learning to deal with their feelings and these emotions, especially the negative emotions. So now they're being raised this way, they become a teenager, emotions are getting really intense, right, and so they need the release of the technology to cope. And then, yeah, it's, it's a combination of these things and, uh, in my presentation to my, to the parents, um, I say, you know, um, I go raise your hand if, uh, if you ever had to walk up to a person and ask them out on a date, face to face, like walk up, saying will you go to the dance with me, like when you're in middle school or high school, and everyone raises their hands.
Speaker 1:And you can see some people that are like, oh, you know, they're kind of like already going back in their mind about this and I'm like you had to get up the gumption. You had to think how am I going to do this? You had to deal with the anxiety, rejection and the social outcasts that you might be no, but you have to deal with all the things. And then if you didn't work out which of course it didn't all the time you had to try again, you have to deal with the scary emotions.
Speaker 1:That's goes back to what you're saying yeah, so our kids don't have to do that. Everything's happening online, so they're doing things without the risk of fear of loss of the consequences. And then I also ask parents. I'm like I go think about growing up, okay, so if the average kid is online, I think it's like I think it's up like six or eight, it's like seven or eight hours a day, right?
Speaker 1:My goodness, online I go. That doesn't leave you with a whole lot of the time, does it? I mean, think about it. If you're not a, if you're not sleeping, how many, how many hours a day do you have discretionary time to do whatever you want to do, right? And especially if you're a child, you have so many hours at school. I go, imagine, I go, I want you. For a moment. Just think about all the amazing experiences you had growing up. Like, just just kind of go back in your mind. Think about especially the things where you're like, man, we probably shouldn't have done that. Somehow we, somehow we survived. I and those are. Those are with friends. Those are with friends. Yeah, I go and and and or, asking someone on a date or whatever, and I go, think about, if I took away 75 of that, who would you be now? Any parents? The parents are sitting there like yeah, like.
Speaker 2:What do you have? What do you?
Speaker 1:have left. That's your kid. Your kid is living 25% of the time that you had to spend with friends. Now you have friends. They say I have lots of friends. These are friends online. These aren't real relationships. And also we ask college students about loneliness. Asked college students about loneliness. I think the number of college students who say they feel lonely most of the time or all the time, I think that's gone up more than 60% in the last 10 years, so they're more lonely. They have fewer real friends, close connections. They have lots of friends online. That really don't amount to a whole lot.
Speaker 2:Dating is difficult too.
Speaker 1:Dating is difficult and the thing is your middle schooler doesn't have a job in buying their phone. You're doing it. You're buying them a phone, so you have the control over this. It's not a necessity. Your child will actually maybe sad because they don't have a phone when everybody else has a phone, but they won't be as sad as a child.
Speaker 2:Who's? Struggling with anxiety and depression. That's right. I'll take that sadness over that other yeah.
Speaker 1:That's a disappointment. That's not true. Sadness True.
Speaker 2:Very true.
Speaker 1:And so, yeah, so my book Parenting the Digital World. I kind of walk parents through all this, my presentation to parents. We do at schools walk them through this. But I might even also mention if, when you give your child a phone and you want to kind of regulate the amount of time that they're on there, your child's device and everything happened on it belongs to you. It's not your child's, it's yours. Your child's expectation of privacy should be zero if you want it to be. It should be If you want them to be yours.
Speaker 2:Yes, your child.
Speaker 1:You have the legal and moral right to know exactly what's happening on that phone and like, would you let your kid hang out with people that you didn't know? Like really would you? I don't think so. I think you'd want to know and your kid is hanging out with people all the time online that you do not know. You wouldn't normally ever let this happen. It's just not in your face. So I put an app on my boys' phones to kind of monitor what was going on, to help shut down the screens when I needed it to and also alert me when there's a problem. So they're not expensive. It's like the cost of going starbucks once a month. Uh, it really helps you. The one that I think is the best and it works really well on the iphone it's called our pact o-u-r-p-a-c-t. They're down in san diego. They're a great company. They, all they. They built this company. The, the ceo, is a parent and he built and he really built it for his daughter to help his daughter with her screen time. Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 2:The desperation of parents.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Like seriously, look at it. Like now we're all trying to figure out apps, we're engineers. All of a sudden, you know, it's like we're all these like scientist engineers trying to develop all these ways to keep these freaks away from our kids.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we're doing it to ourselves. Yeah, we're doing it to ourselves. So, yeah, like most parents, when you try to crack the parental control code of your child's device, you just after like 10 minutes you're like I can't do this, I'm not a software engineer, and so and that was like one of the main things why I wrote my book was to help parents kind of walk them through that. If you go to my website at cybersafetycopcom, we have this thing called the Cyber Safety Wizard and it's like an app on the website. You put in all your kids' devices, it runs you through like a Q&A and then it spits out all the parental controls like step-by-step how to do it. So it's super helpful. I just want to make this as turnkey as possible for parents.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Because I'm a parent, I understand we're exhausted.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's a shit show out there.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is. I mean, really, you're taking your kid to their softball thing and you have the kid going to soccer and, like you're high-fiving your spouse and you're, you know, divide and conquering and at the same time working full-time and all the things. So this is just one more thing that parents have to worry about.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And now it's become such a worry that we can't ignore it actually Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And also I feel like parents are afraid of parenting. Now, too, there's that piece. We're afraid to take back control, and I mean we, because we're all parents. I want to be very inclusive in this, but, yeah, we're very scared of giving consequences, rules, regulations, because kids are very defiant nowadays. They fight back versus before. I'm sure if your dad looked at you in the eye, you'd just stand there freezing like uh-oh he meant business the side eye.
