One in five children agrees to meet after virtual communication: what is wrong with online safety
The Internet has long become a whole universe for children and teenagers, but instead of an exciting space journey, it often turns out to be a landing in a zone of turbulence: cyberbullying, sexual predators, scammers, toxic communities, involvement in gambling or depressive trends. While adults argue about free speech, privacy and platform rights, the most vulnerable are left alone with a system that does not forgive naivety. But what is most impressive is the state’s passivity in this important issue, it either does not hear or pretends not to see. Any legislative initiatives and prevention are in the red, and there are almost no child protection tools. And while officials write rosy reports and count the likes of their Facebook posts, children are daily targeted in virtual traps.
Online trap: alarming statistics
autumn research, conducted by the non-governmental organization Dignity Online together with Proinsight Lab, became one of the most accurate attempts to look behind the veil of the online reality of Ukrainian children during the war. Experts tried not just to measure how much time children spend on the Internet, but to understand what exactly they encounter there and how dangerous it is. The study participants were 1799 children aged 10 to 17 from all regions of Ukraine, except temporarily occupied territories. This survey became a real signal about the danger that is sitting in children’s smartphones every day.
Three quarters of the surveyed children spend more than three hours on the Internet every day. Popular platforms YouTube, Telegram, TikTok, Viber, Instagram create a digital environment that has become a part of everyday life for children. There they study, communicate, seek support. But it is there that danger is waiting for them.
The most disturbing fact is that 8.8% of children accept all friend requests. This means that almost one in ten children opens the door to strangers without any safeguards. 20% of children received messages with sexual connotations in Internet correspondence. 18% met with strangers whom they met online. 12% received requests to send intimate photos, and 3% of them even sent them themselves. The real challenge is that these numbers are growing. As recently as 2020, only 7% of children were willing to meet an online acquaintance, and in 2024, this figure increased to 20%. But children’s silence causes the greatest anxiety. More than half of children who were sexually abused online did not tell anyone about it. Some blocked the offender, some shared with friends. But a third did nothing. And 3% generally agreed to the offer. Such a situation does not simply indicate the recklessness of children, but indicates how often they are left alone with a traumatic experience.
The world in which the modern child lives is divided between reality and the network. In this network, at first glance familiar and safe, a whole set of risks lurks every day. From the banal “I followed the wrong link” to situations that can break the psyche, undermine trust and leave behind a trail of fear for years. And although the responsibility for the safety of a child on the Internet begins with parents, the silent indifference of the state in this story is too loud to be ignored. Violence, porn, drug promotion or sex trafficking appear on the screen instantly and uninvited. For children whose psyches are still being formed, such content causes potential trauma that may not go away for a long time, even if it is not noticed in time.
Added to this are sites with extremist ideologies, pseudo-religious sects or death cults. In social networks, children communicate, get to know each other, and play. Sometimes they meet people they would rather never meet. Adults usually don’t know who “the uncle from the game” or “the girl from the community” is. And while parents believe that friendship on the Internet is manifested only in favors and messages, the child can receive offers of meetings, requests for photos or psychological pressure.
Online bullying often occurs on the Internet, it is enough for a child to post their photos on one of the social networks or write a post. This is targeted pressure: insults, threats, leaking personal information or photos, slander. When insulted at school, the child runs away home. And when online bullying continues at home, the child has nowhere to hide.
It is also worth mentioning online games, which often become the only entertainment, stimulus, joy and source of emotions, and therefore quickly turn into addiction. Moreover, if children are first allowed to play for hours, and then suddenly forbidden, then they immediately develop irritability, isolation, and even aggression. Their lives begin to depend on a constant digital battle for points, skins and achievements. And then the endless process of in-game purchases, subscriptions, and bonuses starts, which may look innocent until significant sums of money start disappearing from the parent’s card. Most children do not understand what financial responsibility is. And a paid subscription to their favorite application looks like a normal button for them.
Artificial intelligence: a new tool in the hands of criminals
Researchers have also identified a new form of danger in the use of artificial intelligence technologies to create fake intimate photos of children. These images are used for intimidation, blackmail or manipulation. Grooming comes to the fore, a process in which a criminal gradually forms an emotional bond with a child in order to later use her.
Unfortunately, children are increasingly exposed to sexual content. 40% saw him at least several times a year. Sometimes these are materials with strangers, and there are also situations where they see completely familiar people. The fact that some children (up to 6%) come across similar content on the boundless spaces of the Internet every day is disconcerting. It should not be forgotten that the war also became an additional factor of pressure. A third of children are bombarded with military content every hour. It is clear that he causes constant anxiety, fear and anger. These are the emotions that shape the general state of a child’s mental health, when the war ceases to be just news and becomes an emotional background.
