FBI: More time online means youths more at risk from predators

In North Carolina, two teens were abducted by online predators in the past two weeks alone.

On Feb. 16, a 15-year-old girl was taken from a group home in Lexington, but she was found a week later at a motel in Aberdeen. A Moore County man has been charged in the case.

FBI supervisory special agent Jason Kaplan, who helped to investigate both cases, said parents need to be aware of whom their children are talking to and how they’re communicating with those people.

But then the predators persuade teens to connect on other, less safe platforms, he said. Some of those are encrypted, which makes it much harder for law enforcement to trace predators.

"A very common technique for child predators is to engage with a child online on a certain platform. It could be Xbox [or] PlayStation, platforms that are generally considered to be relatively safe ... and then simply asking them once they've developed a relationship to move to another platform," Kaplan said.

Parents and teachers need to make sure children and teens recognize the tactic when they see it, he said.

Face-to-face meetings or abductions are worst-case scenarios, Kaplan said, but many predators are looking primarily for explicit photos or video they can use as leverage.

"Once that happens, unfortunately, the child gets hooked by this person," he said. "They can’t stop because there’s threats that, if they stop, that [the predator is] going to share that image or that video with people that [the youth] knows."

Although the teens in both North Carolina cases used computers provided by their schools for remote learning to contact their abductors, Kaplan said he doesn't believe the rise in cases is linked to daily access to laptops for online classes.

Rather, both he and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children say it's a consequence of more time spent at home and online, whether on a computer or cellphone.