Tammy Weeks heard the last thing a mother could possibly want to hear: The body of her 13-year-old daughter has been found dead, discovered in North Carolina, across the state line from their family home in Virginia.
Like any other teenager in this generation, Nicole Lovell turned to social media to find solace. She had been bullied in her high school, and in her desire to feel accepted, she looked for it in the only place she knew where she could find it.
She found it in David Eisenhauer, an 18-year-old Virginia Tech student she had met on the social media app called Kik.
READ: The Importance of Teaching Kids Online Safety
The two quickly began to form a friendship, with the two secretly exchanging messages on the app.
“She had a huge boy crush kind of thing,” her mother Terry told reporters. “But in the same sense, it was kind of innocent, you know?”
“Because she was still a child, you know? And all she wanted was just the attention… She wanted to feel like she could fit in with the boys, and that the boys loved her and thought she was pretty. And, you know, just like any other little girl.”
It didn’t take long for Eisenhauer to lure the teen from her home. Nicole climbed out of her window one night to meet the older teen. Eisenhauer then brought the Nicole to his friend’s dorm where they killed her.
Not surprising
When news of Nicole’s death surfaced, youth culture journalist Nancy Jo Sales wasn’t surprised that social media played a role. She has been reporting on this for over a decade.
“It’s so much a part of their culture,” she said. “I mean I think it’s probably impossible if you have a teenage daughter right now that she doesn’t know what Kik is.”
Nancy Jo continued: “It’s known for a place where you sext. I mean it’s not set up that way…but it’s like, that’s how kids use it. And there’s even, it’s even become a verb, ‘want to Kik?’…And that means ‘do you want to exchange nudes?’”
Online Safety
On one hand you want to keep your children safe, and on the other you want to be able to trust them.
There there’s no point in banning kids from the Internet; its is already a part of our daily life. There is also no point in monitoring your child’s Internet activity 24/7.
Instead of constantly worrying about the real and imagined dangers that could happen, you need to prioritize educating your children on online safety and the proper way to use the internet.
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