It is not easy to deal with the manifestations of sexual violence and harassment of children on the Internet, because it is quite difficult to trace and find the perpetrators. As statistics show, most children are afraid to confess that they have become the object of a crime, and none of them received warning or explanatory information about the threat of sexual violence on the Internet. According to the data research According to the Childlight Global Child Safety Institute of the University of Edinburgh, one in eight children in the world (12.6%) has become a victim of non-consensual conversations about sexual harassment, sharing and viewing sexual images and videos on the Internet. 12.5% of minors have experienced the consequences of unwanted conversations about sexual topics. Children were encouraged to send personal nude photos and were sent messages of intimate content asking for sexual activity. Also, criminals often demand money from victims to keep the sent images private.
As we can see, all these studies point to an important trend, according to which children, spending their time on the Internet, get into trouble and rarely ask for help. Parents, teachers, politicians, technology companies must adapt to the new reality. It is worth understanding that the online world has long ceased to be a toy, turning into a place where danger lurks on the unformed children’s psyche. All this happens in the space that the state continues to consider a “private matter”. At the same time, the state reaction only imitates activity in the form of individual initiatives without continuation. The first thing that catches your eye is the complete absence of mandatory digital education in schools. There are no transparent complaint and protection mechanisms. There is no responsibility for platforms that systematically turn into channels of access to children. Instead, there are tons of press releases and zero tools. Every time another ridiculous and unhealthy challenge appears in the Internet space, when YouTube algorithms recommend shocking content for children, the state limits itself to publishing official warnings. The Ukrainian education system does not know how to talk to teenagers about such risks and how to protect themselves from them. It is worth understanding that while Ukraine invests millions in digitalization, no law, reform or service can be called successful if it does not provide for the basic: how to protect a child when the Internet ceases to be a friend.
How developed countries introduce digital hygiene for the youngest
While children in Ukraine watch videos of violence every day and receive “sexual requests” from strangers, European countries are already building a digital wall of legal, educational and technological bricks. And this is not a luxury, but a necessary minimum. After all, there the issue of children’s online safety is not perceived as a “care on paper”, but a concrete policy with real tools. They do not hope for “attentive parents” or “moral responsibility of platforms”, but build rigid, technological and well-developed systems. That is why children in Europe and North America are more often faced not with threats, but with algorithms that filter these threats.
In Germany, for example, NetzDG is in effect – a law that forces social networks to quickly remove content that violates legal norms: hate speech, harassment, pornography with the participation of minors. Platforms only have 24 hours to remove obviously illegal material after a user complains. In case of non-compliance, violators will be forced to pay a million fine. France and Italy have similar regulations with sanctions that are really felt for global corporations. There, the law does not advise, but compels.
In the UK, digital literacy is part of the compulsory school curriculum. Children are systematically taught how to recognize manipulation, fakes, cyberbullying, fraud and explain how to respond to them. In the US, children have been taking interactive online safety courses since elementary school. Here, the state does not shift responsibility to parents, but integrates digital security into education at the same level as mathematics or English. In the US, the COPPA law is in effect, which clearly regulates how digital services should treat children under 13 years old. Violation of the law leads to serious fines.
Scandinavian countries have long been leaders in implementing state control over access to unwanted content. Sweden and Norway have national filters that block sites with pornography, violence, and radical content at the provider level. These are not just recommendations, but an infrastructure operating at the level of state regulations. At the same time, parents have access to free government software with parental controls, and it is regularly updated. Because a child should not fight threats alone. It is protected by an effective system.
In the European Union, the GDPR Regulation has been in effect for several years, which particularly strictly protects the personal data of children. If the platform collects, processes or stores the information of minors, it must obtain permission from parents. Some countries even mandate that video platforms like YouTube have separate modes for children with age verification, content filtering and data collection restrictions.
In Canada or Australia, cases of online bullying, blackmail or intimidation are not responded to in two weeks after the report, but in a few hours at most. There are special cyber police units, and hotlines accept anonymous calls and have access to mechanisms to remove content from platforms without litigation.
So, the Internet has become a kind of door without a lock for a Ukrainian child today. And while children are trying to figure out on their own whether a friend, a fraudster or a criminal is behind these doors, adults tell fables about the “digital education of the future”. It should be understood that the problem lies not so much in the danger of the Internet space, but in the fact that we still do not have effective state mechanisms for regulating this phenomenon. And while in European countries the online safety of children has long become a matter of national hygiene, in Ukraine it has been replaced by self-suggestion that “everything will be decided by attentive parents.” If the state is not able to protect the most vulnerable in the digital world, then it hardly has the right to celebrate its “cyber modernization”.
