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TikTok announced it will establish a youth council that will be tasked with creating safety tools that are more effective for its younger users.

In a blog post shared with NBC News on Monday and published on Tuesday, TikTok said the council, which will comprise teenagers, will provide the company with feedback from younger users about their experiences with TikTok, as well as help the company avoid building safety tools that are “ineffective or inadequate.”

TikTok’s global head of product policy, Julie de Bailliencourt, said the company planned to launch the council in the next few months but did not give a specific date.

​​“It’s still very early stages, but, again, our goal is that we keep designing really effective products and policies that protect young people but also enable them to find a voice,” de Bailliencourt said. “And we absolutely need to listen intently to what young people have to say about this.”

Discord launched in 2015 and quickly emerged as a hub for online gamers, growing through the pandemic to become a destination for communities devoted to topics as varied as crypto trading, YouTube gossip and K-pop. It’s now used by 150 million people worldwide.

But the app has a darker side. In hidden communities and chat rooms, adults have used the platform to groom children before abducting them, trade child sexual exploitation material (CSAM) and extort minors whom they trick into sending nude images.

In a review of international, national and local criminal complaints, news articles and law enforcement communications published since Discord was founded, NBC News identified 35 cases over the past six years in which adults were prosecuted on charges of kidnapping, grooming or sexual assault that allegedly involved communications on Discord. Twenty-two of those cases occurred during or after the Covid pandemic. At least 15 of the prosecutions have resulted in guilty pleas or verdicts, and many of the other cases are still pending.

Read more here.

It’s time for tees, hats, water bottles and beach totes!

Shop the Warriors and help end human trafficking.  It’s 2023. We can and must all do something.

Thank you.

Get a head start on AI challenges at schools this fall

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools and conversational browsers, including ChatGPT, are going to impact every school this fall. How will your school deal with these easy to use tools?

Learn what some of the challenges are going to be for parents, kids and schools in this series of articles: Part 1 and Part 2.

Also, here’s the ChatGPT one-pager you can download to share with schools and community leaders as you bring up the topic.

Stay safe out there!

Acting Governor Susan Bysiewicz  signed a bill that we tirelessly promoted for more than six years to make the marriage age in Connecticut 18, no exceptions.

Connecticut is now the ninth U.S. state where we have helped to end child marriage — a stunning victory for the nearly 6.5 million girls who live in those states! Only 41 states to go.

Previously, dangerous legal loopholes allowed parents to enter 16- and 17-year-olds into marriage in Connecticut with no real legal recourse for a minor who was forced to marry. Emancipated 16- and 17-year-olds could also marry. Marriage before age 18 creates a nightmarish legal trap: Even the most mature minor faces overwhelming legal and practical barriers if they try to resist or escape a forced marriage. Further, marriage before 18 is recognized as a human rights abuse that destroys almost every aspect of an American girl’s life.

Our research​ found that more than 1,250 minors, some as young as 14, were married in Connecticut between 2000 and 2021. Most were girls wed to adult men.

NATIONAL MOVEMENT

Connecticut now joins most of its neighbors in the northeast in eliminating marriage before 18, no exceptions: Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts and Vermont, as well as Minnesota, have all ended child marriage. ​

Learn more here. 

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Esmeralda Seay-Reynolds had just turned 15 years old when she was scouted by Click Model Management in New York. But the agency told the 5-foot-11, 130-pound hopeful that she wasn’t right because she looked “too mature,” code in fashion for a teen girl deemed “too heavy” because she has already developed curves. So she dropped 20 pounds and immediately signed with NEXT, an even bigger agency. Her ascent was swift, with the Pennsylvania native landing in the pages of Vogue and shooting campaigns for top couture brands like Chanel.

But the red flags emerged just as quickly. At 16, she was booked on a shoot with a photographer who had been publicly accused of sexual coercion. That same year, one of her representatives offered her some dangerous advice on how to stay catwalk thin. “I remember my agent saying, ‘Cotton balls are organic, so it’s fine if you just swallow them to make yourself feel full,’” she says. Around that time, Seay-Reynolds was runway ready and made the Fashion Week cut for Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Saint Laurent, Fendi and Marc Jacobs in New York, Paris and Milan. At her first-ever show, the backstage bathroom scene was troubling. “On either side of me were size zero girls puking their guts up,” she recalls. There was also a financial shocker. She says she received just $130 for the six weeks of grueling work. “I don’t know if that is how much I should have made or if my agency just…

Read more here.

LUBBOCK, Texas — The Lubbock Police Department said 26 people were arrested in a human trafficking operation. The charges included both solicitation of prostitution and misdemeanor prostitution.

The Lubbock Police Department’s Special Operations Division, along with Lubbock Fire Rescue, conducted the operation on June 15th and June 16th.

The operation resulted in 17 felony arrests for solicitation of prostitution, seven arrests for misdemeanor prostitution, and one arrest for Possession of a Controlled substance.

One female was contacted and identified as a possible victim of human trafficking and is not listed below.

Read more here.