Alabama's Morning News with JT
David Everitt is here to inform us what sadfishing is
5280 Exterior's James Hardy sighting is a low-maintenance sighting made primarily of cement that resists flame spread and repels wood-borne insects and woodpeckers. Through the month of July, you'll receive free, rigid foam installation with the purchase of whole-house sighting. That's installing additional insulation behind your sighting, or free, but only for the month of July. Call today for more details or visit 5280exterior's.com. 5280exterior's.com, a James Hardy preferred contractor, 5280 Exterior's, the altitude of quality. Have you heard this new term called "sad fishing"? There's always some new thing that our teens are doing online, and this is the latest thing, "sad fishing." It is essentially when you take some picture, or you make some post, or something like that, where you're basically, you've heard of fishing for compliments, well, this is like fishing for people to feel bad for you. Joining me now is the online safety expert and CEO of GameSafe, David Evert, David, welcome to the show. Good morning. Thanks for having me. So, David, why are the kids doing this? Well, "sad fishing," you nailed it with the definition, "sad fishing" is a cry for help, or it's just a cry for attention. Kids are doing it, especially the trend on social media is to get likes, is to get that attention that they crave, especially when, like, summertime, they're sitting there. They have nothing to do. They're trying to build their social media following, and so they use the sympathy kind of play in order to try to get people to respond and to like what they're doing. And of course, this generates attention, and this generates concern, but this concern can sometimes, because they could say something as they could be threatening to harm themselves, and then people are left going, "Oh, my gosh, do we need to seek professional help?" And it could just be they're just trying to, you know, they're bored, and so they're just going to throw something out there. Yeah, and that's the part where it gets challenging to really understand if there's a serious mental health issue going on. One of the things that we've done with Game Safe is we've developed a mental health model that will look for things like this, and then we want to put the parents in touch with their child when this is happening in real time. So if it's something where they're really doing something, apparently needs to be informed. So they can say, "Okay, this is happening with my kid. This is their emotional state. Let's, my wife and I talk about this and have a plan to really talk to our child." Is there any particular demographic like is it more boys or girls? Is it preteens, teens, older teens? Who's usually the most likely to be out there sad-fishing? It's mainly demographically young women, preteen to teen. They are really going through different emotional hormonal changes, all of these different things, and they're always looking for that acceptance. They're going through different parts of their growth and their maturity to where they could have had a breakup and a relationship from a girlfriend or something where they were bullied or shamed or anything like that, and now they're trying to find that instant gratification that comes through social media in order to fill that need for attention. And another danger is there are predators out there who prey on depressed kids, and they will use this as a way in, and before you know it, now you've got a real problem on your hands. That is exactly the biggest concern that I have. So predators look for this specifically as a target. The child that is, or the teenager that's sharing this kind of information, they're already in a fragile emotional state. So what else would that? What else would that child or that teenage girl give to this predator, whether they start talking about, "Oh yeah, let's meet for coffee, let's do this," or there becomes a huge vulnerability that gets targeted by the predator. And that's something we definitely, as parents, need to watch out for David Everett, the online safety expert and CEO of GameSafe. Thank you so much for joining me this morning on Alabama's Morning News. Thank you for having me. 5280 exteriors James Hardy-Siting is a low maintenance sighting made primarily of cement that resists flame spread and repels woodborne insects and woodpeckers. Through the month of July, you'll receive free rigid foam installation with the purchase of whole house sighting. That's installing additional insulation behind your sighting, or free, but only for the month of July. Call today for more details or visit 5280 exteriors.com 5280 exteriors.com, a James Hardy preferred contractor, 5280 exteriors, the altitude of quality.