372: How Traffickers Use TikTok the Same Way Brands Do

Christa Wiens joins Dr. Sandie Morgan as they explore why the answer to online exploitation isn’t the perfect parental control — it’s helping young people recognize manipulation, build critical thinking skills, and know who they can safely turn to when something feels off.

Christa Wiens

Christa Wiens is the Executive Director of the Central Valley Justice Coalition, a California-based nonprofit focused on preventing human trafficking through education, outreach, and community collaboration. She has spent over a decade in the anti-trafficking field, beginning her career with the Justice Coalition as an Education Coordinator, where she developed and delivered training programs that reached thousands of youth and adults across the Central Valley. She stepped into the Executive Director role in 2022 and has continued to expand the organization’s reach and impact.

Christa is the author of the Understanding Human Trafficking series and has contributed to multiple publications on trafficking awareness and prevention. Her work frequently intersects with faith communities, education systems, and local stakeholders, where she advocates for proactive, trauma-informed approaches and stronger preventive frameworks. She holds a Master of Arts in Ministry, Leadership, and Culture from Fresno Pacific Biblical Seminary.

Key Points

Traffickers have adopted the exact same cross-platform influencer model that legitimate brands use — and parents who don’t recognize it are missing how exploitation actually operates online.
Looking for the “right app” or “right setting” to protect kids is chasing the wind; what’s actually needed are better relational tools for conversation, not better technical controls.
Social media platforms are engineered to maximize engagement, which makes our kids the product — and platforms like TikTok deliberately change what they show users the moment they turn 18.
The most effective protective posture isn’t imposing rules but asking open-ended hypothetical questions (“What would you do if…?”) so kids see parents as safe, curious allies rather than authorities who will punish them.
Building agency means using the language of “when you make a mistake” rather than “if” — signaling that mistakes are expected, that kids won’t be abandoned when they happen, and that they can always come back to a trusted adult.
The driver’s permit is a powerful analogy for devices: we don’t hand teenagers keys and say “best of luck” — we graduate access gradually, narrate the dangers, and teach them to recognize the red flags, like content that makes them feel big, urgent emotions.
Youth in foster care and system involvement are especially vulnerable online because they often lack a trusted adult — equipping care providers with conversation tools and connecting youth to resources like NCMEC’s Take It Down are critical protective steps.
Young people who receive trafficking prevention education report a profound sense of relief — they knew something was off but had no language for it — and once equipped, they become peer educators and advocates in their own communities.

Resources

Transcript

[00:00:00] Christa Wiens: When we come in and try to say, “Hey, if anybody reaches out to you, here’s what I want you to do.”

[00:00:05] We actually shut down their thinking and we miss the opportunity for connection.

[00:00:09]

[00:00:15] Elisha: Parents are exhausted trying to keep up with every new app, trend, and privacy update. This episode explores why the answer may not be finding the perfect parental control, but helping young people recognize manipulation, build critical thinking skills, and know who they can safely talk to when something feels off online.

[00:00:32] Hi, I’m Elisha. I’m a student here at Vanguard and I help produce the show. Today, Sandie talks with Christa Wiens, executive director of Central Valley Justice Coalition and author of the Understanding Human Trafficking Series. And now here’s their conversation.

[00:00:47]

[00:00:49] Sandie Morgan: I am so happy today to have my dear friend and long-time colleague in the anti-human trafficking space. Christa Wiens, she’s the executive director of the Central Valley Justice Coalition, and she’s been doing human trafficking prevention for a very long time.

[00:01:14] We’re probably not even gonna go into how long we’ve been doing this together, right, Christa?

[00:01:19] Christa Wiens: Right. Yeah. A while.

[00:01:22] Sandie Morgan: Yes. Yes. And you also have done some writing. What is the Understanding Human Trafficking Series about?

[00:01:33] Christa Wiens: Oh yeah. We’ve created several classes that we’ve taught for many years now. We have a 101, 201, 301 series that educates all sectors of our community about the realities of human trafficking, and particularly the places where we often overlook trafficking or mislabel it.

[00:01:56] Sandie Morgan: And so much of media makes it seem more extreme or sensationalized, and when we can’t see what’s right next to us, that’s not good for the victims. We need to be able to identify. Okay, so the last time I saw you was in Sacramento at the PACT 2025 Reignite Convening. And your topic there was Trafficking in the Age of TikTok.

[00:02:34] How do we keep up? I loved that topic and I’m curious what made you choose that title?

