As a parent, you hope that you teach your children enough about internet safety growing up. When they start making their own decisions, hopefully they do so in a way that keeps useful tools in mind. Many teenagers have horror stories about creeps on social media when growing up with the internet. With so many things accessible right in our very hands, it’s difficult to find somebody who has not encountered a creep. One woman in New Hampshire shares her horror story regarding an older boyfriend and how it could have ended badly.
User @sof_ttaco shared a personal story on TikTok in response to her 13-year-old sister having her phone taken away from her by her parents. She said they took the phone because she downloaded WhatsApp even though they told her not to. OP said that this prompted her to tell her story about the time she was a teenager and dated a much older man she met online. She captioned the video, “I had a 28 year old boyfriend when I was 14 on Kik Messenger” and, as a parent, this is enough to send shivers down your spine.
As OP remembers, a much older man by the name of Tony added her on Kik Messenger. She said that they spoke on the app for weeks and exchanged photos of each other often. Eventually, they coordinated to meet up. The meeting place? A trail that was up the road from her house in the middle of some woods by a very specific tree. Being a teenager and not quite understanding how bad this could turn out, she decided to meet him one night after her parents were asleep.
OP goes on to say that she met Tony and he showered her with hugs and kisses. She said she was “eating that s**t up like a gourmet meal” because an older man was showing her attention. After hanging out for a while, she was definitely starting to get creepy vibes but continued to follow him. Tony took her to a nearby river where they swung over the water on a rope swing. All of a sudden, the rope snapped and OP fell into the river. OP was swept down the river at fast speeds and hit her head on a rock, which knocked her unconscious.
At this point, OP wakes up but she’s in a daze. She heard something next to her and looked over, where she saw that Tony was digging a hole, presumably to bury her body. It hits OP at this point that this stranger she decided to meet up with thinks that she’s dead. When he comes after her to drag her into the hole, she kicks him in the abdomen. Then, she runs through the woods and back to her house in the pitch black.
Luckily, there’s a happy ending to the story, to some degree: OP makes it home safe. She locks her door and window and never hears from Tony again in teenhood. However, when she’s much older, he does try to friend her on Facebook. Because he knew where she lived, she dealt with the worry of him showing up one day after their meetup. That’s a lot of stress to put on a 14-year-old.
OP’s tale is enough to be a “teachable moment” for others, as she says. She goes on to say that she just wants to share her story as a way to teach internet safety. One commenter felt compelled to send the TikTok video to her teenage daughter. In response, she said she received, “’I still make you order my grilled cheese when we eat out – I promise I’m not bold enough to meet some random.’ Hopefully she means that.”
Another person shared, “You’re disconnected when you talk about it. I’m about 10 years older than you and I had an internet boyfriend who almost killed me and when I talk about it it’s like I’m talking about it happening to somebody else. I am so glad you made it out.” As the parent of young children who know the internet inside and out, it’s a scary story. This internet safety lesson isn’t not meant to be taken as a lecture but a learning experience for everybody. You always have to be on the lookout because it’s obvious that some people are too chill about endangering children.
