PHOENIX — Since the pandemic began, most interaction among teens has gone online - from their schooling to their socializing with friends and family.
While technology has supported many people and offered a way to stay safe from the virus, it can also be dangerous if it is not used properly.
That is why Cyber Dive was created by Jeff Gottfurcht and Derek Jackson. The pair describe the company as a progressive tech startup that will give parents an overview of their child's online data on a variety of social media platforms in one comprehensive app.
"We created a tool that allows parents to see what their children are doing on social media," explained Gottfurcht.
"So, what we did is we actually took my background... I spent some time in active duty as an Intelligence Officer with the Special Forces in charge of a team looking at how ISIS was using social media to recruit foreign fighters," Jackson said. "And we took all of that tradecraft that my team used, we packaged it up, and automated it so we could give it to parents so they could make well-informed decisions in their kids' lives."
Brian Steele is the Chief Executive Officer of the Phoenix Dream Center. The non-profit has joined forces with Cyber Dive in an effort to prevent online predators from trafficking children.
"2020 with COVID changes everything we know, especially in social services and certainly human trafficking was not immune to those changes, so the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children saw a 98% increase in attempts of traffickers to try to get to children just in 2020," Steele explained. "Here in Arizona, we have recovered... law enforcement and service providers have recovered 340 children in just the last 18 months alone. One common thing that 90% of these cases had were social media."
To learn more about the app and to sign-up for the free tool, click here.
