Scott (00:03)
I’m Scott. I work here at Fight the New Drug. I mostly do internet things, website, all the backend data stuff that we deal with. And I, for my own sanity, stay out of our Current Events channel as much as I can. Just because I get to. Elisabeth doesn’t get to. And I hear a lot of things from her that I find informative, are not great, but also you should probably know that these things are happening in the world, and we thought that it would be good to let you guys in on those things too.

Elisabeth (00:40)
Yeah. So I am our social media manager here. My role requires me to know a lot, unfortunately, about what is happening in the world, which is stuff that is really sad and heavy to hear about. Yeah. It makes Scott really sad. Makes all of us sad. Anyways, so my role, I do have to know a lot about the current events. I have to know a lot about the research and what’s going on. I go out and speak with students and with communities. So I know what people are experiencing. And we just figured we have this conversation pretty often, so why not just include you all in it?

So thank you for joining us. Thank you, Scott, for being here. I’m excited to have this conversation with you in front of camera this time. So I just wanted to start by telling you a story about something that just recently happened.

Scott (01:27)
A story makes it sound nice, and I don’t think it’s going to be nice.

Elisabeth (01:30)
No, but correct. So, in this not very nice current event story. So this takes place in a very small town in Pennsylvania. This was in 2024. This story is going to take place at a school, K through 12 school, very small, 600 students total between K and 12. So much smaller than any school that I ever went to.

And at this school, there was a girl, she was 16 years old, and she had a falling out with a friend. And then shortly afterwards, there was a rumor that had spread of her that she had been sending nudes.

And then she was approached a couple months later in the cafeteria at school. Someone came up to her and said, your nudes got leaked. Now, keep in mind, she had never sent a nude before. She didn’t know what was happening, what was going on.

And in reality, there was a deepfake pornographic image of her that had been circulating through her high school at the same time that this rumor had been going around that she was sending her own nudes. So essentially, people thought that she had been, and she hadn’t; it was just a pornographic deep fake.

Now at the same school, there were 347 AI-generated pornographic images and videos that had been spread of 59 minors at this school and one person over the age of 18. So this is just one of 60 victims of this deepfake incident. Now, all of the victims were girls. One of the victims said that she was just 12 years old in one of the photos that the boys used to create a sexualized deep fake of.

Scott (03:22)
Yep, Okay, I’m listening. It’s bad.

Elisabeth (03:27)
It is bad. It is bad.

So, yearbook pictures were used to create these images, innocent social media posts where these girls had just posted themselves with their friends on their Instagrams. One of the victims said that the perpetrator took a screenshot of her during a FaceTime call that they were on and then manipulated it to appear as if she was revealing her body to him over the phone. Now these images were all created using AI.

So generative AI, nudifying apps, technology that is widely available and easy to access. Now the perpetrators were two boys who were also at the school. So two underage minors, teenagers. They both pleaded guilty to 59 felony counts of sexual abuse of children and criminal conspiracy to commit that abuse.

So now knowing the full story of what happened, all of the girls who–

Scott (04:23)
So many images of so many different people at a school of 600. Correct. Is my math off? That’s like, that’s like, you’re, you’re in a graduating class of what, like 50 to 60 people. That’s a small school.

Elisabeth (04:25)
So many images, like 10% of the school. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so this was a huge incident at this school.

And knowing all of this, all the girls who were victimized, you know, you can imagine the trauma and the humiliation and the devastation that occurred after these images came out and after these girls found out that they’d been victimized in this way. Knowing all of this, what do you think the sentence was for these two boys who had created these images?

Scott (05:09)
I mean, that’s, yeah, that’s not the question. I, I, I have no context for that. I, I don’t, I know like.

Elisabeth (05:12)
It’s a hard question.
Scott (05:22)
Whatever sentence, like, policy takes a while to catch up with technology, and so I feel likeI just have no…no way to even guess. Because they were also minors, but they were also under 18 at the school who were generating these images. I have no idea. Can you just? Yeah. I don’t want to guess.

Elisabeth (05:43)
Sure. So the sentence turned out to be two years’ probation for each of the boys and 60 hours each of community service. Now with the community service, 60 hours is one hour for each of the victims. And that’s it.

Scott (06:00)
What? I mean…Okay. That seems like nothing.

When I was in middle school, I got in just a little bit of trouble for playing with some fireworks where I shouldn’t have been playing with fireworks. And I had to do like 20 hours of community service for some stuff that got maybe a little bit burned. So.

Elisabeth (06:22)
Mm-hmm.

Scott (06:24)
60, that seems so low.

