“Unfortunately, bad actors aren’t that far away.”
That’s from Prince George RCMP Detachment Commander Darin Rappel when speaking to the dangers of social media our youth often face when encountering online predators.
This comes as we approach the one-year mark of the passing of 12-year-old Carson Cleland, who took his own life in response to online sextortion.
During an interview with MyPGNow.com, Rappel stated everyone involved needs to do a lot more to protect local youth from these damaging and sometimes tragic occurrences.
“I don’t know that as parents, teachers and police, we are preparing the students well enough in some instances to the potential issues that they might come across with social media and out there on the internet.”
In addition, Rappel noted officers will be a lot more active with local schools to educate youth on the dangers of being online.
“Our intention is to do more this year (with the students) and a big part of that will be education letting kids know the person they are engaged with on the other end of that social media platform might not be a 12-year-old or a 15-year-old. It might be an adult that is looking to take advantage of you.”
“We want to be part of that as the police to let the youth know but we will work closely with the school district in that messaging. We want to have more of an opportunity to engage with our youth in the schools. We recently added a member into community policing and that role will be in the schools to help deliver some of these messages.”
When asked, Rappel is in support of minimum age requirements in order to have a social media account, similar to what we see when it comes to operating a motor vehicle and the legal drinking age.
“I don’t know that youth overall are as prepared to engage in social media as perhaps sometimes we as parents think. You know, you have to be a certain age to drive and you have to be a certain age to go into the bar but yet we will allow children, sometimes at a very young age to be in charge of their social media.”
“I think there is room to do more. I would argue most of that should be concerning limits as to what these kids can get involved in on social media. Perhaps, some more restrictions and age limits – this is an opportunity for them to engage with the entire world unsupervised and sometimes that has the recipe for tragedy,” added Rappel.
Earlier this year, incumbent premier and BC NDP leader David Eby launched new services to help protect people’s intimate images.
Under the Intimate Images Protection Act, the Civil Resolution Tribunal can order someone to pay fines of as much as $500 per day, if it is an individual or as much as $5,000 per day, if it is a website, for not following the order to stop sharing.
In Provincial Court, perpetrators can be ordered to pay significant damages of between $5,000 and $35,000, and the Supreme Court can award damages of more than $35,000.
Additionally, the province launched the Intimate Images Protection Service to ensure victims have dedicated services to support them.
This service provides:
- Emotional support, information and resources;
- help with applying to the Civil Resolution Tribunal;
- Assistance in communicating protection orders issued by the Civil Resolution Tribunal.
The Intimate Images Protection Service will work collaboratively with the tribunal to ensure trauma-informed information and support is available to victims throughout the province.
“Carson was a 12-year-old boy and nothing seemed to faze him, until one day it did,” said Ryan Cleland and Nicola Smith, Carson’s parents.
“He was contacted on social media where they threatened to share his images. He was scared and made a snap decision to end his life. We are two broken parents trying to make sure this doesn’t happen to another family. If this is happening to you, please ask for help. You aren’t alone.”
At the end of April, the province hit the pause button on its public harms legislation after social media giants such as Meta, Snap, TikTok and, X agreed to work collaboratively with the province on the development of Bill 12 as well as be part of BC’s Online Safety Action Table.
In May, all parties met for the first time talking about serious issues like online sexual exploitation and sharing private images without permission.
Rappel believes the additional measures will make a difference in communities like Prince George so a similar tragedy doesn’t occur again.
“These companies do have a good relationship with law enforcement at a macro scale so if you need by way of a warrant to look at the content of a social media account they work with law enforcement through the legal channels that exist in Canada and other countries and we can work with our partners in the US to tackle some of these issues.”
“I do think it will make a difference especially with some of the efforts around AI (artificial intelligence) about some of the features I do know that some of the companies are working on software that can recognize intimate images of children automatically without having a set of human eyes rolling over it,” said Rappel.
Part two of our chat with Superintendent Rappel will be published on Tuesday.
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