336 — Proactive Parenting to Prevent Online Exploitation

Ending Human Trafficking Podcast

Christopher Diiorio joins Dr. Sandie Morgan to discuss proactive parenting approaches that reduce children’s vulnerability to online exploitation and prevent human trafficking.

Christopher Diiorio

Christopher Diiorio is a supervisory special agent with Homeland Security Investigations in Washington, D.C. He specializes in combating human trafficking and child exploitation. With over two decades of law enforcement experience, Chris has been at the forefront of investigating complex cases and developing strategies to dismantle criminal networks. He is passionate about prevention and advocates for proactive parenting approaches to reduce children’s vulnerability to exploitation. Chris will also be a featured speaker at Insure Justice on March 7th and 8th, 2025.

Key Points

• Children must be taught to become “hard targets” to protect against online exploitation.
• Parents should familiarize themselves with the social media platforms and apps their children use by downloading them personally.
• The concept of “hard targets” stems from lessons in personal safety that parents pass on to their children in real life, such as protecting wallets or purses.
• Parental controls on social media apps are essential tools but are underutilized by many parents.
• Parents should balance allowing children access to social media with supervision and clear guidelines.
• Blocking children entirely from social media can hinder their ability to learn safe online habits under parental guidance.
• Open, daily conversations between parents and children about online interactions build trust and awareness.
• Children need to recognize and trust their instincts when encountering abnormal online behavior.
• Online predators often use tactics such as creating multiple personas to manipulate and build trust with children.
• The dark web is not inherently evil but can be misused by bad actors to exploit children.
• Community collaboration, including law enforcement, schools, and parents, is crucial in preventing exploitation.
• Empowering parents to raise their cyber IQ and engage actively in their children’s digital lives reduces vulnerability.

Resources

• iGuardian

Transcript

[00:00:00] Christopher:

[00:00:00] Sandie:

[00:00:00] Sandie: Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast here at Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice in Orange County, California. This is episode number 336.

[00:00:14] Sandie: We’ll be right back. Proactive Parenting to Prevent Online Exploitation with Christopher DiIorio.

[00:00:22] Sandie: My name is Dr. Sandy Morgan, and this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. I’m so grateful to have our guest, Christopher W.

[00:00:38] Sandie: DiIorio, With us today, he is a supervisory special agent with Homeland Security Investigations in Washington, D. C. There he specializes in combating human trafficking and child exploitation. With over two decades of law enforcement experience, Chris has been at the forefront of investigating the complex cases and developing strategies to dismantle criminal networks.

[00:01:12] Sandie: He is passionate about prevention and he advocates for proactive parenting approaches to reduce children’s vulnerability to exploitation. I’m excited because he’s going to be at Insure Justice March 7th and 8th, 2025. There will be a link to register to join us in the show notes. But for now, we’re going to have a conversation with Chris and demystify technology and empower our communities to take action. Welcome.

[00:01:53] Christopher: Thank you, Dr. Morgan. I very much appreciate the opportunity to be here with you today.

[00:01:57] Sandie: Well, let’s get started. In one of our past conversations, you mentioned the importance of making children hard targets, and that caught my imagination. We’re going to use that terminology during this podcast. What. What would it mean for you to make a child a hard target?

[00:02:25] Christopher: Well, thank you very much. You’re right. I hard target is a term that I have used I don’t really remember where it came from and where it started, but it’s certainly Something that’s sort of baked into a lot of parents and teaching their kids, right? And when we were children likely it was your mom telling you when you’re on a busy subway to maybe move your purse over your Head and wear it like a shoulder bag and put it in front of you Or it was a dad telling a son to move your wallet from your backpack And and just over the course of being reared, you get to the point where your parents are making you hard targets in life.

[00:02:59] Christopher: They’re teaching you these little bits of lessons. And when we start talking about technology or exploitation of children through the lens of technology, We went through an entire generation where the kids were going up with a type of technology that the parents just didn’t have or weren’t available to them, so they didn’t know how to put those lessons on to the Children to make them hard targets.

