Press Pause: Finding Balance in a Digital World

Stranger Danger

• Cassie Dietrich • Season 1 • Episode 6

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Guest: Scott Brown, School Resource Officer

The internet can be a great place to connect — but it can also be a place where predators look for victims. Officer Scott Brown explains how online grooming works, what red flags to look for, and how families can build safe online habits to protect kids.

Topics covered:

  • How predators use online platforms to build trust

  • Common tactics like secrecy, flattery, and pressure

  • Practical safety tips for kids and families

This conversation is just one of many. Visit www.dublinschools.net/press-pause to explore tools, resources, and actions you can take today to help your family Press Pause. Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss a conversation.

SPEAKER_02:

In a world that never stops scrolling, sometimes the healthiest thing we can do is press pause. Welcome to Finding Balance in the Digital World, the Dublin City School District's Summer 2025 Parent Education Podcast Series. I'm Cassie Dietrich, Public Information Officer for Dublin City Schools and your host for this series. Each week, we'll have real conversations with experts and community voices about screen time, tech habits, and how we can help our kids and ourselves take back control in a constantly connected world. Let's press pause and start the conversation. I'm here today with Scott Brown, one of our school resource officers in Dublin City Schools. Scott, can you tell us a little bit about your role and just how you work with our students and families here in the district?

SPEAKER_00:

I can, Cassie. Good morning, by the way. So I am a school resource officer over at Dublin Soda High School, a wonderful place, by the way. Great. high school. It is wonderful. I interact with the students daily and the families as well. One of the teachers over at Dublin Scioto described my role more as a student relationship officer as opposed to a school resource officer, which I thought was very relevant to my role over there. So the students come into my office with different concerns, but a lot of the times it's just to chat and kind of fill me in on what's going on in their lives. And that has been very Let's say informative and it has led to a lot of things that I've been able to help them and their families with outside of law enforcement, which has been wonderful and has has made my role at Dublin Scioto very, very fulfilling.

SPEAKER_02:

All right. Awesome. So today we're just going to talk a little bit about the new school version of stranger danger. Okay. And so, you know, it used to be make sure you know your surroundings and who you're with and the car down the street and all that kind of Now we're to the point where we're trying to recognize and avoid or, you know, or prevent online predators.

SPEAKER_00:

So you think about social media and online gaming, especially now with how prevalent it is, they're interacting with people who they have no idea who they're interacting with. And so everybody knows the term grooming now. And that's good that we're aware of that term. But unfortunately, parents don't really know that that's occurring through the app. Right. And so it's important for parents to pay attention and to know who their students are chatting with, because who they're chatting with may not be the profile picture that's popping up on there. So that's the new form of the old school stranger danger term in the world of social media and online gaming, is that profile picture may not be the 16-year-old girl from Texas. And that's the example I use in health classes when I teach at SciOTA. That 16-year-old girl in Texas may be a 50 year old man in his house in Illinois because you have no idea who that person is.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. Or even overseas.

SPEAKER_00:

Exactly. Yeah. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And so what the online predators aside from the grooming I mean have you have we seen things even here in Dublin or the greater Dublin area of sextortion or scamming in general like can you just talk about what some of the real life experiences are that you've had in trying to address these issues with students? Of course.

SPEAKER_00:

So unfortunately, it does happen everywhere, which means I have dealt with it here in Dublin. And for the parents out there, how this usually happens is their students will be interacting with someone who is portraying themselves as someone that they're not. And this happens to both boys, girls, it doesn't matter. It's not just a certain group of people that it happens to. And it starts with just a conversation like the person reaches out and it could be a comment on a TikTok video and that starts the conversation and it progresses into from the conversation into pushing some boundaries into some inappropriate conversation and then there's some asking to keep secrets about the conversations and then it progresses to hey can you send me a photo can you know oftentimes inappropriate like it may be a simple hey, send me a picture of your face. I really want to know what you look like. And then the person will respond with a picture that is obviously not them because the person they're talking to is not who they say they are.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

And then it progresses to inappropriate photos and the person will send a photo back, but it's not them. It's not them. Exactly. And oftentimes in like the sextortion cases, that's when the person says, hey, if you don't send me$50,$100 on Cash App or something like that, I'm going to send this photo you sent me to all your friends, all of your family on Instagram, and they're going to see exactly what you sent me. Sometimes it does progress into people trying to get a face-to-face meeting with these students. And I have dealt with that. Wow. There has been some face-to-face meetings. So the grooming that happens through these apps and these online games is very concerning. And that's what I want parents to be very aware of, is that it is happening and just to just to be very aware of who their students are interacting with on these apps and in these games.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah that's scary. So what I feel like this is a little bit as I think about it and as a parent myself twofold in terms of one making sure kids know there's online predators but two as a parent I can tell my kid that but there's a side of monitoring right that I have to do and so So what are some recommendations you give to parents that you've dealt with in this situation to move forward if they've experienced this? Or how, in your mind, could people prevent it or be proactive?