[00:02:44] Christa Wiens: Oh, well, we at the Justice Coalition work with youth quite a bit, and what we were recognizing is the rapidly changing pace of online exploitation. And not only do we work with youth, but I’m also a mother. I have kids that range from 12 to 19, and I am right in the thick of it myself. I am very aware of the challenges that parents face and teachers and all caregivers trying to keep our kids safe, but really, truly feeling like we are just chasing after them.

[00:03:20] Sandie Morgan: And it seems like as soon as I figure out a setting that is going to keep my kids safer in my community, there’s a new something.

[00:03:31] Christa Wiens: Yes. Your phone updates and now all of your settings are changed.

[00:03:35] Sandie Morgan: Oh yeah, there you go. Or the kids are passing around their little secrets about how to override what looks like a great parental privacy tool. We are talking about TikTok in ways that I never expected to, but when I mention TikTok, every kid in the room knows what I’m talking about.

[00:04:07] The idea of TikTok and trafficking — seems like this is a theme that we’re seeing recruiting happening on. We’re seeing exploitation, sextortion. Are those assumptions accurate?

[00:04:28] Christa Wiens: Yeah, absolutely. At the end of the day, trafficking is a capitalistic endeavor. People are trying to make money, right? And so when we think about all the things that influencers do — cross-platforming, having all of these multiple accounts that drive people to their website — in a regular industry, we’re so adapted to that, and we’re failing to recognize that it’s actually working the same way in the sex industry, and often in ways that prey particularly on our young people.

[00:05:02] Sandie Morgan: So the whole influencer model of monetizing — how many likes, that sort of thing — has driven our youth into this same wave, almost, of trying to compete. How do we, as parents, respond and keep our kids safe?

[00:05:31] Christa Wiens: Yeah, that’s absolutely right. So the question is, how do we respond? This is the challenge because, as you mentioned, it keeps changing. And if we’re gonna keep looking for a simple way to have a proper setting or get the right app that will help us monitor our kids, we will continue to feel like we are chasing the wind.

[00:05:58] Really what we’re wanting to do is help parents and caregivers recognize the reality, so they understand the urgency for this conversation, but also develop better tools for conversations with young people. It really needs to be rooted in relationship and educated conversations.

[00:06:19] Sandie Morgan: So I don’t need to learn how to run an algorithm.

[00:06:24] Christa Wiens: Right. No, you don’t. You might need to know that they exist and that they are strategic and that they are targeted. Because that’s a piece of the puzzle that people don’t always understand. Even that reality — when I open my social media app, now you and I probably aren’t using TikTok as much, or using Facebook and Instagram and the other things, but if I open my Instagram profile right now, I can assume that everyone’s seeing my same feed.

[00:06:54] But the truth is, if you open yours, your ads will be all different. Right. All of the photos and things that are pushed to you will be different, and that’s no different for our kids. So we wanna understand the reality of an algorithm so that we can outsmart it and help our kids recognize that they are, in some sense, being treated as the product in this conversation so that they can push back.

[00:07:19] Sandie Morgan: Explain that. Why.

[00:07:21] Christa Wiens: Yeah, so Instagram, TikTok, all of these profiles — and we haven’t even mentioned OnlyFans and things like that — but other social media sites, they make money by getting people to stay engaged because that’s how they sell advertising. Right. So their goal is to keep you on as long as possible and to get you to click to other things so that those marketers will pay them money.

[00:07:50] So actually what happens is that our kids become the product that’s being sold here so that people can make money off of their engagement. And an example is actually my 17-year-old — he just turned 18 a couple of weeks ago. He has been on TikTok for a little bit. We’ve done all the educating and conversations, and nothing’s perfect anyway.

[00:08:14] But he had been on TikTok and he said to me, after about a week of being 18, he said, “Mom, I think you’ll be proud of this, although I don’t think you’ll be happy about it, but I recognize that the minute I turned 18, the ads changed on TikTok.”

[00:08:32] Sandie Morgan: Oh wow.

[00:08:34] Christa Wiens: And so you see how getting our kids to engage with teen accounts and things like that — they bill it as though this is a favor they’ve done for us.

[00:08:44] They’ve put in all of these safeguards and “you could trust us.” But the reality is they’re just trying to get to kids younger so that when they turn 18 and become consumers, they already have them in their grasp.

[00:08:59] Sandie Morgan: So I think what we’re talking about here is the attention economy.

[00:09:04] Christa Wiens: Yeah.

[00:09:05] Sandie Morgan: Let’s look at that because when we start talking about kids as products, a lot of people go straight to being groomed and sextortion and predators trying to take your child. And while those things happen and we need to have safeguards in place, the disruption in normal adolescent development

[00:09:34] is a critical issue. As a parent, I want my child to grow up with good, strong, critical thinking skills. I want my child to have a wonder and sense of creativity, not just be like everybody else and click, click, click, click. So let’s talk about the attention economy. What are the content makers, the advertisers — what are they after?

