How to stop online predators targeting your child – with Brett Lee

Tracey Challenor:

I’m Tracey Challenor. Welcome to the Life Education Parent Podcast. When you think of cyber safety, do you feel a bit overwhelmed? Keeping up with technology can feel like a full-time job and keeping our children safe online has made the job of raising kids in the 21st century even more complex.

Tracey Challenor:

Well, today, we’ve sought out one of Australia’s leading cyber safety experts to get some advice. Brett Lee is a former detective, father of four and founder of Internet Safe Education. He’s given hundreds of talks on how to navigate the online world and keep our kids cyber safe. And he joins me now. Hi Brett, thanks for your time.

Brett Lee:

Thank you, Tracey.

Tracey Challenor:

Well, fair to say that kids are spending more time online than ever before, with some schools still in lockdown in some places, and more time at home. It’s never been more important, has it, to make sure our kids have the right tools to stay safe online?

Brett Lee:

Absolutely. You’re spot on with people spending more time behind a screen, particularly children. And I mean, a number of things like statistics would confirm that the longer we’re in an environment, the more chance there is that something may happen that may encourage us to make a bad choice, or that someone may make a bad choice towards us. But also, with technology, I suppose, with kids, is that it increases the chances of addiction to particular activities, online, particularly games, maybe addiction to something like affirmation in social media, a reliance on the technology. And also, it increases the possibility that children may be indoctrinated with poisonous cultures, or ideas, or start to chip away at their idea of what reality is.

Tracey Challenor:

Yeah. Well, we’ll get into some of those things a little bit more. Now, as a detective for over 20 years, you spent thousands of hours online posing as a teenager so that you could catch child sex offenders. Thankfully, the majority of kids do have a positive experience online, but we do hear those horror stories about predators, and you’ve written about some of the cases that you confronted. How likely is it that a child will encounter one of these situations when navigating the online world?

Brett Lee:

Look, unfortunately it is very likely. I don’t think the internet has created, in essence, more child sex offenders, who, people who predominantly are looking for children, but I do think the internet’s created a medium, whereby they now have, I suppose, a new ground whereby they can contact children, interact with them, groom them in a way that they never would have been able to. And of course, they’re going to go to places where they know they can get access to children, such as online games, social media, maybe even those video sharing programs, such as YouTube or TikTok. Now, this doesn’t really make the internet a bad place, but it does make it what it is.

Brett Lee:

So, there is a very good chance that young people will come across someone who’s prepared to harm them in that way, but more often than not children make the choices. But nearly by default, even with not much put in place in the home, to avoid that. Because certain things need to exist for a child to be susceptible whereby, they become a victim of these people online.

Tracey Challenor:

You worked on some very high-profile crimes with the FBI and the Australian police force. What was one of the most alarming cases you came across when you were a detective?

Brett Lee:

Look, as you mentioned, I did write a book on some of my key undercover investigations, and even then there’s investigations that I couldn’t put in the book because I felt there was no real value to the public. It wasn’t in the public interest because they were so disturbing. Look, in general terms, I would think that anything that our mind could comprehend that one human being could do to a child, if you multiply that by 10, that’s some of the things that certain members of our community, only a small group, are prepared to do to children. But I would say some of the most confronting cases for me as a parent is where parents actually offend against their own children.

Brett Lee:

Now, quite often, the internet’s not used for that because parents obviously have access to their own children. And the intrafamilial cases were the most disturbing. But in going a bit further than what the internet did, and I was involved in some of these cases, where parents would offer up their own children to online child sex offenders. So, for me, that was probably the most… And they do that for their own gain, whether they would get other children in return, pictures, videos, or whether it was for money. And for me, they were the most alarming cases. The intrafamilial cases.

Tracey Challenor:

Very disturbing. Would you say though that most of the cases would be innocent parents and children who are approached or groomed by someone that they don’t know? Is that something that you-

Brett Lee:

Certainly. Yeah. Look, certainly when it comes to the internet, I think that’s the case, and it’s only because of the nature of the internet. I mean, we can educate our children to the aspects of how to protect yourself in their physical world. But on the internet, they don’t get a chance to see the threat. And children being very accepting, not having as many life skills as us, that is their Achilles heel when they’re on the internet. And like I said, before technology, our children probably never would have been in an environment where these people would have had a chance to get access to them because it was public, they didn’t know the child, it would have been risky, someone could have seen. But now with the internet, they can actually come into our homes, pretending to be whoever they want, and appear on our children’s screens in gaming sites, in social media sites, in websites that have an interest. So, look, the internet certainly has propelled the capability of these individuals.