SPEAKER_00:

Of course. So the one thing I always tell parents, as a father of two daughters myself, I have not experienced some of that, but I have experienced the parent versus friend syndrome, if you will. That is a hard thing to navigate because you want your children to be happy. You don't want to be the super disciplinarian that is so hard on your children that they're just unhappy. Nobody wants their children to be unhappy. Right. that if you see that could be something that you could stop from progressing that could be the beginning of a grooming session like that could be something important that you could stop before it starts check their their chatting online as well find out who they're playing with a lot of times on the online gaming you can see who they have friends who they're friends with on like xbox and all of that see who they're friends with find out if they're their actual friends or if they're people they just friended during gaming sessions we're all busy I know that we're all so busy

SPEAKER_02:

we're all so busy

SPEAKER_00:

just be involved in their lives as well as much as possible and just go through their phones check their Xbox live see who they're gaming with during their gaming sessions just go down sit and be involved with it see who they're talking to see what they're talking about and just be involved as a parent and what What you will learn will be surprising, to say the

SPEAKER_02:

least.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah. a shock that somebody would not be posting an honest picture of themselves so I just explained to them that there are people out there that want to take advantage of them because at their age a lot of times they're more trusting than they will be as they get older and that it's important for them to realize that as they get older they will learn that people are not always who they present themselves to be and that a good lesson for them to learn now Is just to always know who you're interacting with. Because we did not have to, like I know I didn't, I didn't have to deal with that. The social media. No. When I was younger. Yeah. I interacted with people face to face. I knew who I was dealing with and interacting with. They live in a different world with technology. So for them at their age, just always try to know exactly who they're interacting with. Because in the world they live in now, they will not always know that. So just never share personal information. Never put out anything where somebody would find out where they live, where they go to school. I've always told them, don't put out your football jersey that says Scioto Irish. Don't put out anything that says where they go to school. Don't put out anything that would give anybody, because you put out your name, they know where you go to school, they need personal information. So I just try to coach them to be like these people and be as secretive about All right.

SPEAKER_02:

And make sure they know that person in real life.

SPEAKER_00:

how dangerous that can be for them, but also how dangerous that can be for your entire family. Because not only, of course, are they putting themselves in danger, but if this person finds out who they are, where they live, that puts everybody in your household in danger. And maybe if that person had, if they have posted pictures of them and younger siblings, maybe they're not interested in that student, but they're interested in younger siblings. Or I've dealt with cases like that as well, where it's not the senior boy that the person's interested in. It's the fifth grade sister that the person's interest is. So always sit down with that student. And whether you go to Dublin Scioto, I am always available for parents if they need any help at all, if they need advice. The great thing about Dublin, Ohio and Dublin City Schools and the Dublin Police Department is we have a wonderful relationship with one another. And every Dublin middle school and Dublin high school has a school resource officer Thank you, Doug Tima, a school relationship officer.

SPEAKER_02:

Let's say they decide they want to find out who this person is. Let's say you guys see it as like a potential charge or there's concerns. I've heard, and I'm not sure, so I'm asking the expert, that sometimes, and I brought up overseas earlier, that it's really hard to track and trace. And once you're kind of onto them, then they'll delete the accounts and then it's really challenging, right?

SPEAKER_00:

It is. Unfortunately, it is. And you are 100% correct. They are very hard to track down. And And a lot of times they are overseas. So the ones that are doing this extortion are usually overseas. They're just looking for money. The face to face people are sometimes local. They're the ones that are looking for the sometimes out of state, but they'll drive to obviously to meet face to face. And as soon as they realize that we're on to them, when they realize that there's suddenly like other people following them or like

SPEAKER_02:

a change in that student's behavior.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. Change in behavior and then there's other accounts that are suddenly friending them if you will or watching their behavior they'll delete the account and and then they'll they'll just start a new account but it those we almost never find those people unfortunately yeah but the one bonus that comes from that is that student and any of his friends or her friends that were interacting with that person stop interacting with that person yeah so there is a win from that yeah even though we don't use a find that person

SPEAKER_02:

right and that's what we want to kind of hit home is that it's still worth reporting

SPEAKER_00:

of course definitely

SPEAKER_02:

yeah because they could be local

SPEAKER_00:

but

SPEAKER_02:

even if they're not or you feel like they're not it's still worth reporting and and tracking and having the kind of the evidence and the i guess whatever groundwork that goes with it

SPEAKER_00:

yeah definitely yeah please always report it because you you know that that student may have you know 10 friends that are also interacting with this person thinking it's you know, a 16 year old attractive person from another state. And if we can stop that person and his nine friends from interacting with them, that's a win for us.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So that's what we want.

