Parents urged to keep tabs on kids’ Internet interactions to stop online predators

Online predatory crimes against children have gone up significantly over the past few years.

Police in Saskatchewan are noticing that while it’s not spiking in this province, it has gone up as children spend more time online these days.

Staff Sgt. Scott Lambie is the province’s Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) co-ordinator.

“We’ve got a very steep increase in the last few years regarding all types of offences that we’re dealing with,” he said. “It’s tough to say luring has increased during this period or possession of (child pornography) has increased during this period, because everything is consistently on the rise.”

Just last week, Alberta’s ICE unit sent out a warning to parents, indicating that online predatory behaviour had spiked since kids were ordered to stay home. Lambie says while crimes against children have increased in Saskatchewan as well, it’s not what he would call a spike similar to that in Alberta.

“(Online predatory crime) has risen a little bit, but nothing that it has taken off like you would see a curve go right through the roof,” said Lambie.

He has advice for parents who might be concerned about who their children and teens might be interacting with on popular games like Fortnite, Minecraft, Facebook Messenger and a host of apps.

“We always tell them to monitor what your kids are doing online and what they’re doing online and talk to your kids about what their online involvement with other people is,” Lambie said. “Just so they don’t get the types of requests in those chat rooms where people are always asking you to send naked pictures of yourself.

“Those are usually requests done by people that are not really their friends. They’re sort of their ‘Internet friends’ as we call them.”

The bottom line, Lambie says, is parents and their kids should know who they’re talking to — especially if someone is asking the children to do something that doesn’t feel or seem right.

And he wants parents to know that there’s no one particular game or app that’s targeted. If kids are using it, then so are pedophiles and other predators.