Tracey Challenor:

And over the years you saw a pattern that aggressors would follow in order to groom their child targets. They’d often set up false profiles in order to befriend a child, observe them and start gathering info. How does the situation move from that, to child exploitation and abuse?

Brett Lee:

Well, it’s very interesting. I probably arrested 90 adult men from Australia. And I was only limited by time.

Tracey Challenor:

Wow. That must have been satisfying, hugely satisfying.

Brett Lee:

Look, yes, it was. The internet is a very large environment. And I know that senior police all around the world know that we can’t arrest our way out of the problem, but it is good to identify some of those people and remove them from the internet. But even though they operated in slightly different ways, they all had their own modus operandi, their own MO, how they operated. Most of them came back to a five-step process because a child just can’t be offended against or groomed on the internet, unless certain things exist. The first thing, they need to identify a potential victim. So, it may be to do with their age, what they look like, where they are, their agenda. So, they identify the type of person they’re looking for, and they do that through pictures and videos. And that’s what I really say to parents, “Really monitor the personal information your child shares,” because that can become a picture of their child in another person’s mind.

Brett Lee:

So, they identify a potential victim. Then they need to gather information for a number of reasons. One of them is to, like I said, make that child real, to know who they’re dealing with. But what it also does, it moves into the third stage that they go through whereby it enables them to identify a need or a vulnerability. Now, they latch onto that need or vulnerability, and fill it. And what that does then, it desensitises the victim and develops trust. So, then they can get what they want from that child. Sometimes they will then turn that against the child through threats and intimidation to get what they want, but generally they develop trust. Then the fifth stage is the offending where they exploit that trust in a number of different ways. And it could be that’s where the threats could come in, promises to satisfy their, I suppose, their unlawful intentions. So, generally they go through and they have to go through that five-step process.

Tracey Challenor:

And their ultimate goal is to coax a child, to do something that they don’t really want to do, like provide a photo or a video?

Brett Lee:

Yeah. Look, the nature of the internet is… One of the needs that generally most children have is they want friends. They want to feel good about themselves, they want to be famous, they want to be noticed. And that’s what kids tell me. And that is their need. So, getting the information can be one of the simplest parts of their process. Getting further information that may be not consistent with what we expect as a community, that could be a little bit more difficult. That’s why they develop the trust, such as, “Send me a sexually explicit image of yourself,” or “Meet me somewhere.” So, the actual just the sharing of the information, by default, unless we educate children and put some things in place, they will feel that that’s okay to do.

Tracey Challenor:

So important to educate, isn’t it? Well, the federal e-safety commissioner says that, “As soon as we hand a child an internet-enabled device, we need to be teaching kids the do’s and don’ts of internet safety.” In other words, be careful what you post, don’t talk to strangers online, never share passwords and be aware of what you download. We don’t want to frighten children because the internet can be a fantastic resource. But if you could give parents three key tips to help kids stay safe online, what would they be?

Brett Lee:

That’s a great question. There are many, but there’s probably three that I would focus on. And I would even go further than the e-safety commission and say we start the education before we hand the child a device, so they’re prepared. But I’d say the first one is teaching children the value of their identity on the internet. The second one is to instil in our children that the internet connects them to real people, and if those people aren’t part of our physical world, they remain strangers. And the third one is creating a culture of communication with our children, as it relates to technology.

Brett Lee:

Now, not one of those messages really relates to technology, they’re life skills. And they’re probably very similar to the skills we teach our kids to manage the physical world. And it’s important for parents to have strategies, and to know these strategies are powerful, even though they’re simple; that they don’t need to be an internet expert; and they don’t need to look over their kid’s shoulders 24 hours a day. Just because the internet does have those dangers, doesn’t make it a bad place. And when focusing on these three bits of advice, they’re going to reduce risk when it comes to their children for the rest of their children’s life, when it comes to technology.