[00:03:21] Christopher: So I started pretty early on in my. investigative career into child exploitation and the sexual abuse of children to start educating children and parents on how to become hard targets and sort of apply those lessons in the world or the online world

[00:03:39] Sandie: So Chris, can you break down what this means and share everyday actions? parents can take to build resilience and reduce their child’s vulnerability.

[00:03:53] Christopher: one of the first things that, I like to encourage with parents is getting comfortable with sort of the ecosystem or the world that their kids are going to be living in online, right? if they’re going to be using a particular type of, social media, if they’re going to be operating, on these group chats with their friends, make sure you sit down with them and explain to them that,they need to know that every person that’s on this, making sure that they understand that whatever has been put on the Internet is going to live on the Internet forever.

[00:04:21] Christopher: And then I often ask parents to sort of take. their own personal experiences from when they were coming of age, right? You have to, as a parent, think back to that time when you were 12, 13, 14, and sort of the hormones and the changes that your body was going through and remember what that was like and now apply sort of the pressure that comes with that, with that in and of itself to it being 24 seven through constant communication, right?

[00:04:50] Christopher: And so from that, If you download the apps themselves, like, I, I haven’t mentioned yet, but I do have a daughter who’s, who’s, 13 years old, and before she gets any application or is allowed to learn anything, I’m going to download it myself. Unfortunately, I have way more social media accounts than I would have preferred to have.

[00:05:06] Christopher: but I feel like that’s one of the most important things we can do is actually understand the world that they’re going to be communicating in.

[00:05:13] Sandie: So let’s talk about what kind of, let’s say, what kind of protections can parents put in place. The some, here are some of the options that I’ve had conversations about. Uh, parent who does not allow any social media. on their iPhone or Android phone, the parent that says, I’m going to look at your phone every day and check all of your conversations.

[00:05:47] Sandie: And the parent that says, I just trust you. And I know you’ll make a good decision. So that’s a really broad spectrum. What kind of guardrails do you recommend putting up?

[00:06:02] Christopher: Yeah, Dr Morgan. That’s a that’s a really good point. Um, you know, look, it’s not going to be I completely and intrinsically trust you, to just make the right decisions. Um, I wouldn’t put that level of pressure on my Children, nor would I ask that parents in general do that. tech companies have put a tremendous amount of effort into putting parental controls in a lot of social media for a reason.

[00:06:22] Christopher: I also think it’s a sliding scale on how you deal with that, right? It’s going to depend on your particular guidelines as a child. How old is that child? What is their mental maturity of that child? But I think we’re remiss if we completely block our kids out from this world, because what ends up happening is if they’re not learning to use, this social media and interact with people online under the guidance of a trusted adult or a guardian, At some point, they’re going to be released into the world, and they’re going to have no protections in any way, shape, or form, and they’re not going to have learned those hard lessons.

[00:06:55] Christopher: So I personally fall into that middle ground of the three options you gave, which is to allow them to use it, allow them a little bit of freedom, allow them to understand what the benefits are, but then take the time to explain what the downsides are, right? I, as a parent, am constantly leveraging. wanting my kids to feel safe and secure and be happy against also warning them of the dangers that do exist in this world.

[00:07:24] Christopher: Right. And having worked these investigations for 20 years, I can tell you those dangers are are horrible. and so I want them to see the problem coming and going back to the hard target analogy we referred to is if you can identify a problem. before it is a problem, that is the easiest way to avoid it.

[00:07:43] Christopher: So the example I give a lot of parents is if, if I know somebody is going to pickpocket me, I can just cross the street and, and avoid the interaction altogether. So seeing the problem, understanding the behavior, of predators online and how they work is going to be the best way to avoid that and the best way to become a hard target.

[00:08:02] Christopher: And I think that only happens with. limited or, supervised use of social media and these internet platforms and the parental controls that they build into them.

[00:08:12] Sandie: So parental controls, I get that. And I’m often horrified when I’m talking to a group of parents who have never opened the parental controls. What do parental controls do for you as a parent?

