Keeping Kids Safe: Predators in the Inbox

Talk to a teenager or preteen and you can guarentee that there will be an iPhone or other cell buzzing with texts throughout the conversation. The average age to get a cell phone, after all, is 11.6 years old.

But with the growth of communication comes a growing number of predators who are seeking kids out through their cell phones. As parents, the tables have turned from picking up a phone in another room and listening in to making the decision to read the thousands of texts your child sends. So, do you read them? Is this an "invasion of privacy" or a necessary task to keep kids safe.

If predators aren't enough of a concern, there's also the new trends of "sexting," sending sexually explicit messages to someone, and cyberbullying on the horizion. Both of those topics will be addressed in later posts from the Keeping Kids Safe series.

When it comes to adult predators seeking out teens and kids, the evidence is closer than it seems. Remember the missing girl from North Carolina who was allegedly abducted by the registered sex offender? They had been texting each other nightly.  

A report out of Denver shows that it's not just people your child has met in person who could be a threat over the phone. 

Random texts from unknown numbers could be predators fishing for new targets, ABC 7 News reports. 

After time, predators lose interest in text messages and ask to meet the children.

What you can do:

My Mobile Watchdog is one of the top-rated apps used for tracking kids' texts. Through the app, you can monitor text and photo message, enable a GPS to locate your child, block websites and disable the camera. 

Safety Web also offers 10 tips to keep kids safe including warning your child to not post his or her phone number on social media sites. 

The site also recommends waiting before answering messages and calls from unknown callers, stating that if the call is important, the caller will leave a voicemail. 

Patch asks: Do you read your child's text messages?