We're not selling it yet because it's still in its testing phase, but I believe we'll make it there someday after we finalize it.
Scan this QR code. You can get on the waiting list for the game. As you can see, the characters in the game are people who look like them which is also very important. It's multicultural too because that's the real world.
So what about -- yeah, we probably should have a separate session to understand the game.
But if you can tell us, like I asked him, what one thing or two things you wished could be different that we may or may not be able to, but it will give us some food for thought?
The one or two things I wish could be different is that certain things about I would say some history to me, certain things, some history could change in a way that we could look back and be like this is what we shouldn't do, and this is what we should look on. Because if we realize that if we repeat the same mistakes, like the same thing is going to happen. So if we look upon that and actually just think about it, we could really just prevent those.
That's a great suggestion for all of us to do to reflect back and see how do we go forward not making the same mistakes. I'll open the floor to my colleagues. This is Councilmember Gauthier whose district Level Up is in.
Yes. I don't have a question. Just wanted to thank you all for being here. And thanks, Pastor Aaron, for all of the work that you do. And thanks to the young people for coming to City Hall and talking to us about what more we could be doing to create a safe space for you all because there's nothing like hearing it directly from young people what young people actually need. And I'm really proud to have you in my district. I visited Level Up several times and definitely think of it as a model for how we create safe spaces where kids can both learn and have fun. Every time I walk into Level Up, it is apparent that everybody's having a ball and that young people really do want to be there. So you've built something special that I hope we can replicate across the city. And thank you so much.
Thank you so much. We're going to have the next panel come up, but I wanted to really thank you from the bottom of my heart. And we're going to have more conversations. I just want to let you know so be ready. Once we've digested this whole hearing, we'll be coming back to have more conversations. So thank you very much. And, Mr. Sham, if you would call up the next and last panel. Thank you.
Dr. Aunshul Rege, Professor, Department of Criminal Justice, Director of CARE Lab, Temple University; and Khari McKie, Program Director, Community Evening Resource Centers, Juvenile Justice Center. (Witnesses approached witness table.)
We want to make sure they want to keep coming back. All right. Welcome. Thank you for your patience. Please state your name and begin your testimony.
Sure. Dr. Aunshul Rege. And I just want to say good morning, Councilmembers. And again, thank you for the opportunity to speak today in support of this important resolution. So I am a Professor at Temple University and I direct the CARE Lab where we focus on cybersecurity and human behavior. And through our partnership with the Juvenile Justice Center of Philadelphia, we work directly with youth through the Community Evening Resource Center, through hands-on cybersecurity and digital hygiene programs at Temple. We're trying to do the bridge the town and the gown divide through our programming. Since spring 2024, we partnered with JJC and have just completed our sixth cohort, working with approximately 80 youth across these sessions. This work is part of a broader, federally funded community outreach and education effort focused on strengthening cybersecurity awareness and resilience among youth. So our programming covers a range of topics, including online gaming safety, cyber bullying, sextortion and the risks of digital communication, deepfakes and disinformation, privacy and surveillance, digital footprints, scams, social media, algorithms and the influencer cultures, and the role of AI in shaping the future of cybercrime. In our work, one of the most important things we emphasize is that online grooming is not simply about exposure to harmful content. It is fundamentally about manipulation. And there's actually a concept for this term in my discipline. It's called social engineering, where you try to manipulate the person in front of you to try to get them to do something that they otherwise would not do. So this is how do we translate this concept into different demographic spaces specifically for the youth. So our goal in this program is to ensure that youth are not just aware of the risks, but are equipped with practical tools that they are armed with information that they can recognize red flags. They have a plan for how to respond and know what steps to take if something feels wrong. In this space, knowledge and preparation become their strongest form of protection. Through our programming, we have seen that when youth are given the tools to recognize these patterns, when they understand how manipulation works, they become significantly more aware, more cautious and more empowered to respond. And importantly, and Mr. McKie will talk about this, they carry that knowledge back to their families and communities. But what I've found particularly useful for me is that these programs are spaces of mutual learning. So as youth open up about their experiences, we gain insight into emerging risks and behaviors that may not even be widely recognized yet. And this allows us to continuously adapt and develop more relevant, customized content when we're hearing it directly from the population that we are creating this content for, which is exactly what you had mentioned a couple of minutes ago. So it also, I think, reinforces the importance of listening to youth and meeting them where they are, because their lived experiences are essential to designing effective prevention strategies. So I'll end with this one critical takeaway: Prevention cannot rely solely on restricting platforms or reacting after harm occurs. It must include education that helps young people recognize manipulation in realtime. Thank you.
