Edmonton police offer tips to keep children safe on social media

Social media use for children can be risky but Edmonton police say there are ways parents can be proactive to decrease that risk.

In the past few weeks police have been warning about suspects using social media to lure teenagers in Edmonton. In at least two cases the victims met with the suspects who have since been charged with a number of sexual assault counts.

• Edmonton man, 24, faces sex assault charges after contacting teens on Snapchat
• Edmonton man, 20, charged with sexual assault against teens

The Zebra Child Protection Centre, which supports victims of abuse as their cases go through the legal system, has seen an approximate 20 per cent increase in calls over last year. While not all these calls are related to online luring, Detective Derek Onysko with the Edmonton Police Service says he does believe the pandemic has played some part in the increase.

"There's a lot more unsupervised use of social media or the internet," he said, adding that many children may be at home on the computer alone for school while their parents are at work.

Onysko has three recommendations for parents who want to keep their children safe.

The first and most important thing is for parents to maintain open and honest communication with their children about what they're doing online and the potential risks involved.

The second is to check their devices to monitor what their child is doing. That can mean taking the devices being used regularly to look through social media accounts, text messages, and photo galleries to see if they're appropriate.

An unwillingness to share could be a red flag, Onysko said. Another potential warning sign is if a child is reluctant to talk about risky online behaviour when a parent is trying to broach the subject in an open and honest way.

The third recommendation is for parents to have a degree of social media savvy themselves, knowing and being able to navigate popular social media apps.

"So they're able to kind of monitor from the inside some of the things that their children are posting on their social media accounts."

Be supportive

All three recommendations require a level of trust — Onysko says children need to know their parents are there to support them.

"I think a lot of kids sometimes fear that if they've made a mistake, they're afraid to tell their parents or their guardians because they're going to get in trouble," he said. Onysko said that children may be navigating situations with people online that are beyond their ability to deal with.

"I think that if young people are victims of online predators or scary situations that are happening online ... they can't be afraid to go report that to their parents and have those conversations."

Onysko says children also need to know they can turn to an adult — whether a parent, guardian or someone else trusted — if they do run into some of these situations.

"And then eventually hopefully contacting the police to get the police to help investigate," he said.  "Often kids will not report and they need to understand that we are there to help them."