After Pittsburgh-area girl lured from home, expert shares tips for monitoring kids’ online activity

With more children and teens having access to cell phones and tablets, police are urging parents to monitor their activity and be aware of what they’re doing online.

“Parents, community leaders, teachers need to be involved,” said Richard Evanchec, a special agent with the FBI Pittsburgh office. “They need to be aware of what their children are doing online. When they’re picking up a cell phone, we shouldn’t assume that they’re doing something admirable. Children are vulnerable. They don’t yet know what right and wrong is, and we need to help them.”

Evanchec shared that message on Wednesday during a news conference in Whitehall Borough, where a teenage girl had been lured from her home over the weekend. Police said a 27-year-old man started communication with the teen on an app called Discord just days before she went missing.

Consider parental spyware, expert says

Cyber experts said parents must know what their kids are doing on their devices.

“If you’re going to hand your child a device, realize that there’s a time commitment for you as well,” said Dr. Elise Silva, the director of policy research at Pitt Cyber.

Experts at Pitt Cyber said parents need to explain the risks of being online, be vigilant and monitor their kids’ activity and consider parental spyware.

“As soon as your child has access to any digital technology, it’s talking about the responsibility of being a digital citizen,” Silva said. “What is a digital footprint? How long is this information going to be online? But also, who else goes online? Not everybody online is who they say they are.”

Set screen times and parental controls 

Silva said parents should consider setting screen time limits and filtering adult content.

“You can turn on things like parental controls,” Silva said. “Screen time limits for different apps or for an entire device. You can also, app by app, go through and look at the different types of parental controls that are there. I suggest doing it on both a device level and an app level. So the apps that your children are accessing, make sure that you’re going into parental controls, privacy settings and seeing what you do and don’t have control over. Safe Search is a really important thing for parents to know about. You can do that on a device level and also a browser level. So make sure you’re looking at Chrome, make sure you’re looking at Safari and turning on safe search to make sure that they can’t access adult websites, for example.”

Some parental control apps include Bark, Qustodio and Aura, Silva said.

Communication is key

As children get older, Silva said parents can loosen the reins a bit, stressing that communication is key.

“Maybe as they get older, you’re not looking at all of their texts and chats, but you’re talking to them about what online responsibility looks like,” Silva said. “They’re aware of risks that other people in their own age group have experienced, and they know warning signs.”

Some warning signs children should be aware of are online grooming behaviors.

“If somebody is asking them to keep a relationship private, if somebody is asking them to send photos that are inappropriate or asking them inappropriate questions, if somebody who they don’t know is asking them to meet up, these are all grooming behaviors,” Silva said. “And if you’ve had those conversations, over and over again, hopefully that youth would begin to recognize those things. Does that mean that you can control everything? No. What we like to say is that these things are speed bumps, right? They’re not walls, and so, you really have to keep those lines of communication open and really do your best.”

Kids may try to hide things on devices 

Silva also reminds parents that children may try to hide things on their devices.

“There are apps that kids can download that are, they look like one thing, but they’re another thing,” Silva said. “For example, it looks like a dictionary, but it’s actually an AI chatbot. So things are absolutely getting past parents all the time, and that’s where the open communication really comes into play. I spend a lot of time going through my daughter’s phone and iPad. She’s 12. I feel like I will spend less time doing that as she gets older, but it is a time commitment on the parents’ side.”

For parents looking for resources to learn more about things like parental controls, including tutorials on how to lock things down on a child’s phone, Silva suggested websites including Common Sense Media, Connect Safely and Internet Matters.