Tracey Challenor:

That’s great advice. And I know one of the other things you’ve spoken about is encouraging other parents and guardians to lock down their children’s profiles, because your child might have their Insta page on a privacy setting. But if one of their friends doesn’t, and if your child’s in pictures that are posted, they could still be exposed to the wrong sort of attention.

Brett Lee:

Yeah, look exactly. One of the prices we pay when we use technology is that we’re in a very public place. That we’re connected to people we do, know who add value to our life. But also, people that we don’t know, and we’ll never be able to control the choices that other people make. So as soon as we make a choice, what happens in relation to that choice is really not our decision. So, look, I think it’s just being aware of that and knowing that there’s things I do, and I don’t need to share. Am I prepared for a particular type of person, whether it’s a parent, someone else’s parents, every student at my school or another school to see it? And if the answer’s no, really the only way to guarantee I can protect and control that is by not uploading it.

Brett Lee:

And one of the things I say to kids is there’s not one key you have to type on the internet, or else your life won’t turn out as well. And then I say to them, “If you do resist making that choice, that’s a good choice.” So, it does come down to, I suppose, the education we give them and the environment that we create, whereby they have a reason to make the right choice themselves. So just to think it through before they make that choice.

Tracey Challenor:

That’s so important, isn’t it? Teaching kids to pause and think about the repercussions, and often not posting is the best decision.

Brett Lee:

I always say to kids that, “I never sent someone to prison because of what they didn’t do on the internet.”

Tracey Challenor:

That’s right. Brett, it does seem like a cyber minefield out there. Every day we do hear about a new app, or a game, or a website, that’s potentially harmful. We just can’t be current with all technology. There’s too much to do as a parent. How can we take charge? What are the main decisions that parents do need to make around technology?

Brett Lee:

Look, I believe that for a parent to really manage technology and to guide their child into making those good decisions, I really believe it doesn’t take a lot of time, but we do have to devote a bit of time. Technology hasn’t replaced anything. It’s just added upon the, I suppose the responsibilities we always have. I think that a parent really needs to know what devices can connect to the internet, and what programs, apps, and websites their kids are using. Now, we can never stay up to date with everything, but if our child came to us and said, “Oh, everyone else at school is using TikTok. Can I use it?” Now, a parent within five minutes could do a Google search, go to a site such as Common Sense Media, and read everything a parent needs to know about TikTok. Not to say if it’s good or bad, but to let them know if it’s suitable for their child.

Brett Lee:

And then they can have a conversation with their child and say, “Look, I’ve seen where some young people have had problems in here. I’d prefer our family not to be part of this,” and guide them to some other program. So, it’s not really about knowing a lot about technology. It’s about, as we need to know it, we find the answers. Now, there’s going to be a lot of pressure placed upon parents, and that’s why I never bash parents up. They’re really the first generation of parents in the history of mankind that has to manage children with virtually 24/7 access to technology.

Tracey Challenor:

That’s true. Yeah.

Brett Lee:

So, it’s not about feeling they have to be all over it, but it’s about understanding what apps and programs that kids are using. Because there are some, purely because of their functionality, that do cause great concern.

Tracey Challenor:

I’m glad you mentioned TikTok, because I was going to ask you about that. It’s been in the news a lot lately. And apart from data being collected from underage users, there’s also concern about kids uploading videos during school hours to TikTok, while they’re still in school uniform, which could potentially make it very easy for a predator to find out where a child goes to school and who their friends are. Do you worry about apps like TikTok?

Brett Lee:

TikTok has always been a massive concern. It used to be called Musical.ly, I believe they got some very bad publicity, so they rebranded. Musical.ly was linked to, in Australia, a number of child sex offence cases, whereby adults groomed children within that program. Look, it was purchased by another company, so it is a different app, but it was basically the same as Musical.ly. During its development and over the time it’s had functions, whereby it had locality identification, so the area that someone was in. It had privacy settings that were incredibly weak. And videos in particular are like a moth to a flame for child sex offenders. It creates that image of that child in a much more effective way in their mind and it causes that attraction. Very easy to communicate in them. Those little videos give others a reason, particularly child sex offenders, to compliment the child and ask for more videos.

