The internet can be a scary place...

Parents learned about the dark side of social media last night at La Verendrye School in Portage la Prairie. It was the Portage la Prairie School Division's Social Media Awareness Night for parents and students. RCMP School Liaison Officer Constable Amber Storey and RCMP Constable Gord Olson with the Internet Child Exploitation Unit outlined some of the dangers children and teens face online. Olson says it's something that needs to be talked about at an even younger age.

"We do see (young kids) every day in the investigations we get coming into our office. We've seen investigations come in with kids from Grade 3, eight years old, that are getting talked into different things online. So maybe there's no supervision from parents, or whatever the case is, but it definitely is getting younger every week."

Things like sexting, chatting, creating false Facebook pages, luring, online bullying, and some of the dangers of the apps available to kids were discussed. Olson says a lot of apps and games on phones or tablets have chat features when signed in, and predators can lurk in these chat features.

"Unfortunately there are predators that can get into any of those and pretend to be a kid. It's important for the parents to keep up with what their kids are doing and who they're talking to. Those predators are out there with the popular apps the kids use like Twitter, Instagram, Kik, and Snapchat is huge. It's really just a matter of keeping up with your kids."

Olson says a lot of students think their privacy settings are set well enough to protect them, or that certain apps won't allow friends to save photos, but Olson says there are hundreds of other apps to get around things like Snapchat and Instagram's safeguards. He says a lot of it is happening at school.

"It's happening all the time in schools. Some teachers let them have their device in class because they have a lot of access through google to help with projects, some teachers have a box at the front of the room and your device goes in when you walk in. It's really hit and miss with the schools and teachers, and they're trying to promote digital citizenship and responsibility with their devices. It's got to start somewhere because it's not really happening at home."

The biggest thing parents could take away from the meeting was they need to learn more about the apps their kids are using, and spend more time teaching their children about the dangers of the web.