[00:08:30] Christopher: Sure. And now it, it, it varies greatly depending on the company or the type of social media. There are some that have leaned into children and children’s communication. They have built messaging apps that are specifically designed for kids, so that the kids can communicate with each other and all of the communications will be put into the parents, social media account as well for review at any given time.

[00:08:53] Christopher: you can turn on or off. Explicit language or messaging and filters that are built into it. Others are less. cooperative, if you will, whereas they allow you to see who the child is communicating with, but not the content of the communication in any way, shape or form. So if you’ve got like sort of a group chat with a bunch of friends from school and inappropriate data was being, shared amongst these kids, or, or, or an adult pretending to be a kid was able to infiltrate that group, you know, the parent wouldn’t be able to see like signs of grooming or other, atypical or, or. Behavior that would be inappropriate for that. and so understanding those different social media apps and what the parental crawls are is probably one of the most important things. And in full disclosure, it’s not an easy task. It is difficult. Each one is different from the other. these apps are not making money off of parental controls.

[00:09:47] Christopher: So it’s not parental controls aren’t necessarily like the first thing that they’re working on,to fix bugs.

[00:09:54] Sandie: Wow, and that’s an economic. aspect of what we’re dealing with here. So as parents, I think we can drive more motivation for corporate America to put those in place. So our advocacy as parents is part of how we build those guardrails. So Then, in a conversation with a 13 year old who has supervised social media, what are some of the daily topics that come up in the conversation with a trusted adult, a parent, a caregiver, maybe even a grandparent?

[00:10:37] Christopher: Sure. so I make it a, a point of, of chatting with my daughter regularly about who she’s speaking to and what she’s, talking about at any given time, you know, more often than not the, the conversation doesn’t start with. you know, there are people out there that are looking to exploit children and these adults, right?

[00:10:56] Christopher: This conversation can happen just from poor decisions that maybe a teenage boy makes or says something in a group chat or, or one of the, you know, her many girlfriends that are on these group chats and having that open dialogue with her, leads to other conversations. So when For example, when we talk about something that maybe went awry or a kid said something about another child that was wrong, I then use that often to break into a conversation about how, that type of behavior, if normalized, can start to seem like it’s reasonable.

[00:11:30] Christopher: And then I will talk about something as, as heavy as grooming, for example, and how adults might groom a child in, which is to normalize abnormal behavior to get that child to sort of feel comfortable with things that are, are not right. and I use those often as jumping off points.

[00:11:47] Sandie: give me an example of how you have that conversation because for me it’s easy to understand, the difference between normal and abnormal, behavior. When I think about having a conversation with a 12 or 13 year old about what’s abnormal, how do I, actually communicate that. That’s a very esoteric concept.

[00:12:10] Christopher: Sure is. I, I had an, an example. My daughter was in seventh grade and she, along with, maybe a half a dozen of her friends were walking to a local coffee shop for one of the friend’s birthdays. And after school, they were going to walk, it’s about a mile walk to this spot, and they walked down a pretty busy road in Northern Virginia.

[00:12:31] Christopher: And during that walk. Now, mind you, these are 12 year old girls. Two cars beeped their horn and catcalled at these 12 year old girls.and my daughter didn’t quite understand it, so I took that at the time to describe what normal and abnormal behavior was. And I said, look, you have cars passing down, and we did the math, my daughter loves math, so she leans into it, and we talked about the average amount of cars that went down.

[00:12:55] Christopher: In that one mile, you were probably passed by 100 cars, and in that 100 cars, two cars, you had abnormal behavior. behavior come from them? Actually, we said 200. I pointed out that it was probably 50 50 men, women. So let’s look at the 100 men that had passed you. and I, I use that as an example to highlight for her how, yes, not everybody is bad, but that, that the people who are abnormal in their behavior are hiding amongst all those other drivers.

[00:13:23] Christopher: and the idea is how do you identify that? And when you see it, recognize that it’s abnormal behavior. and then Trust your instincts when it comes to that. That felt wrong. That’s mostly because it was wrong. not specific to my daughter, but I’ve had the same conversation with groups of Children where I’m doing,what we call, uh, I guardian outreaches to Children.