Brett Lee:

So, it’s always been a big concern for me, that program. And I think the information concerns now just heightens, I believe its inappropriateness for young people. And I believe, I won’t go into the details, but TikTok was fined a large amount in the United States for not dealing with young people’s information the right way within the last 12 months. So yes, it is a concern. It is a fad. It will die out like all the other programs. We may see programs such as Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook hang around for a while because they actually serve a purpose. If used properly, you can interact with friends and family. Where TikTok is just a little bit of entertainment that doesn’t actually generate anything of value in a person’s life.

Tracey Challenor:

No, and it can be viewed and commented on by anyone as you said. What is the recommended age for a TikTok user?

Brett Lee:

The vast majority of these programs is 13 years of age.

Tracey Challenor:

Which is very young.

Brett Lee:

That doesn’t mean it’s suitable for my child. And no one knows your kids better than you. The reason it’s 13 is because it’s law. It is against the law for these companies and corporations to collect and store data of people under the age of 13. So that’s why the age is 13. I can remember back in the day, the prehistoric days of technology, where Facebook, when they came along, they were 13 years of age. Myspace, if some of the older computer users listening remember that was 15. But when Facebook came along and made it 13, Myspace dropped their age requirement to 13 because they were missing out on two years of customers. And I mean, parents might say, “Well, why do these companies such as TikTok want to get information of people under the age of 13?” And I say, ‘It’s easy, they’re profiling them because they’re future customers’, but it is illegal for them to collect that data of people under the age of 13.

Tracey Challenor:

So, we’ve just got to try and wrestle back control, haven’t we? And it’s very hard to say no to a child who really wants to use TikTok because their friends are using it. But you’d obviously recommend staying away from it, if you can?

Brett Lee:

Absolutely. If you have that relationship within your family, if you have those conversations, if you’re a parent who is putting rules and boundaries in place, it’s going to be a lot simpler. And what I say to parents is, “Look, just because your child uses TikTok doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to have an issue with bullying, grooming, affirmation addiction. It doesn’t mean that, but it increases the chances. So, if you can keep them away from those sorts of programs, in whatever affective way you can, where your family’s still happy and your child’s happy, that’s how we manage technology. And you’ll be repaid gold for the rest of your life. If you have that mentality where these rules are put in place, and no matter what or rely on those rules.”

Tracey Challenor:

Yeah. Well, let’s touch on online gaming, Brett, because many kids love their online games, especially boys. And it can be such a struggle for parents to get kids off the games and come to the dinner table, and do their homework, and so on. But there’s a more sinister side to these games potentially. What are some of the main risks with online gaming? How can parents manage those risks? Because we know that they’re not going to go away. Kids just love to play the games with their friends, and they’re here to stay.

Brett Lee:

Yeah. Look, I think we all know that games like all those apps and programs, they’re companies and their main goal is to make money, and they do it however they can. I don’t think they’re intrinsically evil in their business model, but that’s their job. And they are very, very good at what they do. Quite often now the games have very fast-moving graphics, it has music that goes with it, lots of little wins embedded, which stimulates a particular part of the brain, releases that chemical that makes us feel good. And as that chemical dissipates, we get to another place in the game where we have a win, and the brain starts to look for more, and more, and more. And it’s called the sales funnel. So, these company’s games know the longer they can keep somebody in their game, the more chance that person’s going to spend money at some stage. That’s how they operate.

Brett Lee:

So, some of the risks of course, would be addiction. And the World Health Organisation not long ago introduced a new disease into the world called gaming disorder. And like any disease, it can destroy lives, families, and communities. So, that’s something we’ve got to look at as a parent. Games need time limits. And the more our kids are resisting time limits, the more they’re required. And we need to do it as early as possible. Once a child gets to 15-16, if they have been gaming extensively, it’s going to be very hard to undo some of those habits. And it can start to have a very negative impact on that young person’s life. So as a parent, we’d look at: they don’t want to go to school more often than not, they drop out of sport, they don’t want to hang out with friends, they get aggressive when they get off the internet, they’re not eating properly, maybe having nightmares. Some of these physical world indicators could be brought back to gaming.

Brett Lee:

So, games need time limits. But also, the vast majority of online games have communication functionality. So we’re looking at young people interacting with the wrong type of people on the internet, maybe child sex offenders, maybe people who want to lead our child in a different way, and make them believe things just to suit themselves. And language, and topics that other people may discuss. So that’s what we need to look for in games as well.

