Tim Tebow exhorted parents to protect their children against online predators yesterday in an impassioned interview with podcaster Shawn Ryan.
“When you hand your phone to your kid, know that the world and people with bad intentions are trying to lure them into something [evil],” the former NFL quarterback warned.
“I just want to tell parents, ‘Please be the protectors you’re called to be.’”
Tebow’s heartfelt caution stems from years of combatting online child abuse and sextortion through his eponymous foundation.
The Tim Tebow Foundation (TTF) partners with international and domestic law enforcement agencies, advocacy networks and non-profits to identify, rescue and care for victims of online child sex abuse. It will work with initiatives like Operation Renewed Hope, which have generated more 1,100 possible identifications on unknown victims and liberated dozens from captivity.
Tebow believes God ignited his and his team’s deep longing to free vulnerable children from exploitation:
In the interview, Tebow and Ryan hit on several false assumptions Americans entertain about online exploitation, where it occurs and who perpetrates it. If parents can’t see the problem clearly, Tebow argues, they can’t protect their kids from it.
Here’s what parents need to know.
“People will say, ‘Well, that’s just over there, and it’s in those countries and all of those places,’” Tebow tells Ryan animatedly. “But its not … It’s happening in our country, right here in our neighborhoods and our families.”
He emphasized his point with a horrifying visual aid.
“This is a Department of Justice Law Enforcement map called the red dot map,” he prefaced, handing Ryan an 8’ by 11’’ inch map of the United States covered in 111,000 red blips.
“Every red dot on that map [represents] a unique IP address downloading, sharing or distributing abuse and rape images [of children] under the age of 12 in the last thirty days.”
Between 55 and 85% of these IP addresses belong to abusers themselves, according to Tebow, each of which victimizes an average of thirteen children in their lifetime.
As if that weren’t enough, the Heisman winner further noted:
- America pays the most money of any country for live videos of online child sex abuse.
- American residents share more child abuse material among themselves (peer-to-peer) than almost any other country, outstripped only by China and Russia.
Of the dozens of online child abuse victims TTF identified and rescued through Operation Renewed Hope, Tebow claims authorities found more than half in America.
Too frequently, people that produce child sexual abuse material (CSAM) are close to the victim — sometimes even a family member.
Nor are these perpetrators easy to spot. Most are white, middle-aged men — many of them college graduates. Tebow says these offenders frequently snag jobs working with or close to children.
He believes godly men should hold these offenders to account:
I think it’s time that we call them out. We have to stand up and say, “Not only are we not doing our job as men, we’re actually doing the opposite. Instead of being defenders and protectors of our families, we’re hurting and abusing them.”
Internet predators are far more common than most parents may think. Tebow remarked on the proliferation of sextortion:
These predators can approach children on any device connected to the internet, from an Xbox, to a smartphone, to an e-reader.
Tebow doesn’t want to leave parents discouraged.
“I’m not trying to be doom and gloom,” he told Ryan. “We have hope even in the midst of it because of Jesus. But we’ve got to protect [our kids].”
He recommends warning kids about internet predation and teaching them to spot offenders and scams. He also suggests parents take advantage of devices that limit kids’ internet access altogether.
Most importantly, he encourages parents to enforce tech boundaries, even when kids dislike them. Sometimes being a protector means being the bad guy, he told Ryan, and that’s okay.
Parents have a responsibility to protect their children, but believers are responsible for ministering to the world’s most vulnerable people. Tebow concluded:
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