Owensboro Public Schools is hosting Kentucky State Trooper Corey King to talk to parents on how to safely monitor teens while on the internet and how to watch for predatory actions against teens. The talk will serve for King to showcase what trends tKSP is seeing among teenagers such as different text language, communication with others and how to be responsible on the internet.
The event is from 6-7 p.m. tonight at Owensboro High School’s auditorium and is open to the public.
The different topics are prevalent among 8th grade and high school students.
One trend that King hopes to touch on is the ability to communicate with people throughout the world now that predators are able to disguise themselves online.
“Now, the predator’s playground has moved online and has been for some time now. But now, not only can they not essentially be seen, they can hide under a false alias, and they can become somebody totally different,” King said.
According to King, federal partners estimate roughly 500,000 predators are online at any given moment.
Along with discussing safety while on the internet, King believes there are 18 apps that parents should monitor their children use. These include the mainstream apps like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Tik Tok along with other apps that have more unconventional routes like WhatsApp and even Fortnite.
“Your male predators will try to perpetrate young boys [and] we see a large amount of online gaming like Fortnite,” King said.
Other topics include “sexting,” or sharing explicit photos among each other, and the ramifications of both amongst minors.
“We teach our students what’s safe, what’s not, and so it’s always important to instill that in our students but this is going to be an event for parents to keep that practice at home,” said Jared Revlett, Public Information Officer at OPS.