Tracey Challenor:

Yeah. I’m sure a lot of parents were nodding as you were talking about some of the side effects of gaming, and just that battleground that happens in so many families – very tricky.

Brett Lee:

Look, definitely. And one thing I’d just like to add there, is most kids will never become addicted to games. And it’s not about kicking our kids out of games. It’s about knowing what game they’re playing, and if that’s suitable for them at that stage of their life, putting the time limits in place, and talking to them about it if we feel there is an issue.

Tracey Challenor:

Yeah. Good advice. Kids are often glued to their phones these days as well. I mean, children in primary school have smartphones now. When do you think is the right age to give a child a smartphone? And how can we make sure they don’t stray into dangerous territory just by having a phone?

Brett Lee:

That’s a very tough question because every family’s different, every child’s different, their personalities are different, than the needs within that family can be quite different. My personal opinion is, from my experience, primary school children, I believe, unless there’s a reason, don’t need mobile phones. There may be a reason in relation to safety, where parents need to, for some reason, contact that child. If they pick them up from school, they take them home, they take them to sport, they pick them up from there. I don’t believe a child in primary school needs a phone.

Brett Lee:

Now, nothing I say is meant to challenge parents and go that if your child is in primary school and does have a phone, that you’re a bad parent, that’s not what I’m saying.

Tracey Challenor:

There can be exceptions.

Brett Lee:

I’m saying what best practice would be. And I think we really need to look at, what are the benefits, and what are potential things I need to consider or potential risk in getting my child a phone? Now, there’s many great products out there that are quite limited when it comes to what children can do on the phone. Some don’t have a data plan. They can have a series of five numbers that can be called. They have filtering software actually built into the phone. So, they do have a data plan, they won’t have inappropriate images or videos pop up. But with a parent, it’s always going to be their determination, and that’s taken into account with their family and their child.

Brett Lee:

A lot of parents feel the pressure. And you did mention this, and I’m going to mention it again, where our children may say, “Everyone else at school has got a phone.” Now, this could be tech companies preying on a parent’s vulnerability, and that’s fear. Fear that their child is going to be left out.

Tracey Challenor:

We call it FOMO, don’t we?

Brett Lee:

Yes. Their child is going to be the only one that doesn’t play this game or have a phone. And parents make their decisions based on that fear, rather than what they think is best. And that’s going to be very, very difficult. What I say to parents is this. “I don’t think your child will get to 20 and 30 and say, ‘Mum, my life would have been so much better had I had a phone when I was in year three.'” We put this into perspective. I’ve not known, there may be cases out there of a child who has been seriously bullied or life has been seriously affected in a negative way because they didn’t have a particular app, game, website or device. It is a fear.

Brett Lee:

And I believe that fear is probably not based on fact, it’s just what we think. So, I just wanted to throw that out there so people could consider it. I think some parents feel that I need to have the background because they never had a parent raising them with technology, to really be firm with some of these things that they want to do. Like a parent says, “Oh, I want to get the internet out of the bedroom, but all their friends do it and is it really that big a deal? And I don’t want to fight about it?” So, they want it out, but they feel they probably don’t have the courage or the passion to actually make that decision.

Tracey Challenor:

And like you were saying, there’s so much advertising and marketing around technology, and convincing us that we’ve got to have this and got to have that. So, you do need to just stand firm though, as a parent, and I guess make your own choices really.

Brett Lee:

Absolutely. And it’s not easy. I actually say to parents that when my kids were growing up, if every decision I made with them and technology was popular with them, I wasn’t doing my job properly.

Tracey Challenor:

That’s right.

Brett Lee:

So, that is one of our roles. And I do know it’s hard. It is a hard thing to navigate technology.

Tracey Challenor:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Brett let’s just touch on social media. The downside of social media is well documented. It can promote feelings of jealousy, anxiety, low self-esteem. Obviously, cyber bullying is a big concern. You strongly recommend that kids under the age of 13 don’t have social media accounts. How can we control that though? Because if their friends are using it, they obviously want to do it. And so much of the chat seems to happen away from parental supervision too.