Speaker 1:That's all we needed, yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, he meant business. Yeah, and so did I.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But now, if I look at my son that way, he's going to be like well, mom, are you? Okay, you know, it's a little different.
Speaker 1:It is different and before we started, I was telling you about this book that I'm working on, which is my experiences as a crisis negotiator and how to talk to people and generate voluntary compliance. It's called GVC, military and law enforcement.
Speaker 2:Walk us through that process.
Speaker 1:So you want a kid who listens to you and, but more than that, like, believes in what you're telling them. You want to. Basically, you're trying to recruit your kid to your point of view, and that's kind of hard to do, right it?
Speaker 2:is.
Speaker 1:So it's a leadership role that.
Speaker 1:It is. You're kind of a mentor, kind of a leader in this situation, the're you know the authoritative method that our parents might've used. Like, if you don't do this or else isn't going to work here, like, especially, like talk, like talking to your kid about drugs, it's the same thing. Your, your, your kid is not going to be with you 24 seven. And so in that moment that they get someone who says, or have someone that says, you know, would you like to try X, y or Z drug, your child needs to know what to do in that situation and you have to prepare them for that If you want. If you're telling your kid who is getting dopamine stimulation off of gaming, who is helping it, they're using it to regulate their emotions. It's addictive and it makes them feel good, right, which is why people are addicted to anything because it feels good. And you're asking them to do less of that, like that's a tough sell, right? You're telling them, hey, I'm telling you, but they're like what it feels good to me now? Like, why are you telling me?
Speaker 2:this. At that point, it's an addiction, right, yeah?
Speaker 1:But like To some degree.
Speaker 1:You don't realize that it's a problem until you problems right.
Speaker 1:So like if you, if you are an adult and there's adults that do this, who game, let's say, or, or drink alcohol, whatever it is, and and that behavior becomes so problematic that it interferes with their ability to function well in their job, in their relationships, and those things start falling apart.
Speaker 1:Right, you lose your job, you get kicked out of your apartment, whatever, sleep in your car, your wife or boyfriend leaves you or whatever, and then so that you have the addiction, and then you have fun, right, that's why you're doing it, right, the thing and the fun. But then you get problems and if those problems get so big, it kind of overwhelms the fun part. And then eventually you get help. Right, you hit rock bottom. But what's happening now is parents are coming in and taking away the problems. Right, if your kid's struggling, they're not doing well in school, you're doing their homework for them, right, you're doing whatever you need to do to get them through and they're never having the opportunity to kind of face their consequences and therefore you end up having a 30-year-old who's living with you.
Speaker 2:Adult, infant.
Speaker 1:Adult infant and you're in this boat, so what we need to do is get a kid to, and sometimes they don't want to, but you got to get them to come around to your side of this.
Speaker 2:How do we do that?
Speaker 1:Okay. So first it's so communication. So when we're in crisis negotiation, put me on a phone with a guy barricaded inside of a building and he's maybe suicidal or whatever the case may be, and the first thing I do is I'm aiming to understand. I want to understand what's going on with that person. How do they feel? Why are we here today? Why are you in this situation? Tell me what's going on. I make zero judgments. I use techniques like reflecting back on them If he says you know.
Speaker 2:Mirroring.
Speaker 1:Mirroring. Yeah, I lost my job today and I feel horrible. Wow, you lost your job today and you feel horrible. I mean, that must be really hard. So just doing things like that. So I'm building rapport with them and then eventually, you know, maybe I'm opening open-ended questions. You know, why do you like gaming so much? Like, tell me when you're in it. Oh, I love it because I'm playing with my friends. Oh, so sounds like playing with your friends is really great. Yeah, it is really great. I'm like okay, so we're having a conversation about it. So you're reducing defensiveness.
Speaker 1:And the kid's feeling like oh, my parent understands me interested in what I want, and especially if you start talking about something that kid loves, they're going to tell you stuff, right. They're going to really let you know why they're doing it, what's going on, maybe ask them. So what are some of the challenges? Do you feel you have a kid who's gaming, not waking up time, not getting to school prepared, maybe not doing well in school, and you say you know, um, I see you, uh, you know, I hear you, I see that you're not doing well in school. Could that have anything to do with the gaming? No, it's fine, it's not a big deal, okay. Well, um, what if? What if we experiment a little bit? So you're, you're gaming until like 9 pm, but in your mind you're thinking I like this kid to stop gaming at like seven, right, what if we? What if we? Uh, how do you end it? Finish gaming at like 8.30? Right, just a half hour earlier.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not too much push.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like 25% of what you want. I mean, what do you like? Do you think that might actually help you be more rested, more prepared? Well, maybe. Well, how about we just try for a week? How about we try for a week and just see, and then we'll make some choices? I'm not here to take this all away from you, but I think maybe we could do this and it might be more helpful for you. And so the kid's like okay, I'll try that. So the what if? The open-ended questions.
Speaker 1:So there's a bunch of techniques, that kind of rhetorical techniques that we use. How do we know if this works? This is the one I use all the time with my boys. So I would say, hey, I go, I need so in this scenario, Like, okay, so I need you, you're not getting up on time.
