The other day I was scrolling through Twitter and saw a headline from The Mirror that read "Sick Pedophiles are Pretending to be Chicken Nuggets to Lure Kids". I went into a full on laughing fit that lasted a solid 10-minutes while I imagined people dressed as chicken nuggs.
And at the time, I 100% agreed with this guy
But then I finally calmed down and read the whole article and now I'm honestly freaked out.
**Before you continue reading, just know that there is some disturbing content below.**
Apparently pedophiles are creating fake social media accounts of chicken nuggets, ice cream, and other random things. One even created an account pretending to be a ROAD (yes, a road) outside of a school.
Once they've created these accounts, they'll follow/add/friend request kids on social media in hopes of them accepting the request. Now at first, I was like "WTF why are these kids accepting their friend requests", but then a coworker mentioned that they probably accept the request thinking its just a funny joke or meme and honestly, I probably would have done the same as a kid.
Some of these creeps are just following the kids so that they can get information and photos from their profiles (still creepy AF), while others are actually contacting the kids via social media. In one case, a girl was contacted through Musical.ly, an app where you can create videos of yourself lipsyncing along to popular songs. The man messaged the young girl telling her that he could get her more likes if she sang the song again, but in her underwear, which is just disgusting.
From what I can tell, this is only happening in the UK, but given that it is done via social media, it is possible that it could make its way to the US. Parents - keep tabs on what your kids are doing online! Something that may seem small and like a silly joke could turn into something much more serious.
For more on the story, click here.