Tragic Tale of Sexting at Yahoo MotherBoard Summit Serves as Chilling Reminder of Importance of Internet Safety

The Yahoo MotherBoard Summit agenda was jam packed with tons of information but I was most interested in the Online Safety Roundtable featuring Catherine Teitelbaum, Policy Director for Yahoo Safely and Anne Toth who serves as the Vice President and Head of Privacy for Yahoo.

After a welcome, Catherine Teitelbaum showed us a video featuring a local mother and father remembering their beautiful, smart, and talented teenage daughter who took her life because of a topless photo that she sent as a sext to a boy in her high school. The boy forwarded the photo to one friend and the friend sent it to another friend and on and on and on.

The family said that they noticed that their once outgoing teenage daughter who was always front and center as a flyer on the cheerleading squad seemed withdrawn. Just the week before her suicide, the teen told a friend that she was contemplating suicide. There were signs but the pieces of the puzzle didn’t come together until it was too late.

By the end of the video, I was in tears. I felt this family’s pain as they remembered their daughter who died just a year ago. As I passed tissues to those around me, I kept thinking that this story could be any family’s tragedy and was reminded about the importance of my work with BitMoms.

Everyone has the power to prevent kids from committing suicide because of sexts by establishing family guidelines for cell phone use. We can stop cyberbullying by teaching our kids about being responsible digital citizens and acceptable online behavior.

No one has to die. No one’s feelings should be hurt. Kids shouldn’t have to be victims.

As parents, we know that when our children hurt, we hurt. We can stop the hurt before it starts by teaching our own children and educating other moms and dads about the importance of being safe online. Share what you know about the risks and dangers with your network of parents, both online and in real life, before it’s too late.

Besides joining BitMoms, here are some websites that were shared at the Online Safety Roundtable that you can explore to keep your kids safe online and are some of my personal favorites:

• Yahoo! Safely
• Common Sense Media
• ConnectSafely
• iKeepSafe
• NetSmartz
• TeenAngels
• WiredSafety

While I believe that the work I’m doing over on BitMoms is important, information about how to keep kids safe online needs to come from a variety of different sources to provide parents with a comprehensive pictures of the many risks kids face when using the internet.

As a Yahoo MotherBoard member, Yahoo covered all of my expenses to come to the Summit. I am not required to blog about any of the events or Yahoo sites I learned about at the conference but when I do, all opinions are my own. A version of this post appears on BitMoms.com where I work as a paid consultant and expert about internet safety and security for families.