 Hi, I'm Ricky Perez and I'm Kaylee Smith. Welcome to the Pasco Sheriff's Office student report. Today we are going to focus on the topic of social media dangers and how it relates to human trafficking. We'll take a look at a dangerous norm among teens funding strangers simply for the sake of getting a larger following online. We're joined today by Cristobal Yonlin who has some additional information to share. Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook are all popular avenues. We share information, de-stress, and have fun. It makes us feel like we aren't alone in our opinion. It makes us feel popular when we see the likes in our following growing. But what about that number growing when you have no idea who's behind the monitor? We have to understand these traffickers. This is their business. Corporal Alan Wilkett leads the Pasco Sheriff's Office human trafficking task force and is warning teens that they are targets of traffickers. Oftentimes the trafficker finds the young victim being able to be exploited maybe more easily than someone who has matured and has some life experiences. Sex trafficking happens when a person known as a trafficker uses force to have another person perform a sexual act like prostitution, pornography, or another sexual performance in exchange for any item of value, such as money, shelter, clothing, or drugs. One of the large vulnerable population is our youth, and that's particularly our teenagers. From the ages of 11 and 12 all the way up through the ages 17 and 18, 19, those are those prime ages that the trafficker is targeting that population. Traffickers are now on social media to groom teens and leaving social media accounts or apps set on public and posting personal information is dangerous. A lot of people can read those. More people are reading those than maybe what we intended to be read. And as soon as they start hearing some of those kind of buzzwords like I'm sick of my home, I just want to run away. I'm tired of the rules. I'm tired of having to live under my parents' house or my guardians' rules. Anytime they start reading those types of things, the bell that goes off in a trafficker's head is vulnerability. Another dangerous social media trend for teens is communicating on apps where the messages disappear. These allow the trafficker to prey on and lure teens literally without a trace. Even for the young victim, it appears to be a kind of a cool thing because we kind of get to keep a secret. But for the predator, that secret then becomes their their money. It's money for them because now they can have a low risk, high reward criminal endeavor. And it's called human trafficking. Warnings we all need to pay attention to and share with our friends. Christabel Yanly reporting. One of the most important pieces of information we can take away from this message is that we have to start changing the way we approach social media because it enhances our vulnerability. We have to start thinking about who's actually watching our accounts when we leave them open. What messages are we sending to strangers?