[00:13:43] Christopher: It’s an H. S. I run program. just to make Children hard targets. and I point that out regularly. If you’re amongst a group of friends and you’re seeing that bullying, you generally know what is abnormal and what’s wrong. And I want you to trust your instincts because more often than I’d like to admit, I hear After somebody is arrested for abusing a child, the people around them say, ah, something seemed off.

[00:14:08] Christopher: And I often say, yeah, there was, there was probably things that you would pick up on and that you just need to believe people when they tell you that their behavior is abnormal.

[00:14:19] Sandie: Wow. That is such a good conversation because it’s more than just when you’re online. It’s an in life conversation that parents will routinely have with their kids. I’m also interested in how you took something that is a little abstract and made it concrete. You broke it down in numbers with real cars passing by.

[00:14:48] Sandie: And what I hear an awful lot of is more along the lines of, I’m warning you and there are people, there are predators, they’re going to come after you. And I Would love to hear your opinion on that as a deterrent in Parental conversations.

[00:15:11] Christopher: There is, and again, I, I’m far from an academic, like yourself, but I have spent a little bit of time sort of looking into items, that, pertain to children and to criminals and how to kind of deal with that. And specifically, what you’re referencing is not necessarily the scared straight program, if you’ll recall that,

[00:15:30] Sandie: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:15:31] Christopher: and, and I know that a lot of the studies that came from that scared straight program actually, showed that it didn’t work very well.

[00:15:38] Christopher: and there was a bunch of reasons for that, probably not necessarily because,because a parent was, was telling them not to do something. And I don’t think it equates over, exactly, but I just think that any scare tactics need to be put into context because if we just constantly tell the children, Hey, this is bad.

[00:15:56] Christopher: This is bad. This is bad. eventually they’re just. It’s we’re going to normalize that bad behavior. And so I always make it a point to point out that the vast majority of people are good. It’s just that the bad people are hiding amongst it. And this is the potential of what could happen and why you need to look for the behavior.

[00:16:16] Christopher: I just. I, I grew up in the 80s with, with the, Just Say No campaign and that all drugs were bad. And I’m not necessarily sure we won that messaging campaign, for people. And I think that maybe over communicating has worked for me, and the kids that I’ve had the opportunity to interact with over the years.

[00:16:36] Sandie: and and that really kind of leads into another conversation Because what you said you want your family your kids to be to have good technology skills. So let’s talk a little bit about the double edged sword of technology, where it can lead to expertise or it can lead to exploitation.

[00:17:04] Christopher: Yeah, that’s a great point because, as you mentioned earlier, I used an example of cars passing in a real life situation to to highlight the scenario. 1 of the things I realized. Maybe my 1st, years into investigating child exploitation, crimes was that children’s brains are, are literally wired different than mine.

[00:17:24] Christopher: they don’t see any difference between communicating with a person right in front of them or communicating via text message or online. And that was a lesson I think that, you know, was a real wake up call for me. And in, in the particular investigation where I identified that was I had a victim who was, I think she was about 13 years old at the time.

[00:17:44] Christopher: And without giving any details of that particular investigation, it was time for me to talk to her friends as part of that investigation. And when she gave me the information for one friend, it had a phone number. It, the person lived two houses down. And then she gave me, the information for the second friend, which was, a phone number for a state on the other side of the country.

[00:18:06] Christopher: and I asked her, I said, have, have you ever met this person? And she said, no. Now, I had been talking to this young woman for, two weeks, and in her mind, the friend that lived two houses down and the friend whom she’d never met in person occupied that same space in her mind. And that was a real wake up call for me, is that kids literally use technology or interpret the information they get from technology different than sort of my generation.

[00:18:32] Christopher: Hopefully that will be fixed with this next generation, right, because they’re growing up with technology as well. But I think that double edged sword means making kids hard targets and applying all of those lessons that they learn in real life and making sure they’re applying those to an online life, right?

[00:18:49] Christopher: Being good digital citizens, understanding, that, Their actions have consequences, maybe even more so. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have everything you do monitored all the time. Like, I just, I made so many mistakes as a kid that I feel like these kids are under a tremendous amount of pressure.