Speaker 1:There's a big fight in the morning. We leave upset and emotional to school. Your first period teacher says you're not, you're sleepy, you're not doing well, whatever, you're not doing all these exams. We need to go to bed earlier or game earlier. So we're going to say 8.30. Or let's say your kid's like yeah, 8.30, let's try 8. Let's try 8. Okay, if you go to bed at 8 and you're thinking I'd really like it to be 7,. Or I mean, stop gaming at 8, but really 7,. Or maybe say we don't want gaming at all on a school night. It depends on whatever it might be.
Speaker 1:But you ask your kid, you're telling me you have a plan. What's your plan? All right, dad, I'll stop gaming at 8. I'll get to bed at 9, and I'll make sure my homework's done before I get excited, like maybe there's a plan. Okay, how will we know if that works? You tell me, how will we know if that works? And the kid's like, okay, it'll work. If I get up in the morning without you having to wake me up, I go to school. There's no argument. I go to school, I'm ready, I'm standing by the door, get in the car to go to school on time and I'm and the teachers and you can hit, I'll have the email, the teacher email you next week and tell you like how I'm doing. Okay. So, okay, that sounds reasonable. If you can do all those things, we know if it's working. If you can't do those things, then do you think we need to kind of maybe push it back a little more, like maybe go a little bit earlier. Yeah, I think that's fair.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so they work with you.
Speaker 1:They work with you.
Speaker 2:Kids are very reasonable too with you.
Speaker 1:They work with you. Kids are very reasonable too. I just think they have to feel safe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you make them feel they have some ownership. Yeah, exactly, they have say in something right.
Speaker 1:And if it doesn't work out, they know why. They actually help build the parameters of this, and so, on a parent's side, this should be 100% unemotional. That's a problem. It's our as a parent. Your emotional regulation is really important.
Speaker 2:Your own anxiousness probably gets the best of you.
Speaker 1:But there's a lot. So, as I was kind of writing these things down, I was like in 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 pages and I'm like I guess this is another book. I'm looking forward to putting that in the hands of parents.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can't wait to read it as well. I have a question Do you feel that it's harder to kind of make that plan, as you were explaining, with teenagers versus little ones? Because I always believe in connecting before correcting, and this is something that we were taught in school therapy school. What do you think that nowadays parents are doing that I feel like there's just not enough connection with kids anymore versus our time, and it's kind of harder to help a kid, help your child, when there's no emotional connection there, because there's always this battle for leadership right, and it is. It's a battle for I'm the leader, you listen to me, this is my home and that stuff doesn't really work anymore. Do you believe that connecting with your kids is important?
Speaker 1:It's the most important thing.
Speaker 2:It's the most important thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, everything we do at Cyber Safety Cop. If something happens and there's some new scam or there's something going on and we're like, okay, here's an article about this. The article is here's the problem how to talk to your kid about it. So what we're most interested in is building that bridge between a parent and her kid, and a lot of times again, we're so busy and overwhelmed that it's to be intentional about that.
Speaker 1:It takes time, like what I described to you, like talking to your kid about their screen time like that doesn't happen in one conversation. That takes. It could take weeks to really kind of yeah, I could see that. To break that down, yeah, and we're just like anxious. We're like I just want to fix now. I want to fix now and I'll just tell my kid what to do, or I'll just do it for my kid, I'll just fix it or just suffer through it and never really address like the root problems. But yeah, so if you really want to understand your kid and what's going on with them, like you have to be a good listener.
Speaker 2:And that requires you to slow down and do it right. Yeah, I think that the way we were parented does not really work anymore. No, it's so sad Like we have to change our style.
Speaker 1:I had great parents. I really can't imagine, you know, having different parents who are great, but it was like, and my dad grew up like he was born in the 20s and I was the last of four. He was like 49 when I was born, so he's a bit older, but I remember like his first conversation with me about sex was I was almost graduating high school.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:We're just drive. I was driving him somewhere and he's like Clay, do you want to talk?
Speaker 2:about sex. I'm like what do you want to know, dad, what do you want to know? So I mean, that was just how it was.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's scary now to talk about those things with your kids.
Speaker 2:Online pornography, all the things that are difficult to talk about the internet makes you have to talk about it. Yeah, and I think that that's one of the most scariest pieces of life nowadays that we have to expose our kids to these types of conversations at such an early age, like I'm talking about 7, 8.
Speaker 1:Yeah, earlier than you think you need to Very earlier.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and one question that I have is about these predators, these pedophiles Like how do they get a hold of our kids? Like what apps specifically? Like what are we doing wrong? Because I mean it's just everywhere. So yeah.
Speaker 1:So don't let your kid be on social media, these apps, before they're 16. But if you have a little guy who's playing Roblox, right, like when I talked to my K-3 group this morning third grade I said you know who likes to play Roblox? And the whole place just went nuts. Like every one of those kids are on Roblox and I say raise your hand if you play.
Speaker 2:Roblox, how old are these kids?
Speaker 1:K through three, k through third grade so they're little.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness, they're very little, very little.
Speaker 1:Minecraft, Roblox, and I ask raise your hand. If you play Roblox and almost every hand goes up. So on these servers and they're playing with other people. I had a kiddo who was eight. His dad called me.
