(COLORADO SPRINGS) — Teen boys are at high risk for online exploitation and sextortion, says Preston Goff, VP of Global Communications at The Exodus Road, an anti-human trafficking organization in Colorado Springs.
According to Exodus Road, there are a growing number of people trying to make connections with teenage boys through social media—and exploit their vulnerabilities for money.
“One of the fastest growing crimes against kids in the US is financial extortion,” he said. “And the target demographic that’s being hit the most by that is teen boys between the age of 14 and 17.”
Between 2021 and 2023 there was a 320% increase in online sexual exploitation of children (OSEC), partly due to the pandemic’s effect on how many people and children are online. Goff said this “created more moments for connection between nefarious actors and the individuals they’re seeking to exploit.”
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“Honestly, every child with a device is at risk,” Goff continued. He said kids have more access to tech than ever before, and their usage is largely unsupervised. “Studies that we’ve seen show that 85% of parents report that they don’t confidently know what their kids are doing online.”
40% of 9 to 14-year-olds have reported chatting online with strangers, according to Goff. Gen Z, for the most part, is using social media very differently from previous generations—they’re using it to find and form friendships rather than augmenting real-life relationships.
“And of the 40% that say that they chatted online with strangers, half of them said that they’ve given their phone number to a stranger,” Goff said. “And then from that group, up to 10% of them have said that they’ve met with a stranger. And that’s ages 9 to 14.”
Many parents with children aged 9 to 14 grew up with warnings not to talk to strangers. But the world has changed and strangers can present themselves online in a way that seems friendly and caring. Teen boys in particular are often enticed by someone pretending to be a beautiful young woman who takes an interest in them personally, and sexually.
“I think the reality is, like, kids that meet up with strangers often do so because there are vulnerabilities in their life or in their family structure that might motivate them to seek that connection from someone who has preyed on their [need] to be seen and known and valued,” said Goff.
Once trust is established, a familiar pattern of exploitation is seen: the teen is enticed into sending a nude photo or other sexual content. The bad actor then exposes their true intentions and tells the boy that if he doesn’t send money, the photo will be sent to his friends and family and he’ll be humiliated.
In some cases, teens have been driven to suicide by these situations, Goff said.
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The Exodus Road has created a workshop and curriculum specifically to help parents and teens avoid these situations. Goff mentioned three “red flag questions” that teens should look out for. If someone online, a profile of someone you don’t know in real life, asks one of these three questions, it is a red flag:
“Do you have a good relationship with your parents?”
“Are your screens private/unobserved?
“Do your parents have access to your device or your passwords?”
“Those are questions that help an individual determine how isolated a teen may be from the support systems they would need to be able to recognize and respond,” Goff said.
And, he added, parents should be on the lookout for signs of stress in their teens.
“It’s hard because teens are teens and their behaviors change because they’re teenagers,” Goff said. “But we tell parents, if you see things like a consistent loss of appetite or if you see things like your teen is receiving calls or texts at strange hours, you know, you can do things like watch the phone bills for that kind of stuff. Sometimes it can manifest as just generalized sickness, like complaining of regular headaches and stomach aches. Like, all of these things are reasons why parents should lean in and ask questions.”
He also said to watch out for obsessive behavior in teens with their phones. They might be excessively worried that the person exploiting them is going to send them a message and they might not have time to respond before something bad happens. And in that case, they will guard their phone obsessively.
Or, Goff said, “If the platforms they’re on become a place where they feel trauma or they’ve been victimized, they’ll want to disengage entirely from it. So any of those kinds of sudden shifts can be, you know, indications that there’s probably a conversation that needs to be had.”
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Goff said that parents often fall into one of two extremes when they learn about the dangers of online exploitation. They will either dismiss it as something their child wouldn’t do, or they will overreact in the other direction, and take away their child’s device entirely. The first extreme fails to protect vulnerable teens, and the second can cut them off socially and create resentment.
The Exodus Road wants to equip and encourage parents to become a “trusted guide” to the digital world—allowing their children to develop socially online while also protecting them from bad actors.
Most importantly, they want to encourage parents to trust their instincts. “You know your kid best,” Goff said. “Trust your gut. If something feels off, it probably is.”
