Mom Says She Tried To Prevent Daughters From Falling Victim To Online Predators, But They Were Still Groomed

Meaghan says she’s tried everything to prevent her daughters from becoming victims of online predators, but her two older daughters were groomed by older men they met online. Meaghan first appeared on Dr. Phil with her daughter Meadow, who was 14 at the time and was speaking provocatively and sending pictures to older men on Snapchat. Watch their story here. Meaghan says even though she has had “blunt” conversations with her daughters about online safety, her 12-year-old daughter recently created TikTok and Snapchat accounts and was chatting with an adult “who got her to send videos of her doing sexual things to herself.” “These predators are finding ways to get around parental locks and teach them how to sign up for stuff,” Meaghan says. “I feel like a failure when I’m doing everything possible to keep them safe, and I don’t know what to do anymore.” Hear more from Meaghan in the video above, including what she says happened when she tried to contact the social media companies. The FBI says, on any given day, there are 500,000 predators online looking for their next young prey. On Wednesday’s episode, "To Catch an Online Child Predator," hear from a father whose teen daughter has been missing for four years. Plus, meet Roo Powell, a mother of three and child advocate who is fighting online predators in an unconventional way. Check local listings to see where you can watch. Full statement from Snap Inc: “The online sexual exploitation of minors is despicable, and we routinely work with safety experts to combat it. Snapchat was designed to help young people talk to their friends they know in real life, and we intentionally make it very difficult for predators to identify and meet teens. On Snapchat, you can only message another person if you are mutual friends; we don’t allow those under 18 to have public profiles, and location-sharing on our Snap Map is off by default for everyone. “As part of our ongoing efforts to improve our in-app protections, we recently rolled out a feature that prompts Snapchatters to review their friend lists and confidentially remove contacts, and to limit the discoverability of minors in friend suggestions. We also want to help provide ways for parents and teens to partner to help ensure their safety and wellbeing online. To this end, we are currently developing tools that will give parents the ability to view their teen's friends and know who they're talking to, while still respecting their privacy.” Additional online safety from Snap Inc: • It’s important for all parents and teens to know we offer in-app tools for reporting any concerning content or behavior to our 24/7 Trust and Safety teams. Once reported, our teams take action on most content in under two hours. • On our Snap Map, we only allow Snapchatters to share their location with mutual friends. • Non-mutual friends have no way of seeing someone's location on the Snap Map. Also, Ghost Mode is the default setting for Snap Map and you have to actively choose to share your location with friends. You can share with all of your friends (mutual only), or select friends, or choose to keep your location private in ghost mode. WATCH: Father Shares Warning Signs He Missed In Behavior Of Teen Daughter Who’s Been Missing For Four Years TELL DR. PHIL YOUR STORY: Hopelessly in need of Dr. Phil's Help?