Scott: Monitor your child’s online activity – even fake accounts
Published:Friday | May 30, 2025 | 12:08 AMChristopher Thomas/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
Renowned child and family therapist Dr Beverly Scott is urging Jamaican parents to take a more active role in monitoring their children’s social media use, warning that some children are creating decoy accounts to mislead parents about their online activity.
Speaking with The Gleaner on Thursday, Scott addressed the troubling issue of missing and runaway children in light of 2024 data from the Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA), which reported 1,011 missing children.
“For younger children, the parents can monitor their online pages [more easily],” she said. “But I do not think that 14-year-olds or 15-year-olds really want their parents to monitor their pages. They may want to talk to their little friends about their parents, who they do not want to relate to. So if the parents go on their child’s page, the child can open another page, and they can be on one page with their parents and on another one with their friends.”
EARLY GUIDANCE
Scott emphasised the importance of early parental guidance so teens can make responsible decisions online and in real life.
“There are parents who know they can trust their children because they have proven the children to be obedient, but there are other parents who cannot trust their children. I would say to err on the side of caution about supervising them,” she told The Gleaner.
Her advice aligns with CPFSA Ananda Alert Officer Annadjae Roberts, who also stressed the dangers lurking online. “
“Social media can lead to unwanted or inappropriate attention, and your child may not necessarily know who they are communicating with,” said Roberts. “You need to be in the know, and actively engage with the different social media platforms, especially the ones that your child uses.”
Roberts recommended that parents go beyond surface-level monitoring.
“You should send your child a friend request on these platforms. Check the sites they visit, check the conversations they are having, pay attention to the direct messages, and do not just check the sent messages, but check the draft messages as well,” added Roberts.
Meanwhile, on the subject of parents developing good relationships with their children, Scott said that based on her observations over the years, some children who go missing are likely to have run away from home because of abuse or unresolved conflicts.
“When parents treat children well and they have a good relationship, the children feel guilty by the time they leave home at age 20. When you do not treat children well, they will leave home at any age, and it is usually because of some problem in the home, as some children are orphans in their homes because their parents do not take good care of them,” said Scott.
“Children are not going to leave a nice and loving home. Children who are abused, rather than feeling guilty, they run away and make the parents feel guilty. In my experience, the parents usually know what caused it, and some of them report the child as missing out of the blue, when they know it was them that did something to the child,” added Scott.
Of the 1,011 reported cases of missing children across Jamaica in 2024, St Catherine had the highest number of cases at 301, followed by Kingston and St Andrew with 200, and Clarendon with 93. Approximately 899 of the 1,011 children reported missing have since returned home.