I understand that like, you hope that like they’re also kids. I can see how they would maybe like, all like this technology exists. You said it was 2024 too. That’s crazy because things have only gotten more accessible and easier to create these types of images.

I guess it seems like a very low, it feels like a very low sentence if you were one of those people that had images generated of you. Cause that doesn’t disappear just because it was caught. Like it’s been distributed around the school. exists online. It will continue to exist and that sucks. Like that’s going to follow you around for so long. And then at the same time, it’s like, you would hope that those boys get help educated rather than just punishment, like, because they’re also young and learning and figuring things out? I don’t know.

Elisabeth (07:38)
Yeah, thank you.

Scott (07:38)
I don’t know what any…I don’t know what to do with any of that.

Elisabeth (07:41)
Yeah, and I think that’s a good point. Like, what is the right sentence for a case like this where it’s all minors are involved? It’s clear that for these boys, like, we as a system have failed them. We haven’t educated them on this. They probably didn’t recognize that what they were doing was something that was going to be so harmful to the girls involved. And like you said, at the same time, this is something that isn’t just going to go away for the victims. This is something that they have to live with, that maybe those images are gonna come back up later in their life, that’s gonna be hurtful for them. Like these are things that aren’t just going to go away. And so I think that’s something that’s really important to think about is what can we be doing to prevent something like this from happening again? Because this isn’t just so an isolated incident, this isn’t just a one-off case, this is happening all over the world, all over the world in different schools and different communities and churches.

If you think that this isn’t happening in your community, you’re wrong.

Scott (08:40)
That’s crazy, yeah. It’s such a small school. Like a lot of times, you think that you are, I mean, it’s easy with anything that you hear about that is bad in the world. You think that it exists over there. It’s like the example of, like, trafficking happens in Taken and not anywhere near where you live, which is not the case. And this kind of thing, you would feel safer where you live in a small community. Go to a tiny school with not a lot of other kids. Like I’m sure those. I’m sure there’s some like part of it where like those parents feel safer in that community and not in the big city where you hear these of these other crazy stories, but it just makes it, you know, the internet has maybe leveled. Leveled the playing field is the wrong phrase. What am I trying to say? The internet has made it just accessible anywhere.

Elisabeth (09:38)
Yeah, for sure. I’ve spoken at a handful of really small schools in the middle of literally nowhere. And a lot of times, what I hear as a presenter at those schools is from the parents, there’s a lot of pushback, or even from the educators, there’s pushback that, okay, we recognize that these things are real. You know, they’re not arguing the stats with us. They’re not arguing that these things don’t exist. They’re just saying it’s not exciting. It’s being here. It’s not happening here.

But statistically speaking, it is. And wouldn’t you rather be protecting your children and educating them and getting in front of those issues rather than trying to catch up after they’ve already happened?

Scott (10:23)
For real. Yeah.

Hey, talk to your kids. If you have friends that are parents, tell them to talk to their kids.

We have a lot of resources. We have a documentary. It’s very age-appropriate for like middle schoolers. You don’t even have to talk to them. You can just show them the documentary first and let that broach the subject. It’d be great.

But it feels crazy to go through to like, I don’t know, to just like ignore that these things are happening.

Elisabeth (10:58)
I guess I’m curious what your perspective is as a parent, how it is to hear that it is so easy to be a victim of this and that there are so many victims and that there are essentially no consequences for creating this kind of content, or at least, you know, we haven’t caught up in that point with the justice system. What is your perspective as a parent on some of this?

Scott (11:26)
I mean, it’s scary. It’s a scary thing to know about. It’s super like, obviously like, you hear about this, and you think that again, you think like, yep, that happened way over there. That happened far away from my safe little community here.

Like this happened not because there were like super malicious crime lords doing whatever, but it was just other kids in school. And that makes it, I don’t know, way scarier, I guess. Brings it a lot closer to home and makes you just wanna be prepared however you can be, which is another tough thing.

Elisabeth (12:24)
Do you think that parents are prepared, or do you think that they understand the stakes of these issues?

Scott (12:33)
I think people are not prepared because they assume it’s everybody else’s kid and not their kid. And I think parents are not prepared because it’s not something they want to put effort into learning about, because it’s a bad thing that you don’t want to learn about. I would rather not know anything about this.

I think if I didn’t work here, I wouldn’t know most of it. I’ve talked to other friends that are parents about…these types of things when they come up in their lives, and they are not prepared and don’t know what to do, and maybe they thought it’s like it would happen eventually, but then it happens sooner than they’re expecting, or it happens in a more severe way.

