Protecting Children from Online Grooming
Our Vision
Children and young people’s experiences and perspectives are at the heart of understanding how to best keep them safe online. Together with our partners at Save the Children, we’re using cross-cultural and child-centred approaches to understand how diverse children recognise, experience, and respond to online grooming and solicitation.
To prevent Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (OCSEA), we’re exploring children’s perceptions of online grooming, as well as their help-seeking and protective behaviours. How do children think about online interactions with strangers, how do these thoughts inform what they do, and how do they manage an online relationship if they think it is becoming inappropriate? We are working towards a world where all children are safe from harm online.
Our Project Plan
We are using children's insights to improve the accessibility and effectiveness of online safety training programs, and to inform the policies and advocacy that prevents grooming and guides reporting and responses to OCSEA.
Using our novel and award-winning Distributed Data Generation (DDG) methodology, our team has trained and supported facilitators in Save the Children Country offices around the world to run participatory workshops.
The face-to-face and online participatory workshops took place in Australia, Cambodia, Colombia, Finland, Philippines, Kenya and South Africa between July and October 2023. Participants were from both rural and urban settings.
In total we heard from 597 children (aged 9 to 16 years old) across seven countries, about their views on OCSEA. The de-identified data is now being co-analysed with local researchers.
Our research findings will be shared with technology platforms and developers of online safety training programs to improve the effectiveness of their child safety efforts.
What Impact will this research have?
This research is supporting technology platforms to develop the most effective mechanisms possible for preventing, responding to, and reporting OCSEA. Our team’s work will also guide developers of online safety training programs towards more effective methods to teach children and young people to recognise, respond to and report attempted OCSEA, better protecting and empowering children against online harm and supporting their healthy use of technology.
Outputs
Further outputs will be added as they are created. These will include customisable communications for key stakeholders, like technology companies, researchers, and child workers.
Collaboration team
The research was conducted by the Young & Resilient Research Centre at Western Sydney and Save the Children.
Internal collaborators:
External collaborators
- Save the Children International Office
- Save the Children Country Offices: Colombia, Cambodia, Philippines, Kenya, South Africa, Finland and Australia.
Funding
This project is funded by the online safety investment vehicle Safe Online, as part of the Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund. Safe Online is the only global investment vehicle dedicated to keeping children safe in the digital world. Through investing in innovation and bringing key actors together, Safe Online helps shape a digital world that is safe and empowering for all children and young people, everywhere.
Streams
Period
January 2022 to December 2024
Contact: If you would like to get in contact with the Protecting Children from Online Grooming team, please email Dr Pavithra Rajan at p.rajan@westernsydney.edu.au