Thank you for that. Please state your name and begin your testimony. MR. McKIE: My name is Khari McKie. I'm a Program Director for the Juvenile Justice Center, the Northwest District for our Community Evening Resource Center. Our Community Resource Center is a safe space for young people age 10 to 17. m. , so we're pretty much a safe haven for young people for afterschool time and evening programming. One of the things that we really groomed ourselves on was that we do a lot of gaming, we have a lot of social media activity and we do a lot of computer work at our program. Part of the programming was or some of the critical issues that we faced was that we had a lot of fights and activities that was going on, but a lot of it came from a lot of inappropriate social media activity, things of that nature. But then over time, we figured out talking to our Executive Director was what is a way that we could figure out a way to impact our young people outside of our program and outside of school, that we can prevent some of these issues that they have in their home, in their community, at school. So we came up -- we met with Dr. Rege and then, you know, here we are today with the Temple CARE Lab. So over the past two years, we've partnered with Temple University's CARE Lab to provide digital hygiene and cybersecurity education to our youth. We serve each semester, our young people participate in a six-week workshop series designed to help them better understand how to safely navigate online, the online world under the leadership of Dr. Rege and her students. What makes this program especially impactful is the space it creates for honest conversations. The workshops are not lecture-based. They're more interactive and informative where they can do things and communicate to each other. So while we're trying to educate our young people, they're actually educating us on things that we need to do and how we can be more preventative for the work that we're doing. As a staff member, I think it was great for me to be able to sit in and watch them interact with each other and the staff. But also just like from Level Up, we also get to hear directly from the young people about what's going on in the community and what they're experiencing online. They talk about -- and in those sessions, they get an opportunity to talk about, you know, being approached by strangers while gaming or on social media platforms. And then they also share instances where they're asked for money or their personal information is being asked for, and then even how to move these conversations off the platform and into their regular day. Also through these workshops, you learn how to recognize those warning signs and how to tell if a link is safe, how to protect their personal information, how to disengage from unsafe situations. They also learn the ability about identity theft. Many have shared that someone close to them have been affected, which makes these lessons very real. We also introduced topics that Dr. Rege said with deepfakes and digital manipulation. But the most important part is that after each session and after each workshop that we go to, you participate in an interactive quiz that allowed them to demonstrate what they've learned and what we've talked about. So this reinforces the information in a way that is engaging and helps prevent further activity for things that's going on. One of the most powerful outcomes we've seen is how you take this information home. They talk to their parents, grandparents, friends and other family members, helping them understand risks like scams, unsafe links and identity theft. In many ways, they become educators within their own families and friend circles.
So one of the biggest things for us is that we can talk about prevention, we can talk about all of these different things, but without our young people or going back to their community, I know you referenced how do we work with young people who when they're in a structured environment can excel, but then when they go back home to those environments, how do they be able to be successful. So they will be the teacher, they will be the one who can share the information and share the things that they learned with us to continue to create a safe space in their home, create a safe space in the classroom and then create a safe space online. So I thank you for this opportunity and if you have any questions.
Well, thank you. I believe we have one more witness or she's not here yet?
We'll ask questions all at once and we'll try to be brief. I know the hour is late and our stenographer has been sitting here all day. We'll just take the -- this is our final panel. So we'll take your testimony. (Witness approached witness table.)