[00:19:06] Christopher: and I try to be mindful of that when I’m having those conversations.

[00:19:09] Sandie: So this risk for being groomed by somebody you’ve never met but feels like a Like a friend that you can walk over to their house. Wow, that just gives me Goosebumps. I’m like, what what can I do as a parent to intervene in that thought process? And when would I know to intervene? Are there behavioral red flags?

[00:19:38] Sandie: That we can look for that might indicate grooming.

[00:19:42] Christopher: So, for the children, one of the things I like to point out is the difference. Most people understand what virus software looks like on a computer. Um, there’s really two different types of virus software. There’s the type that looks for downloads your virus definitions, right? And it will tell you, Hey, We know these files are a virus, so we will quarantine them, delete them, not let you pull them down.

[00:20:02] Christopher: And I’m sure you’ve seen this on your computers. And there’s another type of virus software called heuristic virus software, which actually doesn’t look for the particular files, but instead it looks for the behavior of the software. So, I have adopted this and, and the I Guardian Project has adopted this, and I highly suggest that parents do this, which is understanding how people groom and how it works.

[00:20:23] Christopher: A couple of examples would be something we refer to as white knighting. So you will have somebody who is online, and they will befriend a, a potential victim online. They will also create a second online persona where they will, will attack that victim. And so. They’ll start making that victim feel bad.

[00:20:43] Christopher: They will start attacking them. They will start cyber bullying them. And with the white knight account, the one that’s a friend, that white knight account will then defend the victim from there. And all of this is just a show to build trust into the victim that I am looking out for you and I am not the predator.

[00:21:00] Christopher: But really both accounts were run by the predators. It’s also like understanding For example, the Nigerian Prince, scheme where people won money, we saw that a lot in the early 2000s, late 90s. And looking back on it, it’s almost laughable that somebody would lose their entire life savings. But when it was novel and you didn’t understand it was a fraud or scam, you can get caught by it.

[00:21:24] Christopher: So again, Understanding or being that heuristic software or explaining with your kids how the predators work, what they do, what is their behavior will give the kids the ability to see that behavior. Hey, it is abnormal for something like this to happen or this is the type of scam somebody might have or somebody might pretend, to be doing in order to gain your trust.

[00:21:45] Christopher: And in reality, that’s grooming and it makes it a lot easier to see it. Um, truthfully, if I had my way, I would never work another one of these investigations because it. We would put him out, but unfortunately, I don’t think we’re there.

[00:21:57] Sandie: Wow. Really insightful. Thank you. another question I have for you. I don’t get dads on this show very often from a father’s perspective. Is there a unique aspect of male role models?

[00:22:14] Christopher: So personally I think that my relationship with my daughter is very important. I know it’s important for me and I think it’s probably pretty important for her as well. And I think that male role models play an important role really in in. And both boys and girls and raising them. I often say the best thing that I can do for my daughter is treat her mother well, right?

[00:22:37] Christopher: Because I am setting that standard by which all males will be judged going forward, at least at a younger age. And I want to be that role model. I want her to see that. typical behavior, how I interact with her, how I interact with her mother on a regular basis is going to level her expectations going forward.

[00:22:56] Christopher: And if I hold a high standard, when she moves out into the world, she’s going to expect that same standard, from the other males in her life. And I think just by being that person or being that father, I am, I am continually giving her the tools necessary to decipher, What’s good, what’s bad, what’s normal, what’s abnormal, and, and in effect, making her a harder target.

[00:23:19] Sandie: I love that. And the other thought that has been running through my mind since our first conversation is if I’m in a community environment and I’m part of PTA, I’m at a church, maybe I’m a group of teachers, educators. Are there some tips for how I relate to law enforcement?

[00:23:47] Christopher: Yeah, so I think that law enforcement, especially those who work in, in, in sort of the, what we refer to CSAM, the child sexual abuse material, the child exploitation world, realize that this is,this is a ubiquitous problem that knows no boundaries, right? There’s there’s no socioeconomic issues.

