I am a mom of a teenager girl, she is only 12. She loves to draw, mangas and watch cartoons/animes. She is a very quiet and smart girl. I let her draw and watch animes because I thought these are her outlets of being creative and self-expression. I'm also the one responsible of her facebook account, by doing so, my only intention was for her to have a space to post her drawings and somehow communicate with her friends/classmates when needed (specially when there's something important to relay about school matters and stuff). She then became active in posting her drawings and joining communities with members of common interests. At first, we did not see anything wrong about it aside from the fact that she is becoming more quiet, shy and somehow uncontrollable with her use of tablet or laptop.

I should say, that being her mom, i had this feeling to see what's going on. Since I was the one who created her facebook account, I was able to open it and the sad reality had hit me so hard. I've seen her chats with a few people (male) with unknown identity, what's worse is that these unknown guys somehow took the advantage of my daughter's innocence and curiosity to their advantage. My 12 y/o daughter got exposed to not role playing but more of sex chatting. I don't know now what to think, since there are kids and also adults who are into role playing. The first step that I did was change her password, i spoke to my daughter and told her that there's nothing wrong with chatting and making friends but what she did is dangerous and can later on backfire at her.

I know that later on she will discover a lot more, but right now she's still young (for me) to be exposed to these kind of stuff. I discovered all these almost 3 weeks ago, still it creeps me out everytime it crosses my mind.

I definitely think you did the right thing talking to her about it, and you should make sure that she is aware of Internet safety etc, and also that the majority of people on the Internet are adults, and they are not always honest with who they are. Make sure she knows the rules about sending photographs and giving out personal information. Maybe make her aware that people will want to take advantage of her? 12 is still very young, but she is clearly old enough to get involved in these conversations now - they can sometimes escalate quite quickly. I think overall you should ensure her that you are not angry with her, and that she can talk to you about any problems she has online.

I think it's normal for her to want to explore the Internet, and it can be tonnes of fun, I remember when I first started using the Internet, it's just a shame that there are terrible people out there...

I don't know if there are any well-moderated sites that allow kids and teens to RP with people their own age and without inappropriate content but if she's into the idea in and of itself (As in, like, acting out stories with everyone having their own character, not NSFW type talk.) maybe you two could find a site like that and explore it to see if it's somewhere she could post safely? It's really unfortunate that there aren't more avenues for young people to do the things they want to do online safely because I really enjoyed making online friends as a teen and met some really great people... But also a lot of creeps and perverts and I hate that I had to take so much bad with the good.

It's a shame that there are people willing to take advantage of a young girl. :/ At the same time, it sounds like your daughter has a lot of interests that could really be honed through joining communities of like minded people. I'd say it's great that you opened this dialogue with her. I'd definitely monitor her time online, speaking as someone who grew up on the internet (and did have some adult males take advantage of me...). I'd hate to see anyone miss out on the beautiful things the internet has to offer due to some lowlife scum. Maybe making the internet a joint interest until she's a bit older would help?

I'm happy to see a parent who is so involved in her daughter, to be willing to post to her community. (I'm assuming she's a member of Subeta?)