Speaker 1:Dad came to my presentation and in the presentation I say if your child is on gaming or social media, you need to turn on the pronoun control, especially gaming. So for littles you know the discussion with littles is different. Obviously with teens, Like you don't need so much. You're not trying to get them to comply, You're basically creating these boundaries for them. So you're just like, hey, I'm turning off the voice chat, I'm turning off this, this and this, and they really don't have a say. Like you're not really trying to. It's not a back and forth conversation with the littles, so you're throwing up the guardrails for for them. So I tell him like, hey, I go, your kid could be on Roblox talking to a complete stranger unless you turn on the parental controls.
Speaker 1:So this dad goes home and his kid played it on his iPad. He's playing Roblox on his iPad. He pulls up his kid's Roblox, he looks up the chat log and he sees that his eight-year-old boy has been talking to someone on there who's saying he's also eight years old but talked about explicit sex. Stop Explicit. And this person's coaching his eight-year-old, to use the words right. This is grooming. So this dad calls me up and he goes I was at your talk last night and this is what happened. He tells me the story and as he's telling me the story, he starts breaking down and crying over the phone and, as a dad like I, have a hard time talking about it. It makes me emotional. But he feels like he completely failed his child.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 1:And I'm like you're in good company, man I go. You're not a bad parent, you just didn't know, right. So if your child is on these games, you have to turn on the parental controls. Yeah, your child is talking to complete strangers. These predators know, and so they're in those places. It's everywhere. It's not just. It's not just it's obviously happening in snapchat and things like that, but it's also happening places you may not be thinking. If your child can communicate with another human being, you need to wrap your brain around that app, whatever it is, and understand how it works. Read the parent guides. I have them on my website. Go to commonsensemediaorg. Read those parental controls guides and turn them on. Yes, it's going to require a little legwork on your part, but don't say yes to it. Don't say yes to a game or an app without you fully understanding what you're getting your kid into. I've just had, I've had my heart broken by these parents, I'm sure with every a lot.
Speaker 2:I mean, what is the most gruesome thing that you've kind of witnessed from parents and child perspective? What have you seen? That's kind of shooken your world. So that many.
Speaker 1:I don't know, shooken your world so that many I don't know. Like, actually, the worst thing that I've dealt with is when a parent is abusing their own child. Oh yeah, so we have children who are in teens and actually even older. Um, meeting someone, like on snapchat right, and this person says, um, uh, you're super cute, whatever, and so they and usually it's happening to our boys they send them a nude image usually happening to boys yeah, this is more commonly.
Speaker 1:This is like the biggest scam going on right now, mostly happening to boys and um, and they send a nude image and they're like if you want more pictures of me, send me a picture of you. And so these boys are have no compunction about taking an image of their privates and sending it to a complete stranger and then immediately getting a message saying if you don't want everybody to see this, send me $500. Oh my gosh, and this is coming out of like, typically like the Ivory Coast, west Africa, the Philippines, all over the place Usually and very infrequently happening in the United States, because we can actually track those people down and arrest them, but if it's happening in another country, there's not a lot that can be done.
Speaker 2:So Text messages too.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, sure, so they, you know. But the thing is, once they're their friend on Instagram or Snapchat, then the threat is intense because they're like, I'm going to DM all your friends this image of you holding your business and or a video of you, and parents don't understand, like, how intense this threat is because and how they shame your kid, because what they say is, if I send this image out of you, your parents are going to see it and they're going to see how dirty person you are.
Speaker 2:There goes the suicidal ideation.
Speaker 1:All your friends are going to leave you. They're going to laugh at you. They're going to think you're gross and sick and I'm going to destroy your life. And if you don't do it, you might as well. Just if you don't give me the money, you destroy your life.
Speaker 2:And if you don't do it, if you don't give me the money, you might as well just kill yourself, my God.
Speaker 1:So parents don't understand, like, how brutal that threat is to a kid and you might think, as a kid, the only way out of this is taking my own life. So that's one of the things that I'm really most I'm really concerned about right now is that and it's happening everywhere. All the time it's super underreported. I probably have a parent, maybe not once a week, but every other week, calling me and saying hey, clay, I saw you at my kid's middle school, like three years ago. Now my kid's in high school and guess what happened?
Speaker 2:And I need help finding this person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my kid was in your presentation and you said don't do it. Right? Actually, we don't just say don't do it, we actually tell a story. And so we try to make it really kind of relational. Like if you just tell a kid not do something, that's not going to be helpful. Like the way we talk to kids in our assemblies is very different than what you might imagine. Like we really kind of make them, we challenge them to think about it, we tell them stories and and not just simply you know, do this, don't do this, like that's not going to work. But she's like you know, I told my kid was in her presentation. I sat down with my kid after I came to your talk and we talked about it and my son looked me in the eyes and said mom, not a million years, not a million years, would I ever do this. And she said mom, not in a million years, not a million years, would I ever do this. And she said he did it. She goes.
Speaker 1:I found him in the fetal position, crying in his room because all he could scratch together was like $70 from his high school buddies. And this is a kid who's like 6'2", 220. He's going to play lacrosse at like Boston University, like he's going to get a scholarship, whatever. And he's like he was gonna kill himself because he said mom, if that image, everybody on my instagram are players, coaches, recruiters he goes my life's over and so she's. She's like what do we do? I'm like, well, you're not gonna pay him and tell the person I'm the parent, you're not, my kid's not paying, go away. We're telling the. We're calling the. Not the police can do anything.
