LEAD. June 2021 | Page 8

What Teen Predators Look Like

AND HOW TO PROTECT YOUR KIDS FROM THEM

JONATHAN MCKEE

Here are the three categories of predators I see young people encountering today , starting with the most common .
1 . The Teen “ Toolbag ”
I don ’ t know if I ’ d call these kids “ predators ,” but it ’ s worth noting that every school I visit — and I mean literally every single one — has students who have exploited other students through their phones .
The most common scenario is when a guy asks a girl for a “ nude .” She eventually sends it , usually on Snapchat or some platform where pics disappear shortly after they ’ re posted . But the guy screenshots the pic , and a week later , a month later , a year later — doesn ’ t really matter when — he forwards the pic to a bunch of his friends , if not the whole school .
This happens all the time . I mean it happens in every school . In fact , in an analysis of thirty-nine different studies with a total of more than 100K participants , about 15 % of kids under eighteen years of age sent “ sexually explicit images , videos , and / or
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