[00:24:06] Christopher: There’s no race issues. There’s no gender issues in the end. It’s about adults protecting Children, and working together to do that. at least in the United States of America, we have these things called the ICACs, which is the Internet Crime Against Children, task force that operate in every community across the entire country.

[00:24:25] Christopher: HSI has an iGuardian program that’s built specifically to do these types of outreaches. and I think that leveraging those or using your school resource officers to sort of talk about or engage with the children, is really important. And I think that, parents to understand that. the police want nothing more than for this crime to just go away for the rest of their lives.

[00:24:46] Christopher: And, and, and that we are happy to help in any way, shape or form whenever we can. And if that means helping in a way that isn’t reactionary, but instead is proactive, like this podcast today, that we’re, we’re all in.

[00:25:00] Sandie: Oh, that’s so good. Honestly, when I talk to parents, sometimes exactly what you said about the police comes up. They just want this to go away. And parents feel like this is so overwhelming. And there are a lot of media misrepresents the hard facts. And I think one of the things I’ve heard you talk about is the dark web, which is like this monster boogeyman in my mind, and makes me really concerned that somehow this is going to be something I can’t manage.

[00:25:40] Sandie: Can you demystify that just a bit?

[00:25:44] Christopher: Yes, doctor. I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah. I think that, Not being intimidated by the technology, is, is step one for parents when we talk about keeping kids safe online and, and making them hard targets. the dark web is this thing you hear about online. It’s the seedy underbelly. they’ve made children’s movies that involve like, you know, the dark web and, and I find them pretty hilarious and, and, and accurate at the same time.

[00:26:09] Christopher: But what we shouldn’t think is that the dark web is some. Some spot that’s hard to get to. Ultimately, the Dark Web, really, when most people refer to that, they’re talking about Tor, which is the Onion Router, was an actual US government project that was developed and released out into the world as an open source way of communicating.

[00:26:29] Christopher: The Dark Web, or Tor, in and of itself, is not evil, it’s not good, and it’s not bad. As a matter of fact, All it does is it makes you anonymous online, and you can imagine that if you lived in a country where because of your gender, you were not allowed to learn how to read or to go to school, being able to get online and be anonymous and get access to resources or even just read the news like the BBC or the Wall Street Journal might be really beneficial because otherwise that would be blocked by your country.

[00:26:59] Christopher: You could really put the dark web through the lens of something that is beneficial for society. The problem is that anonymity that is intrinsic into, the onion router, more commonly known as the dark web, is, or a dark net, is leveraged by bad actors, right? And bad actors use it. They commit heinous crimes with it.

[00:27:21] Christopher: and that sort of, gives it that ominous feel to it. And truthfully, there are some terrible things happen in it on a regular basis. The technology is really just encryption, not unlike end to end encrypted messaging you would have with, your, your Apple phone or your Android phone or, or a messaging app.

[00:27:39] Christopher: The difference is the encryption is deployed not to keep the data safe, but the encryption is deployed to keep the users of it anonymous. And it’s very good at what it does. I mean, this isn’t, these wasn’t created by some hackers wearing hoods, like you see on television. This was created by some of the smartest cryptologists and computer programs, software engineers, in the world, really at the behest of the U.

[00:28:03] Christopher: S. government and under contract for them. Which is why the technology is so good, and there is an argument for privacy. So from a parent’s point of view, going to torproject. org, going to HSI’s iGuardian resources, Leaning on DHS is no to protect, campaign will help them understand sort of how this technology works.

[00:28:24] Christopher: So they’re not intimidated by it. Ultimately, my goal is sort of to pull the veil away from, the technology itself and empower people. It is not. Intrinsically evil, and it’s not illegal, by the way. That’s the other piece. You can go to tour project dot org and download a tour browser. I would be very careful about where you visit with it, but, you could go and you can read about it and understand it.

[00:28:48] Christopher: But most importantly, what you need to know is that your kids can also do that. It’s very easy to download the browser and just get online.

[00:28:55] Sandie: Wow. Okay. So. It’s demystified, but I’m still pretty intimidated by it. So I’m going to be going to iGuardian first to get more information. And there are so many great apps out there in our community trying to keep our kids safe. We’ve interviewed people like Rachel Thomas with the Cool Ants series.