Speaker 2:They can't do anything no.
Speaker 1:If this person is in some other country, it's going to go nowhere. There have been cases made when you because what they actually end up having you do is you get like some prepaid card, like visa cards or whatever, and you give those numbers to somebody in the United States and then they wire the money to the person in these other countries so that person is considered like a mule, a money mule, so they can prosecute those money mules, and so we've had some success in doing that, but it's not going to be 100%. So anyway, like I literally just had this happen with one of my son's friends who's a college student, in his 20s and he did this.
Speaker 1:So he comes over hysterical. He's got his mom on the phone and she's like talk to my mom. And I'm like, hey, how's it going? And she's like she tells me I'm like all right, I got this, I'll sit and talk to her son.
Speaker 2:So what did you do in that situation? What do you do in a situation like that?
Speaker 1:So the full story is my son was out with his friend. These are they're like 21. And his friend shows up, but not my son, and his friend is hysterical at the door and he's like crying and pulling his own hair, like he's like losing it. And I look around. I'm like I don't see my son. So I'm thinking what happened to my son, right? So I actually had this adrenaline dump in that moment where I was like I got cold sweats and everything. And then, as soon as he told me that he sent a nude image, like I almost like started laughing because I was so like releasing the tension.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I bet and I'm like I just kind of I put my arms around him and I said, hey, man, it's going to be okay, it's going to be okay. I know it feels really horrible right now, it's going to be okay. So I guess, like that horse has left the barn, right, there's nothing to be done about that image. But it's really a numbers game. If they realize you're not going to pay, they're going to move on Like they may try to threaten you a little bit more and just see what they can get out of you. But if you give them any inclination that you might pay something, even if it's less, they'll just stay after you. So just say no, we're not doing it. And then you know, your kid may need some therapy, right, like your kid may need to talk to someone.
Speaker 2:It's traumatic, of course.
Speaker 1:And I feel like kids. You know your kid may be struggling with dark thoughts, like a lot of kids are, and they don't feel comfortable telling mom and dad about it because they don't want mom and dad to freak out. I've talked to so many kids who'd be like I can't tell my mom and dad how I feel about this or whatever's going on. I'm like, well, you need to tell somebody, like school counselor. So, as a parent, I told my boys there's nothing you can't tell me. Your mom and I will never stop loving you.
Speaker 1:If you come to me and you've made a horrible choice, I'm going to help you. I'm not going to judge you. I'm not going to yell at you. I'm giving you my promise and so if you send a nude image to somebody and they are now blackmailing you, even after we've already talked about this and you said you would never do it, if it were to happen, you can still come to me and we'll talk about it and we'll work it. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out together. I don't want you to go through this by yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if there's something you can't tell me because it's so horrible In your mind you're thinking I can't tell my dad this, and maybe it's something that you're ashamed about. I don't know. Whatever it is, Even though I'm telling you you can, there's nothing you can't tell me. Is there somebody that is an adult that you trust that you could do it?
Speaker 2:I like that.
Speaker 1:Is there a counselor at the school? And so they said, yeah, we have a counselor to school, or their youth pastor or whatever. I'm like, okay, as long as there's somebody, I don't want you going through this stuff alone and you can always tell me. But if, but yes, don't, don't hold onto this stuff, it's not healthy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, also, I've noticed text messages, random text messages, all the time. And you know, guilty, guilty. You know my son's 12, we gave him a phone but no apps like, no social media, nothing, and he gets these random text messages. And then I took on that role. I was just talking back there like, yeah, they were just talking about you know who's your dad, who's your mom, just it's this person. And then my husband picked up and called that person. Never answered the phone, but it was like a six, six something number. Where do they get this information from? It's these random people that I even get text messages like that.
Speaker 1:It's very scary. They're getting it from the same place, they're getting my phone number because they're doing it to me and so I just block it. So you can't set your kid's phone up where basically any number that's not in their contacts goes into like a junk folder.
Speaker 2:Where do you do that?
Speaker 1:If it's an iPhone, there is a setting under the phone setting in the settings to do that. So it'll basically, and I did it for a while, but then eventually you miss a call, right yeah.
Speaker 1:And you don't even know about it. It just randomly, it just goes in there without even knowing. So I I recommend, if a parent now again, I said you know, as I said earlier, I don't think you should give your child, um a smartphone, yeah, but the smartphone does give you that ability. You might be able to set that up with um through uh, I'm not sure about like flip phones or anything like that. You could always. There's also other options. So like Pinwheel makes a phone that has all the parental stuff built in. You can really dial in like how you want, who can call your kid or whatever. And then you have Bark also makes a phone. So there are some people making phones that are for kids. So there are some options there. But I would say, yeah, I would definitely turn that feature on.
Speaker 1:And today, like we were talking to the fourth through sixth graders and I said you know we're talking about who you allow in your digital world and the rule is you only let people in your digital world. You treat your digital world like your home. The same rules apply. So when someone knocks on your door, you look to see who it is. You make a very simple decision Is this person okay to come into my home and who are the two groups of people Friends and family? So that is the same rule for your digital world.
Speaker 1:So if somebody wants to follow you on social media or play games or message you, we only let them in if they'd be a person you let in your home. If it's not, it's a block. If they'd be a person you let in your home. If it's not, it's a block. So if you get those text messages and all these kids do, don't entertain it. You just block them and don't even open the door Because, yeah, what you said exactly. They engage you, they want you to talk and then, before you know it, yeah, you're sending them money.
