5. Internet Best Friends: Protect Yourself Online

Sensitive Information is shared in this week's Podcast Episode.

Recently, I heard a new trend that kind of blew me away. 

If you listen to the intro of this Podcast, you know that it is my heart to help teen girls overcome real life issues in a way that stays true to who God created you to be. That’s exactly what we’re going to be doing this week…tackling a real-life issue that honestly isn’t talked about a lot. 

• Teens are spending an average of 8 hours a day on social media alone.
• 46% of teens report being online constantly.
• An average of 5+ billion snaps are created every day.
• Females between the ages of 10-19 make up TikTok’s largest demographic.
• 54% of teens said they’d be a lot more worried about social media if their parents knew exactly what was going on.

And this kind of leads us to to what we’re going to be talking about today. Many of the profiles we see on IG, TikTok, and Snapchat are fake. 

You all may or may not know this latest trend we’re seeing on social media by teens, but teens today are going online to find their next IBF…or internet best friend and then when they find them, they meet up with their new IBF in person and record a dramatic video of the process. 

As teens, I get it, you just went through the pandemic. It’s not always easy to get back into life since you had been isolated for so long. You want to meet new friends…and that’s okay. 

There’s a quote that my pastor says, it is “If you want to find someone bad, you are going to find someone bad.”

 Finding your next IBF is great when everything goes as planned, but this is also a breeding ground for online predators to take advantage of these teen girls. So, what I want to talk about today is how to protect yourself online so that you aren’t taken advantage of by these predators. 

 Now, know that I’m not trying to scare you with this or incite fear, but I want to help you with making wise choices so that you aren’t taken advantage of and hurt in the process. 

 When I searched the tearm #IBF on Instagram, I found that their were close to 900,000 posts about them. With the hashtag, IBFmeeting, it was over 130,000, IBFfinder had over 221,000 and you get the point. 

When I looked at someone of the posts...which I share in this week's episode...ladies, there is a problem here…these posts, one are created by young teen girls who are desperate. They are sharing personal information about themselves…and that is exactly what online predators are looking for. 

Another research study was recently done that shows that the percentage of people trying to entice minors online…anyone under the age of 18…with inappropriate materials has gone up 97% since the shut down in 2020. This includes predators manipulating teens to share their own explicit content online.

To learn more about how to protect yourself online from these predators, check out this week's episode.

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