[00:10:13] Christa Wiens: Yeah. I mentioned this term, cross-platforming. If you think about maybe your favorite brands, you’ve probably seen them on Instagram and on Facebook and on their website, and maybe see some celebrity endorsements of that brand. And all of these other sites work the same way. So one example would be OnlyFans and the Bop House.

[00:10:44] Now that might be a new term,

[00:10:46] but so OnlyFans is a site that works like social media, but they sell pornography and it is billed as being self-made pornography. Now that’s obviously not content that they can put on Instagram. But what they can do is create a house full of these OnlyFans content creators.

[00:11:09] They call it the Bop House, and they can create Instagram profiles that do meet the qualifications for Instagram, and then they can create these reels and stories and things that draw people to their profiles that will eventually lead them to the OnlyFans site. So now I’m not only paying attention to you for 30 seconds in this reel.

[00:11:33] I’m getting invested in you as a storyteller, and I am subscribing to your brand so that eventually I can go to the site that really makes you the most money or makes the person who’s benefiting the most money.

[00:11:49] Sandie Morgan: And you just used a term that has been super hot on Instagram in leadership training — the idea that storytelling is the way to engage an audience. And so when I hear kids talking, they do say, “Did you see that story?” And then they stay there because they wanna get the next installment, they want to read the next screen, the next reel, all of those things.

[00:12:28] And again, that becomes part of the attention economy because the marketers wanna keep you on that page so you’ll at least see the ads even if you don’t click, because they get money for every time eyes scan across that page and even more money every time somebody clicks. And if they click through or they stay longer — that attention economy — they are buying our attention.

[00:13:06] Christa Wiens: That’s exactly right.

[00:13:07] Sandie Morgan: I have other things I’d like my kids to be paying attention to. Right. Yeah. I can’t get him to do the laundry.

[00:13:14] Yeah. Yeah. And learn how to cook or whatever. So when parents and adults are talking to young people about TikTok, what are some guidelines for those conversations?

[00:13:34] Christa Wiens: Yeah, good question. I really encourage open-ended questions. It can be tempting for us as parents to come in and guide the conversation. We want to, because we want them to arrive at the conclusion that we’ve arrived at. But really what we’re after is connection, so that when something happens — when they turn 18 and their feed changes, when someone reaches out to them and asks them for pictures —

[00:14:03] they will come to us because they know that we will be curious and supportive. So that’s the posture I encourage people to take. I really like to use scenarios that are a little depersonalized. They may be rooted in real situations, but I encourage families and educators, foster parents to have conversations about “what would you do if.”

[00:14:28] What would you do if someone you know received photos sent to them through TikTok that they weren’t asking for? And then just see what your kids come up with. Because the truth is they’re probably not gonna come to you first with this question, because they think maybe you don’t even know what they’re talking about.

[00:14:50] And secondly, they might get in trouble, and they don’t wanna get in trouble, and they don’t want you to take away their device or their platform or their video game. So they’re gonna try to solve it on their own. But if we can come to them first with a hypothetical scenario, then we demonstrate that we do know what’s happening in the world and that we are okay with looking at multiple solutions to a problem.

[00:15:16] So when I ask kids questions like this, some would say, “Well, I’ll just block them and report them on the app.” Others would say, “Well, I would go and tell the school resource officer,” or “I would tell a parent,” right. There are lots of ways that you could handle a situation, and when we come in and try to say, “Hey, if anybody reaches out to you, here’s what I want you to do.”

[00:15:36] We actually shut down their thinking and we miss the opportunity for connection.

[00:15:41] Sandie Morgan: So I think I remember taking notes in your workshop that we don’t want to focus on just imposing rules, but we want to build agency. So what are the building blocks of agency?

[00:16:00] Christa Wiens: It starts with curiosity. So allowing kids to be curious, to give feedback, and then for us to give them feedback on those decisions as well. We need to have a little information, right? We want them to have some key information. We also want them to know that it is safe and expected that they will make mistakes.

[00:16:26] So we can’t give people agency if we’re not willing to let them do it wrong. Whatever wrong might be.

[00:16:34] Sandie Morgan: No. I want them to get it right.

[00:16:37] Christa Wiens: I know, and right is exactly what I imagined, right?

[00:16:41] Sandie Morgan: Mm.

[00:16:42] Christa Wiens: Yes. Yeah. So a big piece of giving agency is allowing them to make a mistake or to do it differently. We really encourage people to tell kids, “When you make a mistake, I’m here to help.”