Speaker 1:You're sending them money.
Speaker 2:It's ridiculous. As a crisis negotiator and a sergeant, have you ever came face to face with a predator?
Speaker 1:Yeah, more than once.
Speaker 2:How was that experience as a parent, as a human being?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's tough. I had a parent. Actually, I arrested a parent who was abusing his daughters.
Speaker 2:Sexually abusing.
Speaker 1:Sexually abusing his daughters, Daughters, Daughters. Yeah so two girls at an intermediate school, so one was sixth grade, one was eighth grade, and the eighth grader was kind of serially being abused every night by dad, oh my goodness. But she didn't want to tell anybody because she didn't want him to abuse her little sister. And then finally he started abusing little sister and then she decided I need to tell somebody. And so she came in one day and just told me and um, and then we worked, worked, working with um. Our sex crimes investigators brought the dad in and arrested him, Um, so that was. That was rough, because um mom was out of the picture and I think they had an older sister and I don't know. I hope the older sister was able to take them, because they ended up going to foster care, oh man, and who knows what happens after that with them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1:It just destroys that family and it's destroying those little girls, but anyway, obviously a safer place than where they were. But we had a guy who, on the surface so what's interesting is, a lot of times the people who are doing this put themselves in positions of trust. A coach, I mean it really, it's really horrible, because you look at your kid's coach and you're like, oh, look at this person who's volunteering helping my kid, and 99.99% of them they're doing that Like they're a person who loves working with kids, they want to help develop your child into being a better human being and it's awesome, right, like your youth pastor or whatever, like these are the people that you should trust, should, should trust, should, should trust. But occasionally, you know, you have somebody who kind of works their way in and they use those positions of trust to exploit children.
Speaker 1:So this guy was a baseball coach, oh my goodness. But online he was a very cute, like 17-year-old girl and he would. He friended all the boys on his team, all the high school boys on his team, and and he also did like travel baseball, did all the, all the year round stuff, so all the boys that he worked with. He was this girl online and he would say hey, you know, can we be friends online? You're so cute. And he basically would manipulate these boys into sending them nude images and and then he'd, and then he'd also victimize the boys of the other teams that they would play.
Speaker 1:So there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands of victims, I don't know. We had to stop looking for victims and we hit about 250. We literally did not have enough investigators to go out and talk to all the victims. So and really what it boiled down to and it's interesting, it took so long but finally a kid gets this message from this girl and he takes it to mom and dad and he says this person I don't know is asking is sending me a nude image and asking for one. And then they walk it into the police department and that's how all this unravels.
Speaker 1:But this has been going on for years. So think about those hundreds of boys who are getting these, never told mom and dad. Mom and dad had no idea what was going on, which is a common denominator in most of my stories. Parents didn't know what was going on and then finally a kid you know did finally tell a parent and that's how we were solved. The average predator will victimize 200 to 300 people in their lifetime, and actually, if it's online, it's going to be much higher than that. So yeah, we you know he had a wife and two kids.
Speaker 2:No way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, kids were like in middle school or elementary school. That's sick. So we arrested him, put him in Orange County Jail. His wife that night I don't think it was, I think it was the night he was booked in or maybe the next night she walked in with the divorce papers. I think they should question the kids too, out of their oh probably. But he was a you know everybody's like oh, such a great guy and you know the stories that you hear like how could this ever happen?
Speaker 2:Build trust Very charming.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I'm sure yeah, by a psychopath.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and also one thing I talked to about with another therapist is these behaviors. It could be learned behavior as well. You know a lot of these, you know pedophiles, predators in general, abuse. They've had abuse, yeah, they've had these types of things done to them. So at such a young age like this, grooming.
Speaker 1:Yeah, somebody traumatized them, sexually assaulted them, broke them, where it's a behavior now, now it's yeah, so there's something that is in there that's broken and can't really well be fixed. So one of the things I did in Registrar's Center Margarita was about once a year I'd go around and visit all the 290 registrants either sex registrants in the city, and most of them were older guys off probation. We had a couple probationers, not many, and so I would just show up and say, hey, I'm Deputy Cranford and I'm the child safety deputy and I would have their file and, of course, making sure that they're registered and they're living in the place that they're registered at. So that's the main thing. And usually these guys would invite me and they want to chit-chat, which is interesting.
Speaker 1:I don't know, they just want someone to talk to them, but I would read their story, what they were arrested for and prosecuted for prior, and almost every one of them had an excuse, which was interesting to me. Almost every one of them said she manipulated me into doing it, like there's always some kind of excuse, so and that's. And as a sergeant in jail we had the sex registrants in prospective custody there and it's always the same thing. So it's interesting. There's just a lack of again. I think there's something inside that's broken that can't really be fixed.
Speaker 2:They certainly weren't born like that. They weren't born like that. Something happened to them to be that way.
