Answer: Wanting to fit in, seeking love and acceptance, feeling misunderstood, insecure or lonely.

If those seem like typical emotions during the turmoil of the teen years — you are right. Any teen can be vulnerable to a predator, and with the accessibility of the internet, anyone can be at risk.

According to experts from the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (endsexualexploitation.org), “The Internet has leveled factors like race and class, by allowing exploiters access to children who usually had the benefit of more protective barriers. …In a focus group earlier this year with youth ages 16-18 from stable families in the wealthy suburbs of Washington, DC, EVERY single one of them had been solicited for sex online by a stranger.”

Those statistics may be from the West Coast, but the reality is that similar things are happening here in our area as well.

“What we see here is everything is online; so, exploitation with a picture. Because all it takes is, ‘Send me this picture’ — that coercion,” said Tonia Hartzell, family advocate at The Children’s Advocacy Center of McKean County. “Then they send the picture and that person can say to that child, ‘if you don’t do A,B,C,D then I’m showing this picture to your parents, I’m showing it to your school, I’m showing it to everybody.’”

Hartzell said that, based on years of experience, that is probably the greatest risk for youth locally.

“Are family members trafficking their children for rent, risk, food? Yes, but risk online is what we see more frequently because of the access,” Hartzell said. “Maybe a teenager is upset with their parents, and they talk to this older person who says ‘I understand, parents can suck sometimes,’ and that connection is immediately there.”

Hartzell explains that abusers are manipulative and patient. They coerce the teen to send a photo, and then they use that photo to further manipulate the teen to do what they want by threatening to send that photo to their parents, school or friends if they don’t do what the abuser says.

Another method of coercion, according to Shared Hope International, is gift-giving. This method, too, has become easier with the internet.

Abusers will purchase a virtual gift card (Amazon, etc..) and send it to the teen’s inbox, which allows them to use it. They also will purchase upgrades to games to help kids get to the next level and earn trust via that assistance.

Predators and those interested in developing a relationship with a child or teen are willing to put in long-term effort.

“Maybe they talked online for a year. These people are very, very patient. They are not yanking someone out of a store, out of a dark alley,” Hartzell said.

Further information from endsexualexploitation.org shows that “Most sex traffickers prefer to develop relationships with their targets — sometimes virtually and sometimes in-person — in order to methodically groom and traffic them. As documented in a review of active federal sex trafficking cases in 2019, 23.3% involved a pre-existing relationship, whereas only 3.5% were organized crime-directed. In other words, sex trafficking is not the stuff of Liam Neeson thrillers.”

Furthermore, the very apps your teens want to use to keep in touch with their friends are a target area for potential abusers.

Based on survivor testimony and research, The National Center on Sexual Exploitation reports that sex traffickers and child predators appear to be using popular social media apps such as Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok to identify, groom, and exploit children in the online space. In many of the cases occurring on these platforms, minors are receiving unsolicited direct messages from strangers who will often pose as peers or as cohorts from nearby areas.

As with other aspects of the internet, up-to-date information on the platforms used by predators is hard to come by.

“We meet with teens and have them look over the list of most current apps to be concerned about,” Hartzell explained. “Most of the time, the teens feel those are outdated, they are already using new ones.”

The important thing — the key to keeping kids safe and averting potential abuse — is keeping communication lines open with your teen. Remember this is NOT a one-time conversation.

“If we don’t talk about it, (abusers) are sneaky and patient and get away with it. They groom communities, victims’ families,” Hartzell said. “Whether they go to church, are upstanding in the fire department or another field” they create a certain profile with the community, she explains.

“Then if the child does disclose, the community around them would say, well HE would never do that/SHE would never do that. It’s very frustrating, but they are good at what they do.”