Online Safety
Protect children without making them afraid to tell you.
Stay calm, preserve evidence and focus on safety—not punishment—when a child discloses something worrying.
Common warning signs
- Secret accounts, unexplained gifts or sudden contact with older people.
- Requests to move to encrypted or disappearing messages.
- Pressure for images, livestreams, location sharing or secrecy.
- Threats to share images or expose private conversations.
- Withdrawal, panic when notifications arrive or sudden sleep changes.
What to do first
- Thank the child for telling you and do not blame them.
- Stop contact and use platform blocking/reporting tools.
- Save usernames, URLs, dates and screenshots of messages. Do not forward sexual images.
- Review privacy, location and parental-control settings together.
- Report sexual grooming or exploitation to CEOP; call police if danger is immediate.
Talk about specific risks
Cover gaming chats, Roblox, Snapchat, TikTok, Discord, livestreaming, sextortion, pornography, AI-generated images, scams and sharing school or home locations.