[00:29:18] Sandie: We’ve interviewed pe Folks from Thorne, from NCMEC, um, last year at our Insure Justice Conference, by the end of the second day, we had a tagline, Talk Tech Every Day. And I think we can equate this conversation with how we reduced dental caries, cavities, decades ago, because we made brushing your teeth a daily expectation that Every parent taught every year in school, you got to chew that little tablet to see with the black light, if you had any gaps in how you were brushing your teeth.

[00:30:01] Sandie: And so as we continue to dialogue on this and develop better online safety, I’m, Would like to know how you have changed. You’ve been doing this for a couple of decades and as you have become a recognized, a recognized active, no, that’s not what I, a recognized advocate for proactive parenting. I think that’s why I’m so excited you’re coming to Ensure Justice because you’re an example of what we can do, not What, how we can run, hide, protect, be on our guard all the time.

[00:30:46] Sandie: And so I would like to know how you would advise parents to join you in that movement away from a fear based approach to proactive parenting.

[00:30:59] Christopher: Yes, and I certainly would, would. encourage parents to lean into communications and lean into talking about tech. I, I refer to it as raising the cyber IQ of parents, but I very much like your tagline more. talk tech every day, gets to that point where we’re, we’re demystifying it, we’re pulling it back.

[00:31:19] Christopher: We’re having a conversation. And truthfully, I learned more from my child about how these apps work than, then I could figure out on my own because it’s just all very intuitive to her. And so opening that line of communication up, opening it up with the other parents, every Christmas party we have, sometimes I’m not the funnest person just for the, the nature of the work I do.

[00:31:39] Christopher: It’s kind of a downer, but if we, if we gear it to sort of their kids and their presentations, then what we ended up finding out is that, They have the skills necessary to lean into it, but they were just a little bit intimidated to your point. And, and once they have somebody sort of empower them or tell them, Hey, look, you can do this, download it, let’s do it.

[00:31:57] Christopher: As friends, we all have social media communication apps that we wouldn’t use ourselves, but for our kids being on it. So now we all sort of get in and now we communicate on it, not because we really want to, but because it’s the right thing to do. So we understand the platform that our kids are using daily.

[00:32:14] Sandie: And I do think it’s important that parents. partner in their communities. A few years back, my daughter’s friends, when my granddaughter was a teenager, had all started becoming friends with a guy at school, that it turns out when my daughter asked, who is he? Where does he live? Nobody actually had ever met him.

[00:32:42] Sandie: And so she reported it to the school, they found out he was, some, a guy in his 20s targeting high school girls. And so parents can be part of, of a community that is alert to what other kids in their kid’s friend circles can do as well. And I’m more and more convinced that proactive parenting is going to be the next big thing in combating human trafficking when it comes to online recruitment.

[00:33:18] Sandie: and predatory behavior. Last remark, what do you want people to be thinking about?

[00:33:26] Christopher: Well, as it relates to being a hard target, being online and keeping our Children safe, I just want people to remember that, the vast majority of the people are in fact good people in the world, right? And being able to identify that and trust your gut and trust your communication levels with your children so that you can continue to have those conversations is something we need to strive for.

[00:33:49] Christopher: Look, talking to a teenager isn’t always the easiest thing. I think we all know that. but you know, as parents,we should, we should embrace that and we should continue to talk tech every day. And I fully endorse that.

[00:34:00] Sandie: Thank you so much, Chris. it’s been a pleasure to have you with us today. I have learned so much. I’ve got more questions, but I’m going to have to have you come back. No, wait, I’m going to have you come to Vanguard. you In March, 7th and 8th, Ensure Justice, sign up so you can have a personal conversation with our team here.

[00:34:23] Sandie: And everybody, if this is your first time to listen to the podcast, go over to the EndingHumanTrafficking. org website. Subscribe, and you’ll get an email when a new episode drops every two weeks. Give us some feedback. Are there topics you’d like us to explore? And join us.

[00:34:47] Sandie: Again in two weeks