Brett Lee:

Yeah. Look, exactly. And what I say to parents is this, “When your child puts their face behind that screen, they’re connected to four and a half billion real people. Every single adult person and every single adult issue that this world has to offer.” And this is not about trusting our kids. This is about not trusting the nature of the world that we live in. So, this is about thinking, “What is my child going to be exposed to? And what are the issues it could create if they use social media?” Particularly under 13. I absolutely would recommend every parent distracts themselves from the idea that their children should be social networking under 13. Well, I really believe no one should be social networking. Look, in saying that, it can be used very effectively. And there’s a lot of good uses. And most people use the internet in an effective way. But this is about weighing it up as to why I’m allowing this, what’s it actually going to do? What are some of the potential risks in relation to this?

Brett Lee:

With kids under 13 and social media, when I go into schools, they may say, “Look, we’ve had a number of issues this year in relation to bullying.” And so, “Oh, how’s it happened?” “It’s all happened on social media. Every bit of it happened on social media, and it happened outside the school environment on personal devices.”

Tracey Challenor:

Wow.

Brett Lee:

So, look, I think our community needs to get to the stage where we’re normalising the fact that, hey, we have made a bit of a mistake. Kids under 13 should not be social networking. And once that becomes normal, it’s going to be easier for parents to make those decisions. Look, my kids they would have come home and said, “Oh look, everyone’s using it.” Now, I know that’s not the case. So, parents are going to get that. And they’re going to feel like their child’s the only one, again. And they usually get that from their son or daughter that everyone else is using it. I can guarantee you; everybody doesn’t use everything. So, it is putting it into perspective. But I strongly suggest that parents resist the temptation to allow their kids to social network.

Brett Lee:

How can we control it? We put rules in place. We talk to our kids and give them reasons why. We talk to them regularly about what they’re doing online, and we use filtering monitoring software. And that should be enough to really get our head around young kids and social media.

Tracey Challenor:

Wow. That’s yeah, really good advice there. I think we’d all like our kids to spend less time on screens and online, it has become the great battleground of parenting for many of us. How do you wrestle back control with your kids? How did you manage to get them off the screens?

Brett Lee:

Look, we use filtering and monitoring software, management controls, little programs that’s either on the device or on the router, that helps them manage time. It is one of the big battles. Technology is very easy. All of those apps, programs, websites, are designed to keep someone there, and they’re very good at what they do. Every picture, every word, every colour, every design, is designed to keep people online.

Brett Lee:

One of their main things that I believe they’re trying to achieve, is that they manipulate our mind to make the choice that makes them money. That’s what they are working towards. And for children who probably don’t have the capacity to make the same informed choices we do because of their age, nothing to do with their intelligence, it makes it even harder for them. So, look, we put rules in place at home in relation to time. They’re actually verbalised rules. And we say to our kids, “These aren’t technology rules, they’re real rules that apply to technology. There is a real as the rules you have in your physical world.”

Brett Lee:

So, we put the rules in place as it relates to time, but also, we can use, like I mentioned, management software. So, you might have something set that, okay, at seven o’clock at night, every internet-enabled device goes off that my children use. These programs, they’re pretty high-end now, if you get a good one. And you might need to pay a little bit. I wouldn’t be paying too much but pay a little bit. They work on devices when our children leave the home as well. So maybe they get to school, and the internet goes off on their phone at nine o’clock, and it comes back on at 3:00. So that’s a good way to manage time, is those two ways. Never forget the conversations and the rules, and also management software.

Tracey Challenor:

Well, Brett, it’s a topic that can sometimes feel overwhelming, but when it comes to technology, knowledge is power. And even knowing the basics can help prevent some of the pitfalls that kids might encounter. So, thank you so much for joining me today and sharing some great advice on online safety. I don’t think you’ll be out of a job anytime soon.

Brett Lee:

No, it’s a growing industry.

Tracey Challenor:

That’s for sure.

Brett Lee:

Thank you, Tracey.

Tracey Challenor:

Thanks, Brett. My guest today was Brett Lee, founder of Internet Safe Education, and author of the book Screen Resolution, which you can find on the Internet Safe Education website. You’ve been listening to the Life Education Podcast for Parents, and you can find our other free podcasts on the Life Education website or your favourite podcast platforms. I’m Tracey Challenor, Great to have your company. Thanks for joining us.