12yo DD has been chatting older boys & adults online

[cwfen]

DD has a nice group.of friends she plays Minecraft with online. I know them all in real life.

However I've just discovered that in the last couple of months she's stopped playing with them and now has a group of online friends she doesn't know in real life, and which includes a 19 year old, 16 year olds and 15 year olds - all male. She has her own Minecraft server I think and it looks like that's where these people have come from.

She's been lying to me about their names, their age and where they live (pretending they're all one person she knows in real life who is 14),

Besides the 19 year old, I'm relieved to see most of the conversation is related to the game and general chit chat, nothing obviously dodgy. The conversation with the 19 year old is totally inappropriate, although I think it mostly went over her head.

Also, she's "acting up" trying to act older than her age to impress them, which is worrying.

My biggest issue is the lying, and that she plainly doesn't understand the risks.

I've taken her phone and laptop off her, and she's not getting them back for the foreseeable.

But what now? I don't want to just tell her off. This is too serious.

It's about her keeping safe, and she's obviously been stringing us along every bloody time we've had a conversation about this stuff and doesn't get it all.

I need her to really understand for herself why this isn't on. Is it realistic to think that might be possible? What now? WWYD?

Aagh I wrote a long response and it vanished.
Got to the police and report the 19yr old as that is sexual communication with a child. Your daughter may be pretending to be older. He may also be a 50yr old man for all she knows.
There was a young female adult I can't remember her name. She was groomed online over a few days. And she was murdered . Also let the school know incase her friends are also doing this kind of thing.

I'll have to read it again to see if anything is reportable.

He kinda skirts round things rather than saying anything outright. I have no idea what country he's in. Possibly America. The 15 year old is in Poland.

She says how old she is, she's not pretending to be older.

At the moment, I'm most concerned with how to get through to her that this really isn't ok.

I don't think her (mostly female) school friends are involved as she keeps her gaming separate from them - the real life friends she games with are (mostly) boys from her primary school who went to a different secondary.

I'll try to find out if they're also making friends with randoms online.

From a practical pov she will need her laptop for school work. Set it back up but in a family area, so you and dad (if around) swoosh past at random times casting your eyes over the pages open; be alert from quick tab-closing. Learn how to look up the browsing history if you don't know already. Check at regular intervals.

I've said she can only do her homework supervised, with us able to see the screen at all times, and no headphones.

She's been so duplicitous I don't trust her an inch at the moment. Or them.

It's discord she's been chatting to them on.

Would that be Kayleigh Haywood? A chilling case.

Look up Kayleigh's Love Story (a short film produced by Leicestershire Police) if you'd like to know more.

I’m pretty relaxed about my son’s gaming/Youtube use but I won’t allow Discord. Apple rates it 17+ and you’re meant to be 13 to have an account.

Have a look at the CEOP site. They also have resources and activities for different age groups.
https://www.ceopeducation.co.uk/parents/Concerned-about-your-child/

Without being nasty, this is on you and your other half.
Your child is 12

They shouldn't even be ON discord

"Punish" them all you want, but this is a parenting fail.

Yeah sorry OP. Agree massive parenting error here. You have allowed her access to something which in turn gives all the strangers in the world access to her.

Close down all her accounts and email. Set up new, and only on age appropriate platforms which are restricted and monitored.

cancel her server and her discord account, she shouldn’t have either at 12. Get the password for her email so you can check what she signs up too in the future and install parental controls with a white list of websites for now.

Speak to Safeguarding at school.
Report the 19 year old to police. They can decide whether or not to pursue it. He might be grooming other children.

Sounds like you need a huge reset on phone/internet access. Educate yourself/partner first - there are loads of resources online, NSPCC, Barnardos, itsnotokay, Ivison Trust - around internet safety but also exploitation. Look up parental controls, there are apps you can use like Qustodio which basically mirrors your child’s phone onto yours. You could set her up a gaming profile on your own email for oversight depending what she’s using. No live chat/turn off messaging in game. Keep the console in living room. Absolute no to discord, Snapchat, etc. It’s terrifying once you know what can happen to kids online. Good luck

Discord is not a safe place for children OP. There’s some terrible discussions and groups on there.