[00:16:57] It’s my job to keep you safe. And we like the language of “when” — when you make a mistake — as opposed to “if.” Because everyone makes them and we set the stage that this is just a piece of learning.

[00:17:10] Sandie Morgan: Okay, so when you make a mistake, but to help you not make mistakes, can I recommend to my 14-year-old that you might wanna use this set of teen privacy settings?

[00:17:24] Christa Wiens: Absolutely. And I am also not advocating that we should have no rules or expectations for our kids. I do. There are certain permissions in my home, certain things that are allowed, certain things that are not — or not for this age group. I’m an educator by trade. We know child development.

[00:17:46] We know that things that are appropriate for a 15-year-old are not appropriate for a 4-year-old. So it’s good for us as adults to set those parameters. It’s really important. It keeps our kids safe. And yes, it is good for us to say, “Hey, I am aware that this is an issue.” So an example would be that there are lots of influencers in what’s called the Manosphere right now.

[00:18:11] The

[00:18:11] Sandie Morgan: Oh, talk to me about that. I know other parents are overwhelmed too. Yeah, it is a little overwhelming. I think it’s overwhelming because we recognize all these people have existed and we didn’t even recognize the kind of influence they were having. So now we’re hearing about Andrew Tate and Clavicular and all of the other folks that have maybe been influencing our kids, and we didn’t even recognize it.

[00:18:39] Christa Wiens: And so it can send parents into fear mode. And what we want instead is to encourage them to move towards connection mode so that we come to our kid and say, “I just learned about these things. Are you familiar?” And now, back to that agency conversation, we allow our children to teach us something. And then we get to come back and say, “Hey, so here are the concerns that I have — knowing what I know, having lived the life that I live.

[00:19:08] These are the things that I worry about. Do you worry about those? And what do you think we could do about that?” And we can create a plan together. That plan might include, “We’re gonna put some restrictions so that you can only watch things that are rated a certain thing,” or “You only get 30 minutes on your social media a day.”

[00:19:26] Different families decide different things, but restrictions are important. And restrictions being made in conversation with our kids is really healthy.

[00:19:35] Sandie Morgan: And I’ve started using the language of guardrails.

[00:19:40] Christa Wiens: Yeah.

[00:19:40] Sandie Morgan: I love that language because when you’re going just a little faster than the speed limit recommends on that mountain road and you come around the curve and you suddenly see the reflector on that guardrail, you automatically hit your brakes and start slowing down.

[00:20:04] And I want the youth that are in my care, that are in my community to know how to slow down when they see that danger signal. And I think it isn’t fearmongering to teach them about what that looks like. And in your workshop, you had people’s eyes absolutely bug-eyed.

[00:20:38] Oh my gosh, really, Christa? You showed us what was out there. Are you that direct with the kids?

[00:20:47] Christa Wiens: Sometimes, depending on the age and the relationship, yeah, sometimes I might be. A lot of times it’s enough to give a hint — like I just mentioned, some content creators. Now I don’t have to talk about what it is that they’re saying or showing, but I’ll get a sense in a room full of high schoolers which kids recognize those names pretty fast. Right. That gives me a clue. And your analogy of the guardrails is wonderful. The analogy I have been using is the driver’s permit. When we have kids that are ready to start driving, we don’t hand them the keys and say, “Best of luck. I’m sure you’ll be fine.” Right. We give them — they have to take the driver’s training course, they have to do some driving with a paid instructor.

[00:21:40] They get a learner’s permit. They move to the license. And even with the license — when my 16-year-old had their license, I wasn’t like, “Have a good trip to New York.” I was, “Hey, enjoy the side roads on your way to school,” right?

[00:21:55] Sandie Morgan: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:57] Christa Wiens: When we hand kids devices, we really need to have a similar approach.

[00:22:02] We have instead been handing them a tablet at four years old and, truthfully, hoping for the best. And what I hear you advocating for is more of what I’m also advocating for — this gradual release into independence where instead of saying, “Here you go, the world’s your oyster,” we instead say, “Actually, I’m gonna teach you how to use this.”

[00:22:26] I’m gonna talk to you about the dangers. Just like when I’m teaching kids to drive, which is a terrifying experience,

[00:22:33] Sandie Morgan: Ooh. Yeah.

[00:22:34] Christa Wiens: I’m also talking through with them why I signal when I signal and why I am stopping behind the crosswalk. Right? I’m saying these things out loud. I’m helping them notice that the ball that rolls into the street is a sign that there’s a kid there.