SPEAKER_02:

So just thinking about, you know, how parents can stay ahead of this or what steps they can take. And let's kind of circle back to being in the same online space that their kids in. We don't want this. We have no desire for this podcast with you and I, even though this is a very serious topic, actually more serious than any of the ones I've done to scare parents. But it's that monitoring is key. Can you just talk about how you've seen parents effectively monitor phones or even in your own household?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, of course. So there are apps and there are like you can do even like Apple phones and I think Androids, you can set time limits on the phone. So again, I'm not telling parents to pull phones from their students. Both of my Daughters were athletes, and so having a phone was a necessity for us as a family. So I am definitely not telling them to completely disconnect and have their students disconnect. But just monitoring the phone, having a schedule where you're checking the phone, but randomize that schedule so the student doesn't know when you're going to check it because then they may delete things at a certain time. Great suggestion. So just randomly check it. Look at some of the different apps that are out there. There's apps where you can have it on your phone and you can have it on their phone where you can see what they're doing. Get a TikTok account. Follow your student on TikTok and then you'll know what they're posting on TikTok because when they post, you'll get it on your TikTok account so you'll know exactly what they're posting. There are ways that you can do it where you don't have to 100% You don't have to take their phone from them.

SPEAKER_02:

And if you get on TikTok, I think you can see Scott Brown's school relationship or student relationship officer doing some really amazing dances.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm more of a prop for the students, but the students are the dancers. I'm just kind of there trying to dance.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, well, we love it. We get a kick out of it here at Central Office.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I

SPEAKER_01:

appreciate

SPEAKER_02:

it. Yeah. So there are there are tons of apps. There's tons of monitor device usage that will pick up on key words that might be concerning. There's also a cyber tip line where you can report concerns. And we will have all of that linked on our website after we post today's episode so that parents can go on there and they can see the different apps, how they can set parental controls, how they can report concerns. We'll have contact information for our Dublin Police Department. So if there is something that comes up, you can reach them. So again, the goal is protection, not punishment It's about safety, not necessarily surveillance. So we want to do this in a healthy way. If there's one message that you hope families remember from this conversation or just talking about the new 2025 version of Stranger Danger, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00:

We don't want students to think that they're being punished. Because I know even when I was younger, which was a long time ago, if I thought I was being punished, I rebelled and it got worse. So as you said, we don't want it to be Like a surveillance state, you know, we don't want them to rebel, but we want to keep them safe. So if you're if you're currently not watching what your students doing with their phones or with their social media or their online gaming, show an interest in it. If you if there's any ounce of you that likes online gaming, start playing. If you are a parent that games with your student, you will be the coolest parent in the world. I'll tell you. So if you can do that and you can and chat with your student and all their friends in there. Get yourself one of those cool little headphones. You will be like the coolest parent in the world, trust me. So if you can do that and monitor their online gaming and then kind of check their phones here and there randomly and get some of these apps that Cassie was talking about, then, I mean, right there is a great way that you can monitor their behavior and it's not going to make them rebel because they're not going to feel like you're coming down on them. Yeah. And that's huge. Because that's when they're going to start changing their behavior in a way where they're going to put themselves more at risk. So I would say if there's anything I would want parents to take from this is just find a healthy way that you can be more involved. Again, we're all busy, but just find a healthy way to kind of slide into that environment with your student and be more involved in what they're doing online with social media and gaming.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, perfect. All right. Well, hey, thanks for joining us. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00:

Anytime.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. This is what Press Pause is all about, taking a moment to reflect and make small changes that matter. So we encourage our listeners to visit our webpage today for resources related to today's episode, tips for talking with kids about online safety, and the Cyber Tip Line reporting tool. So remember, a little pause goes away. We'll see you next time. Thanks, Scott.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, thank you, Cassie.

Contributor

Cassie Dietrich

Host