Greggornation  

The Associated Press recently reported on a new and developing type of cyber-crime that involves children and teens, but can be prevented. Labeled as “sextortion,” this new phenomena enabled by the age of digital media is one that we must talk about with our kids from a very young age. Here’s how it works – a child or teen – let’s say a young girl – takes a sexually suggestive or compromising photo of herself and posts it somewhere online. She assumes that she’s posting the photo in a place where privacy settings will keep most people from ever seeing it. But somebody copies the photo and it gets distributed widely. The photo winds up in the hands of a person who contacts the girl to tell her that he has a copy of the photo, and unless she sends him more photos of herself in compromising poses, he will send the photo to her parents or the entire world. Parents, now is the time to say and do what you must to prevent your kids from ever hitting the shutter button in the first place.