Your child is not at fault
She needs to understand the risk of online chatting / befriending
But she is a child who needs GUIDANCE

Why are you not checking her phone?
Have software that shows what she is looking at online? She’s 12!!!!

Yes, I agree, hence considering my response and not coming down on her like a ton of bricks.

I do have software that checks what she installs, and I usually do check her devices every so often but I haven't done for a while as life has been busy and I felt I trusted her. Mistakenly it now turns out.

She had discord for chatting to her gaming group of friends I know, and we had lots of chats about not befriending strangers. She seemed to understand. But she obviously only understood enough to know what to say to lie to me convincingly :(

She's not in trouble as such. But there need to be major changes and currently she doesn't have access to her devices at all while I work out next steps. And I can't see her getting them back again in the same way. The trust is gone now.

I'm not really interested in blame - I'm much more interested in what others would do / have done in similar situations.

I'm thinking DD needs a period of time off the devices completely (I wish all their homework wasn't online!) and to reconnect with RL friends and remember other interests. She does do a lot of clubs and activities (of her own choosing) but it's about what she does with her "downtime".

She had been spending too much time online tbh.

I wish there was a dislike button. Some day you may realise you are not perfect either!. Life has a way of humbling .

A 12 year old should not be on discord! It’s is full of very dodgy stuff

I’d also be turning off the internet in the evening or cutting her computers access to it behind a password.

Sorry OP at 12 it shouldn’t be ever ”soft often”. She should be handing them over at night every night and they stay with you.

games and online are attractive the same way we used to stay up late reading. Remove the temptation

Hi OP, yes Discord was a mistake but you explained the risks of talking to strangers online and she’s lied to you and done it anyway. It will take a long time for her to earn your trust again.

Advice? Firstly search through all her devices and accounts and photo libraries to make sure she hasn’t sent indecent images of herself or received a request for them. If she has, report to police.

Talk to her again about how she absolutely cannot trust who people say they are online if she doesn’t know them irl. The person she thinks is 19 could actually be a 45 year old targeting Minecraft users because they are mainly younger.

Explain if she lives an online social life, it is likely that she will be requested to send images of herself at some point. That she will have no control over what happens to such images after they are sent and they could be distributed without her consent or used to shame and blackmail her.

Thing is. It sounds like you’ve probably already explained this stuff but she’s chosen to ignore you. So delete any social media for when she gets her phone back.

Get her meeting rl friends more. I have sympathy here because my son is a gamer. He spent a warm sunny afternoon gaming with his school friends online (yes I’m confident who he is talking to I can hear them). I am determined he is going to spend more time actually outside this summer and seeing people but he really loves gaming.

So, it turns DD got up and hour early this morning, snuck downstairs and told her online friends she's been barred. Then acted sweet as pie over breakfast.

I've changed the password on her laptop now, so that won't happen again.

I've had a good look at their chats and it's the 19 year old she's talking to most. Their chats only go back 2 months but they're really frequent, she chats to him all the time, so she's going to experience this as a break up I think.

How to explain to her that no 19 year old should be messaging a 12 year old that much, in a way that gets through and without her feeling I just don't understand?

The messages are mostly about the game they play or sharing memes and stuff. It's the frequency of them and the fact he's 19 that's the main issue, and also that's there is some content that's inappropriate for her age.

I think he's in the US but not sure.

They are in a team of 4 who are playing a game together. She chats a bit with another of them, a 16 year old Polish boy.

There are also messages from her RL friends -who I thought she was playing with - asking why they don't play together anymore and if she's ignoring them. ☹️

Relieved these people aren't in the same country at least.