Speaker 1:And they were raised in the same world that we were. So many of them had these desires but also were dealing with shame and guilt, right Because they know it's not right. I mean they know it's not right. There are some who try to rationalize it by saying these children are sexual beings and so they should be able to explore their sexuality, but for most of them, throw in psychology.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they think that like it's like, but they think that a 12-year-old has that kind of agency when they don't. So, but most of and it's true, it's actually true with all pornography. So you, especially when you're young, so it usually starts when they're pretty young, but you know it's sexual script theory, right. So you're building your kind of your template for your sexuality in terms of, like, what is okay, what's not okay, what's normative, what's too far, et cetera, in your role and sexuality, et cetera. And so if you're building that template by watching pornography child pornography so you're basically it just basically chips away. There's like a wall between that person and actually touching a child, and that's a shame, fear and guilt, right. So that this watching it over and over again and actually the, the, the fantasy, right that they're, that they're masturbating to breaks down that wall, just chips that wall away until it's down here and they just they just step over it. And so this is this is actually true for for, for all pornography to some degree, that it breaks down those inhibitions.
Speaker 1:I have very young children and one of the things I cover in my book that I don't think a lot of people who do what I do talk about. Is the effect of pornography on children's brains?
Speaker 1:Yes, and how they're forming their roles and relationships.
Speaker 2:It affects every relationship.
Speaker 1:Yes, and it makes it really difficult for them to have a loving, caring relationship actually, and. But most parents look at it and they're like, well, I don't want to be judgmental or prude, but I'm like I'm not talking about adults watching this, I'm talking about children watching it, and the fact of the matter is there are kids who are addicted to it. Because there are kids who are addicted to it, and it's very different than the pornography that someone in my generation may have consumed, which was a magazine.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Right, Once you look at a magazine a couple of times, the novelty wears off. You don't get the same dopamine release right the first time you look at it, but now you have the porn tubes like YouPorn, pornhub, whatever.
Speaker 1:You have thousands of videos. You have all these categories. Just hit refresh, yeah, and you have all these news. So every time it's novel, high dopamine release. And you have kids. And what are kids learning Like? If you're building a script of like, I ask parents in my position, I say for a moment, just a like. I want you think what would you want your child to believe about a healthy, loving relationship? What do you want their script to be? What do you want their template to be in a loving, caring, supportive relationship, whoever they're with? I guarantee pornography is 180 degrees different than that, because what it's teaching them is that women aren't people, that they're just're just things, and that the men and she's not consenting. What's happening to her? It's things that are painful, humiliating and violent. Yeah, and your little boy, who doesn't know that this is a fantasy, is watching it over and over and over again, um, and masturbating over it.
Speaker 2:Yes, with all this dopamine release that's just sickening, making him worse.
Speaker 1:So he I think it was something like of they did a survey of middle schoolers or high schoolers and I think a third of them said porn provided them with the most useful information about sex or relationships.
Speaker 2:They think they're learning.
Speaker 1:It's sex ed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they think it's sex ed for them.
Speaker 1:So your kid and it's not like, hey, if you've got a daughter, like, do you want her to be treated like that in a relationship, right, and if you have a son, you want him to understand how to hold a relationship together.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:And so that's another piece of this that we could have a whole other podcast about right.
Speaker 2:Yes, I have a question actually, and it's a very important question what is the punishment for pedophiles in the state of California?
Speaker 1:What is the punishment?
Speaker 2:Well, the answer to all these things, or what does it look like. It depends.
Speaker 1:Well, okay. So typically the good news is that punishment in the United States with regards to crimes against children are pretty severe, especially when you maybe not severe enough for most people, including me. But if you look at like worldwide, like in the UK and other places, like some places like slap on the wrist, slap on the wrist so, and now that we have human trafficking enhancements, you might have a human trafficking situation. It also kind of depends so, on top of whatever that time in prison will be which could like okay. So for the guy who would pretend to be the girl, the baseball coach, I think he got nine years.
Speaker 2:That's it.
Speaker 1:That's it.
Speaker 2:Out of 250-something victims. That could have been thousands.
Speaker 1:He pled out, pledged that and because he never physically touched a kid, but he produced a lot of child pornography and he shared this stuff with other people. So, on top of the boys realizing that, okay, this happened to me, which isn't great, but these images and videos of these boys goes on forever, like until the end of civilization, Like these they're going to be on people's computers.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I was kind of underwhelmed, to say the least, about that. But the other thing then after they're out they have to register as a sex offender on or before their birthday for the rest of their lives. And while they're on probation there's a lot of rules. But once they're off probation, like the rules about sometimes the rules you can't have a computer, like it kind of depends. What's interesting is at the main jail in Santa Ana, where I was a sergeant, we actually had a section of the jail for extreme. There were predators that had a high propensity of likelihood of reoffending. They finished their prison sentence and the court is holding them, civilly held, inside the jail. So there's dozens of guys in there that have completed their sentence but because they're so dangerous and so likely to reoffend and hurt a kid, they're not being released. So there are people who are not a lot, but there's a few. There's one guy that was in there since I, like when I was a brand new deputy, he was in there.
Speaker 2:Which prison was this?
Speaker 1:The main jail in Santa Ana.
Speaker 2:Yeah, have you ever worked in a prison before, like long-term?
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, so I was. I was so in the Orange County system, the sheriff's department. Our main duty is the jail and the court. So you start out in the jail as a deputy and then when you, when you promote, they reward you by sending you back to the jail. So I was a sergeant in the jail for the last six or seven years of my career and I worked at the main jail, the women's jail and the intake and release center, which is like where all the mental health stuff. So my last few years I was dealing with very mentally sick people on a daily basis in there. I was basically kind of supervising the mental health. It's the mental health hospital.