Like something that connects a little bit in my brain is I remember hearing a stat, and it was about suicide prevention, and it was that checking in with your friends, loved ones, whoever, about how they’re mentally and if they’ve ever thought about taking their own life, doesn’t put the idea in their head in a way. Like, people always use that as an excuse of, if I check in with this person who I think is maybe a little bit depressed, and I ask them about suicide, maybe they weren’t thinking about it before, and now they are.

But basically, the data says that that is not the case. That you’re not putting that idea in their head. That you checking in with them is them being about and takes more care of them than it could possibly create harm, I guess. I don’t know if I’m phrasing that in the right way. But I think about it in the same way.

I think a lot of parents are worried about introducing the concept of porn or talking about, you know. I don’t know what parent is like, excited to talk about sex with their kid that they’ve like…I’m just thinking, like, you still see them as so cute and young and whatever, and you don’t want to talk to them about it, like just talking to your kids about it doesn’t make them want to go out and seek it, I don’t think.

Elisabeth (14:52)
Well, research, there’s actually research on that and it says that no. Like kids…there’s research that says kids see pornography and see these things as harmful, and that kids themselves, teenagers, say that education is the most important thing. And then there’s also research that, exactly like what you said, suggests that teaching kids about pornography or about harmful activities and behaviors doesn’t actually incentivize or encourage them to go out and participate in it themselves.

So this is empowering for them. It’s helpful for them to know that they’re not alone in this, that they have adults to talk to, that there are people struggling with this besides themselves. These are conversations we should be having.

Scott (15:31)
Totally. And I mean, it’s, it’s a weird thing to, it might be weird to initially try and open the conversation up, but it’s so important.

I don’t see how it’s not a guarantee that your kid doesn’t find porn. And so talking to them is way more important.

Elisabeth (15:53)
Sure, well, it’s like what you said earlier—

Scott (15:55)
Not more. I don’t know. Can’t say more important. Is important.

Elisabeth (15:58)
It is very important. Yes, it is.

Scott (16:01)
The odds are they’re going to like, they’re going to run into porn at some point in their lives. They’re going to see something like, especially with how much life is online.

Elisabeth (16:14)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, the average age of exposure now is between 11 and 13 years old. And just us as an organization, we just regularly hear from people who were like five when they—

Scott (16:24)
I was, it was, yep, was younger for me, and I’m old now, so it’s crazy that it’s still that late for most kids.

Elisabeth (16:33)
Yeah. So I think, like what you said, I think education is so important. I think a lot of parents don’t educate their kids because for whatever reason, whatever various reason. But that’s such a huge part of what we do and a huge part of our organization. Our whole mission is just to educate people.

And one of the resources that comes to mind that is specifically for kids and specifically for communities is our live presentation program. This is something that we talk about in that program because, you know, we make updates every time there’s new changes in current events and new changes in the ways that you can exploit people.

And so we talk about deep fakes. We talk about AI-generated nudes. We talk about all of this stuff. We talk about blackmailing other kids with these images, all of the above, because this is something that kids need to be educated on that parents aren’t teaching them about.

Scott (17:33)
It’s something that happens. So it’s necessary to educate.

Elisabeth (17:37)
Absolutely. It’d be so much better. Yeah. And I’m one of the people that goes out and presents. And so oftentimes, like we hear from these kids who are saying, thank you for talking to us about this, because no adult in my life has had this conversation with me. Or we just recently had a client who specifically said, our school is struggling with deep fakes and with kids exploiting each other. And we were able to go and provide that information for those kids, tell them that that’s illegal and it’s harmful.

We have a community and a parent presentation where we’re able to talk to parents and help parents become more comfortable with having conversations with their kids, understanding the issues, understanding why it’s important to have those conversations with their kids. This is something that is so important.

So anyways, on that note, Fight the New Drug plug. If you are interested in our live presentation program, if you’re interested in…educating students at your school or at your church or, you know, other community members, parents, anybody in your community, let us know. We’ll link it in our show notes. And you can connect with a team member, and we would love to see what we can do to make that possible for your community.

Scott (18:48)
So good. 10 out of 10 would recommend for absolutely everybody.

But yeah, thank you for, I guess, telling me terrible things, keeping us all informed. If you have other things you want Elisabeth to explain to us, because she knows everything. She stays very informed, just throw that in the comments, and Elisabeth will go through all those and decide what she’s going to tell me about next. And yeah, like, and subscribe, do all those things, push the buttons.

Elisabeth (19:28)
Like and subscribe.

Scott (19:29)
And yeah, definitely let us know what you want us to talk about next.