[00:22:50] These are the same kinds of things we wanna help kids walk through in technology — to say, “Look, these are the dangers that exist, and like the guardrails, we need to slow down when we start to see that.” For example, somebody is really helping me feel big emotions, right? Making me very angry, making me very afraid.

[00:23:11] These are actually big red flags that the content is intended to somehow manipulate me, and I should maybe be curious about what’s going on behind that.

[00:23:22] Sandie Morgan: And that’s the time: when this happens, you can come and we can talk about it.

[00:23:29] Christa Wiens: That’s right.

[00:23:30] Sandie Morgan: Your kids are so lucky to have you, Christa.

[00:23:34] Christa Wiens: Oh, I’m pretty lucky too.

[00:23:36] Sandie Morgan: So I also end up in communities where we have youth who have been in system care — they’ve been taken out of an unsafe environment, and now they may have some trauma, they may feel socially isolated, and much more vulnerable, and not have

[00:24:07] that trusted adult who says, “When this happens, come to me.” So what do you recommend then?

[00:24:17] Christa Wiens: That’s right. We also work with lots of foster youth. And so a piece of what we do is helping equip the social workers and the care providers to have some of these same conversations. But with the youth, we really also want to make sure that they are creating safety plans. Now we think of safety plans sometimes —

[00:24:40] yeah, we think of those as really physical threats, but a safety plan can also be an awareness that something might be a danger online. And when that danger occurs, what are my options? Who can I contact? Where do I report it? We wanna make sure that they have tools like the NCMEC Take It Down resource, so that if they find — maybe they don’t have an adult that they can come to — they can go to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and get assistance taking images off of the internet.

[00:25:16] That’s huge. So trying to help point them to resources is another big tool.

[00:25:22] Sandie Morgan: They are so tech savvy and will click and go through to those links. We just need to make sure they know about them. Where are you seeing young people demonstrate that kind of resilience and even wisdom in how they keep their friend group — which is their community — safe?

[00:25:48] Christa Wiens: What’s so wonderful when we do group classes with young people is they are so excited. They feel refreshed to have adults talk to them about these things, because mostly what they’re doing is talking to their peers, or honestly to the person online that reached out to them. They don’t know who to talk to.

[00:26:09] So the fact that we are able to begin the conversation, our experience has been that there’s just this sense of relief. “Oh, now I can ask my questions. Now I can have a conversation. I knew something was off here, but nobody was helping me see it.” So when we do classes at schools, when we’ve done community classes, it is so interesting and exciting to hear the kids engage with each other.

[00:26:36] And then they feel empowered because now this question that’s been nagging them in the back of their mind, they finally have an answer to. And what we see is they feel motivated to make sure others have that answer as well. So we see students that have launched clubs on campus. We see youth who are making sure that their younger siblings have this information.

[00:26:59] Making sure that their community is safe. And I always tell kids, people are gonna listen to you before they listen to me. So you’re the one that really has the influence.

[00:27:08] Sandie Morgan: Yes. And of course now this needs to be intergenerational. Every single day there is another story of a grandparent who thought their grandson was calling and sent money through Venmo or something, and it was fraud online. It was a scam. And seniors are on their phones, and I know that the ads on my Instagram feed, Christa, are different than the ads on yours.

[00:27:46] We can talk about that privately, offline, but the idea that this has to be a family conversation — and it’s definitely something to talk about at Sunday dinner after church with three or four generations, because this attention economy is to get your attention so that I can get your money or something of value from you.

[00:28:23] And so I love how you started this conversation with the aspect of being a product. And so my closing question is: if a listener only remembers one thing from this conversation, what do you want them to do before the next time they have a conversation with a young person about technology?

[00:28:56] Christa Wiens: Oh, I would love for them to embrace curiosity.

[00:29:00] Sandie Morgan: Oh.

[00:29:02] Christa Wiens: To think, what do I wish I understood and how can I invite a young person to teach me? And then doesn’t that shift the way that we protect one another?

[00:29:17] Sandie Morgan: Wow. That is such a good answer. That’s perfect. Thank you, Christa, for being on the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast.

[00:29:28] Christa Wiens: Thank you for having me. What an honor.

[00:29:31]

[00:29:32] Elisha: Thank you to Christa for helping us understand why digital safety has to include curiosity, not just control. When adults ask better questions, young people are more likely to build agency, recognize risk, and ask for help. Listeners, if you love this conversation, make sure you check out our website at endinghumantrafficking.org for tons of in-depth show notes and other resources.

[00:29:54] If you’d love to help us grow this podcast, you can start by sharing this episode with someone and connecting with us on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. And as always, thank you for listening.

[00:30:03]