Speaker 2:That is intense, right Like we shut down all the mental health hospitals.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and now they're all in our hospital. That is intense, right, that is intense. We shut down all the mental health hospitals yeah and now they're all in our jail.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:And so, yeah, so that's what I did, but yeah, so I spent a lot of time in jail myself. Yeah, but yeah, so it's you talk to these guys how about women. The women, yeah, the women's jail, do you?
Speaker 2:see more of women predators versus male predators.
Speaker 1:Males are more, oh for sure, really by a lot. Yeah yeah, women really. I just, I don't know what it is. It's just the way we're built as human beings, like women typically aren't doing that as often we do have some.
Speaker 2:We do yeah.
Speaker 1:But it's not the percentage that you see with men, and obviously women are jailed at way lower percentages per the population than men are, because men are. We're looking at the extremes, right of aggressiveness or whatever and so percentage of men at the extreme ends are way bigger than the women at the extreme ends. So we have more men, violent men.
Speaker 2:And this kind of puts a puzzle. I don't know how correct I am of this. This is just something I'm putting together, but you said that there are more boys being sexually abused right than girls. Is that what you?
Speaker 1:or no. With the sexting, it's more often boys are victims because they're impulsive and they're sending nude images of themselves. They're easy.
Speaker 2:They're easy marks, they're easy marks, marks, but are you noticing it's more for boys, because I'm trying to put think like why are there more male predators? Could it be because does this go back to that learned behavior like they're? Oh, I think I do feel like it's. I think I think it's.
Speaker 1:I think it's genetic in the sense that the the power role it's. The people are predators, um, usually have, have or have have power, whether it's physical power, yeah, size, whatever, usually it's the people are predators, um usually have have or have have power, whether it's physical power yeah size whatever.
Speaker 1:Usually it's obviously age right if you have an adult and a child like yeah, that's their vulnerability, yeah so, but I just feel like, just in terms of men, of violence and this type of stuff and maybe, um, the violence, so I think it's just skews towards the Y chromosome than the X, apparently, but yeah, so, yeah, women in their. What's interesting is the thing that I noticed is that almost all the women in the jail that I talked to or I knew anything about were, were, were, had been abused in relationships. So there's so there's a lot of trauma there and yeah, and they're, and they're typically not there because of, like, they're not involved in a lot of violence, right.
Speaker 1:It's usually others usually drug related or something else.
Speaker 2:That's interesting. What's one advice you would give parents? Well, one I would say, or a few. Well, maybe yeah, one important one, one important I would say.
Speaker 1:I would say take time to spend time with your child and talk to them. Put your phone away Every time you're hanging out with your kid, even if you're just sitting next to them watching the ball game or watching a movie and something. Don't have your phone away Every time you're hanging out with your kid, even if you're just sitting next to them watching the ballgame or watching a movie and something. Don't have your phone out, because what you're signaling to your child is that the phone is more important than the time that you're spending with them. And then I would be very intentional about just talking to your kid and just aiming to kind of understand what's going on with them.
Speaker 1:The more you do that, the more likely your child is going to share things with you, share their struggles with you, come to you for help if they know that you're a person, you're a safe person and you may have to be explicit about it. I told my boys, like I said earlier, if you have a problem and you come to me, I'm making you a promise I'm not going to flip out on you, I'm not going to judge you, I'm not going to berate you, whatever, I'm going to help you. I can take your phone away. I'm going to listen to you and if they know that you're good to your word and they'll challenge you like they'll do something and later you're going to have to like prove it. I have boys now that come and talk to me and actually in their college, and sometimes they tell me things that actually I don't even want to know.
Speaker 2:Like they tell me things I would never have told my dad, but I'm so grateful that they feel like they can do, that You've done something right.
Speaker 1:I think maybe that's the biggest one. The next one is, I would say create accountability for your child, and you can only do that by your child knowing that there's consequences for them. So if you're giving your child a phone, you know, put OurPact on their phone. They need to know that there's something on there that's monitoring them, or that you're monitoring, so they'll pump the brakes. Okay, check in with them. And you know I have lots of suggestions on my website.
Speaker 2:I'll link everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the book is helpful. I actually have a video series. It's like my master class of internet safety for families, and so a parent can work through the different modules and I talk great detail about sexing, a lot about how to talk about pornography, everything it is about how to talk to your kid about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And be patient, you know, because yeah, be a listener, right. Don't roll in there. Like after parents come to my talk, I tell them like don't go home and just go nuts on your kid. We're taking this away. We're doing this Like take.
Speaker 2:The bulldozer parents.
Speaker 1:Yes just take little bites Like if you want this much, go do 25% of it, you know, and incrementally try to do things where you get wins.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they also have to be age appropriate too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2:You know you can't like take away an 18-year-old's phone and like I don't know, I think that punishment also, or consequences, positive or negative, have to be appropriate with age.
Speaker 1:Absolutely you know, or else it doesn't make sense. They're going to fight you on it, yeah, and your child should not get a consequence without knowing up front what's at stake. Don't just get emotional and spring something crazy on them or taking that away for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2:That's going to build so much resentment. That's a chaotic thing to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you can't follow through? No, because your kid knows, if I just wait it out long enough, my parent will cave.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, thank you so much. It was such an honor to have you on and I love the work you're doing, and please don't ever stop spreading the message and teaching parents and helping kids.
Speaker 1:I appreciate you. I appreciate you, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thank you, thank you.