Good afternoon. Lisa Barrimond. I'm the Executive Director at the Support Center for Child Advocates. Good afternoon, Chairperson and members of City Council. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be here today. As I said, I serve as the Executive Director of the Support Center for Child Advocates, but I am appearing today on behalf of Marcia Hopkins. She is one of our child advocates, social workers and the project manager of Project PROTECT, which stands for Philadelphia's Response Outreach to End Child Trafficking. She's unable to be here today, but I am sharing her words and to offer testimony in strong support of Resolution 260150. The Support Center for Child Advocates provides legal representation and social service advocacy to more than 900 children and youth involved in Philadelphia's dependency system each year. We also are appointed as a child advocate in partnership with the District Attorney's Office for child victims of crime. Through Project PROTECT, we specialize in serving child victims of human trafficking and youth at high risk of exploitation. In Fiscal Year '25 alone, our team represented 21 confirmed child victims of human 22 trafficking. We respectfully 23 submit this testimony in strong support of Resolution 260150, which calls for an examination of the role that social media and gaming platforms play in the online grooming of youth. Online grooming is not hypothetical. It is a rapidly growing and evolving threat. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, reports of online enticement, one of the clearest indicators of grooming, increased from 292,951 to 518,720 in just the first half of 2025 alone. That is a dramatic surge for one year. 3 million reports of suspected child exploitation in 2025, underscoring the scale of online harm impacting children nationwide. org. These figures reflect what we continue to observe in practice. Exploitation is increasingly initiated through online platforms. Social media and gaming environments provide direct, often unmonitored access to children, allowing offenders to build, trust, manipulate and isolate. Youth grooming is a deliberate and calculated process, one that can escalate into coercion, exploitation and trafficking. There is a well- established connection between online grooming, human trafficking and missing youth. National data indicates that more than 500 reports of suspected child sex trafficking were made in 2025, a 323% increase from the prior year, and that in missing children reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children were likely victims of sex trafficking. That data comes from Internet Safety 101 and data. Many youth who go missing, particularly those who run away, are contacted and exploited within hours, frequently through online platforms. Certain populations of youth are disproportionately vulnerable. Research and advocacy from Rights for Girls highlights that 60% of child sex trafficking victims recovered in a nationwide FBI operation were children from foster care or group homes, demonstrating the strong nexus between system involvement and exploitation. Additionally, the vast majority of identified child sex trafficking victims are girls, with some data indicating as high as 80% to 90%. Youth involved in child welfare and juvenile justice systems as well as those experiencing homelessness face compounded risks. Prior trauma, instability, disconnection from school, poverty, unmet emotional needs significantly increase vulnerability to grooming and exploitation. Homeless and runaway youth in particular, are at heightened risk, often targeted by traffickers who exploit their immediate needs for safety, housing and connection. For these reasons, awareness and prevention are critical. It is essential that parents, caregivers, educators and professionals understand how grooming occurs, including tactics such as flattery, secrecy, gift- giving and manipulation, and how quickly it can escalate.
Equally important is the need to invest in youth-centered prevention strategies. Young people must have access to developmentally appropriate, culturally responsive education on online safety, trafficking risks and exploitation tactics. They must be empowered to recognize warning signs, understand that exploitation is never their fault and know how to safely seek help through our Youth Survivor Advisory Board. We have observed that peer-led, survivor- informed education is among the most effective prevention strategies. When youth receive information from individuals with lived experience, it increases engagement, reduces stigma, and strengthens their ability to identify risks and seek support. At the same time, we must strengthen protective factors, safe and stable housing, supportive relationships with trusted adults, access to mental health services, and meaningful youth engagement all reduce vulnerability to exploitation. This also requires sustained investment in youth programming and family supports, because when we defund programs for young people and weaken safety nets for families, we significantly increase risk. Young people have consistently expressed the need for safe, engaging and enriching opportunities that connect them to positive peers, mentors, and support healing from trauma. And in the absence of these opportunities, gaps emerge that traffickers and exploiters actively target. When young people feel connected, valued and supported, they are less susceptible to grooming. We must be a city that prioritizes keeping families together, safe, healthy and well. This resolution 6 represents an important step toward accountability and prevention. It creates an opportunity to more fully examine how technology is being used to harm children, while also identifying strategies to strengthen safeguards, enhance platform responsibility and improve coordination across systems. Philadelphia has an opportunity to lead by recognizing that online grooming is not separate from trafficking. It is often the point of entry. We respectfully urge City Council to adopt Resolution 22 260150 and to continue advancing policies that protect the safety, dignity and well-being of Philadelphia's children. Thank you.
Thank you so much. We'll have a few questions and then we are going to break shortly -- for how long a break?