A couple weeks ago, a panel of five brave high school students answered some uncomfortable questions in front of about 50 adults gathered at the FEMA Event Center.

After a showing of the documentary “Childhood 2.0,” which delves into the dangers of technology, smart devices, social media and the internet, the students were asked to speak to their experiences at Cassville schools.

Their answers will shock you. I am not naming these five students because there is no need to identify them directly. They are run-of-the mill kids. All play sports, some have parents or guardians who work at the district, and one is even the child of a law enforcement officer.

If you find yourself wondering exactly who the kids are — picture them as yours.

“Childhood 2.0” puts a large focus on how constant phone usage and never-ending contact with the outside world, wanted or unwanted, can result in bullying, low self-esteem, anxiety and vulnerability to predators who exploit those feelings behind the mask of a keyboard.

One of the first topics the panel addressed is social media and its effect on how our kids see themselves and their peers.

Bullying, specifically, has changed drastically in the last two decades. Instead of “meet me in the schoolyard at 3 o’clock,” it’s a crushing cavalcade of texts, comments, group chats and other faceless communication avenues that lessen the in-person empathy needed to operate in society.

“[Bullying] will happen behind your back and people will be staring at you in the hallway and you don’t know why,” one student said. “You never see it in-person.”

“I think 100 percent of kids have engaged in bullying in group chats the subject does not know about,” another said.

Parallel to the bullying in the messages is the unhealthy mental effects of scrolling. Student panelists said body image standards — for girls and boys — set on social media like Instagram, have a negative effect on their self-image.

“I have used tools to alter my body and make it look how I want in photos,” one student said. “It’s a never- ending comparison and never liking who you are.”

The end of that quote, “never liking who you are,” is the vulnerability that online predators latch onto.

While that did not occur in this instance, the same student also said “if you’re not confident enough to give yourself validation and another person is giving you validation, you want to be around them.”

Imagine, as a parent, that validation coming from a predator because the child does not know any better.

A huge part of protecting our children is managing device usage.

Cassville schools offered a poll to its students in grades 6-12 recently, receiving more than 350 voluntary responses.

According to the results, 20% of students are on a device more than 6 hours a day, 31.9% are at 4-6 hours, 34.6% are at 2-4 hours and only 13.5% are under 2 hours. Furthermore, 80% of students keep their phones in their bedrooms overnight.

As parents, we have to set some limits here to protect our kids from others, and even from themselves. Remove the opportunity for a bad situation to arise by limiting screen time and removing phones from bedrooms where unsupervised and poor decisions might occur.

And, if you think one won’t, consider the poll results that 21% of students have received unsolicited sexually explicit photos (and another 9.2% declined to answer), and 19.5% have been exposed to naked photos or pornography on their device (and another 13% declined to answer).

Furthermore, 31.4% of students said they have received uncomfortable messages from a stranger on social media or a gaming platform (and another 6.2% declined to answer), and 43.2% have received threats or negative comments online. Just over half of respondents also said their social and gaming accounts are set to public.

Setting limitations is step one to combat these troubling statistics from our own kids, but what else can we do?

Step two is education, and even the kids say they want it.

“Parents always try to stop it versus teach about it,” another student panelist said. “People will show you stuff in the hallways or on the bus. It’s impossible to stop it from happening.”

These are tough topics, and parents may feel uncomfortable discussing them. If we do not educate our kids, no matter how it makes us feel, they will educate themselves absent of guidance.

The family of Aurora 16-year-old Evan Boettler and the Aurora-Marionville Police Department issued a release this week asking parents to take a greater role in conversations about online safety after what happened to their son.

Boettler committed suicide in January, and authorities later discovered one hour prior to his death, he was the victim of an attempted extortion on a social media platform. An individual said they had photos of Boettler and threatened to release them if he did not pay money.

“These events are believed to have taken place only hours before Evan took his own life, presumably believing he had no other way out,” the release said.

This tragedy, and many others that go unnoticed or unaddressed, exemplify the message of “Childhood 2.0” and what consequences may arise from technology in this new normal.

If you have a child of any age and have not watched the documentary, I highly recommend it.

To prevent tragedies of all kinds in the future, we must educate ourselves and educate our children. They deserve it.

Kyle Troutman has served as the editor of the Cassville Democrat since 2014 and became Publisher in 2023. He was named William E. James/Missouri Outstanding Young Journalist for daily newspapers in 2017, and he won a Golden Dozen Award from ISWINE in 2022. He may be reached at 417-847-2610 or ktroutman@cassville-democrat.com.