A Queensland mother has urged all parents with teenagers who have social media to be aware of her family’s experience.
Beki Giunta said a bag of food delivered by Uber Eats arrived at her family home and she hadn’t ordered it, so she asked her 16-year-old daughter about it.
Her daughter said someone had ordered it for her after sharing the home’s address by entering a code into the app, meaning that she got the delivery for free.
“I was like, ‘That is a load of s—t. Give me your phone.’ I went through her phone because there is no such thing in my house as privacy with a mobile phone — especially when you’re a teenager,” she said.
After looking at the phone, Beki discovered messages from a man who she claimed was asking her daughter to call him “bad names” and say “nasty things” in exchange for gifts, such as Uber Eats deliveries.
“Teenagers are so impressionable, they’ll do anything for free s—t. It’s disgusting,” she said.
After reading through the messages, Beki decided to take the phone to the police station as she alleged the man was grooming her teenager.
“They were pretty concerned about it because now this guy has my address. We did not sleep for weeks because we were worried this man was going to break in,” she said.
Beki said the reason she wanted to share her story was to increase awareness about what could be happening to their children while using social media platforms.
“On a TikTok live from her friend, her friend was sharing this guy’s profile and saying if you said nasty things to him, he’ll buy you things,” she said.
“So dumb teenagers are like ‘Cool, free s—t. Let’s do it’. And it works.”
She advised parents to keep an eye on their child’s social media use.
“Just be safe. This f—-g creep could’ve been at my door or even watching us this whole time. It’s terrifying to say the least.”
A TikTok spokesperson encouraged all guardians and parents to look at their Guardian’s Guide.
“Keeping our community safe is a top priority for us and this type of behavior will not be tolerated on our platform. We encourage all users to report in app any behavior which contravenes our community guidelines,” the spokesperson told news.com.au.
“We actively review and remove content, and sometimes accounts, that violate our guidelines and under certain circumstances, we will report accounts to law enforcement.
“Our easy to use Guardians Guide was developed in collaboration with ySafe and helps put parents and guardians in control of their teens account.”