”

Whiting: As phones get smarter, bullying can get worse, cybercop says

A combination of handed-down smartphones, summer break and a new wave of shadowy apps makes the next three months especially dangerous for children, warns a nationally recognized cybercop.

Understand, it’s not just pedophiles and pimps preying on children. It’s children preying on children.

Despite parental controls, says Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy Clay Cranford, children as young as 9 years old go to war with one another with tragic consequences they are too young to anticipate.

Cranford, given the 2015 National Bullying Prevention Award from the School Safety Advocacy Council, fires up his tablet and the recent case of Britney unfolds.

Britney, not her real name, was a fifth-grader in a middle-class home in South County. Mom got a new iPhone and gave her 9-year-old daughter the old phone. Secretly, Britney created an Instagram account and agreed to set one up for her best friend. But the girls had a falling out.

Britney went into her friend’s account, masquerading as the girl. “I like to pole dance,” Britney wrote.

It got worse. The online feeding frenzy was savage – from 9- and 10-year-olds.

When Cranford first saw the young victim, “she was crying, bent over, coming to pieces.”

The deputy talked to the parents and children and managed to restore order. But, he points out, there are thousands of similar incidents every day across this nation, and most remain hidden in the underground world of adolescent and teen social media.

Cranford reports scores of parents in the past few years handed off their old smartphones to their children, many in elementary school. “It’s like handing a 16-year-old the keys to a Ferrari.”

But he also says that with diligence, family time and learning about the new smartphone universe and the a ...