What is Cyber Grooming?
Cyber grooming is when an older person befriends an underage child on the internet to initiate an inappropriate relationship or sexually exploit them. This is done through chat rooms, social media apps, online games and similar platforms.
While the reality of grooming is not new, the rise of online gaming, metaverse, social media apps, and the evolution of technology has made it easier for children to be groomed online.
The next generation of children is growing up with more access to the internet than any generation before. Social media, streaming platforms and gaming make it easy for strangers to directly contact your children without your knowledge.
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) announced that the social media platform Snapchat is the most used app by groomers. Between 2023 and 2024, approximately 7000 offenses of Sexual Communication with a Child were recorded, with Snapchat accounting for nearly half of the 1,824 cases where the specific platform was identified by the police.
Despite these alarming figures, many parents struggle to address online safety with their children. One Kaspersky study found that although 84% of parents are worried about their children’s online safety, they only spend approximately 46 minutes talking about it.
It’s vital that parents, teachers and guardians start the conversation about internet safety. To do so, knowing what online grooming is, the stages and signs of online grooming and efficient preventative measures to take is key to helping your child be safe online.
Know the dangers
There are three major threats to children online:
- Strangers that initiate conversations to groom children for sexual exploitation or fraudulent behaviors.
- Friends or peers that initiate cyberbullying or conduct pranks that affect them both online and at school.
- Their own online behavior such as sharing personal information, downloading or sharing illegal content or bullying or trolling others online.
Understanding cyber grooming?
Grooming is when a perpetrator targets and manipulates a child by building a false sense of security and emotional connection with them, with the intention to exploit them. The definition of online grooming is similar, but in this scenario, it takes place in an online space, such as social media, gaming metaverse, forums or chat rooms.
Social media grooming
Platforms like Instagram and TikTok allow users to post content that can be viewed by followers or publicly. Users can engage with images and videos, follow friends, and family and even connect with new people over similar interests.
Why is it bad?
Social media can be very addictive. Dopamine or social media addiction means that children obsessively consume content online or start creating content that draws more attention to them.
It’s easy to make profiles public, allowing anyone to see your children’s posts and engage with them.
Children create Finsta accounts, which are social media profiles they share with their parents and family to maintain a persona for them. They create separate accounts for their friends or connections that are not restricted.
While all social media apps have an age restriction, there are no verification checks in place, which is why it is important to stay safe on social media.
Predators can contact your children directly, either via their own profiles or under the guise of a fake account, which is called catfishing.
Snapchat grooming
Unlike other platforms like Instagram or TikTok where a user's posts can live on their profile, Snapchat users upload content that displays and disappear once received and viewed, these are called snaps.
Why is it bad?
Snapchat makes it very easy to share your profile code for anyone to contact you via the platform.
It’s easy to create a public profile, allowing all content uploaded to be visible and profiles contactable by strangers.
All Snapchat content that has been uploaded can live on the company’s servers for up to 30 days.
You can only send or receive snaps of people in your follow list, however, it’s easy for contacts on your phone to send you a snap.
A 2024 study shows that Snapchat is the preferred social media platform for predators to use.
While measures have been put in place by the company to notify users if their snap has been screenshotted, it’s already too late.
To fully understand what is grooming on the internet, it’s important to note that it’s not only social media apps but also gaming.
Online gaming grooming
Cyber grooming is not limited to sexual grooming (having a sexual motive) but can also have a criminal one, which is more prevalent in the online gaming space. Despite games being available for children of all ages, kids as young as three years old have also fallen victim to online gaming risks such as scammers.
In 2022, Kaspersky detected more than seven million attacks related to popular children’s games, many of which were games aimed at children aged 3-8 years old. The Kaspersky co-produced documentary hacker:HUNTER uncovers how criminal syndicates target children to manipulate them into committing cybercrime on their behalf or providing access to parents' accounts.
Games that have been identified for phishing activity or scams include:
- Roblox
- Fortnite
- Minecraft
- Poppy Playtime
Signs of online grooming in children
If you think that your child is at risk or is the victim of being groomed online, there are key signs to look out for:
- A sudden change in how they behave in person or needing to be online more often.
- Visible emotional distress, especially after being online.
- New friends or communication with people whose names are unfamiliar to you or their friends.
- Unexplained gifts or money that they won’t disclose the source.
- Secretive behavior when wanting to go online.
- Followers on their accounts that are significantly older than your child and engaging with their content.
What does grooming look like?
Knowing what you should be looking out for in online grooming makes it easier to explain to your children the exact dangers that they need to be aware of.
Paedophile or grooming behavior methodology is largely the same for online grooming and follows a specific pattern:
1. Finding and targeting victims
Groomers navigate their way through a variety of online spaces, like social media apps, games or chat rooms, to find targets that meet their personal preference, be it age, look or vulnerability.
2. Contact and engagement
The perpetrator initiates contact with the potential victim via direct messaging or commenting on their online activity, like posts or videos. In many cases, the predator pretends to have a common interest with the child, such as not liking a particular school subject.
This is generally followed by the child receiving a lot of attention from the groomer and potentially moving conversations to private communications like WhatsApp.
3. Establishing and pushing boundaries
Once the groomer has established a positive rapport with the child, they gradually begin desensitizing them to inappropriate content. This is often via explicit images or encouraging the child to discuss private information to manipulate them into thinking that they share a unique connection.
4. Isolation
The groomer reinforces the notion that adults won’t understand their relationship. Therefore, they must keep it a secret and the child must cut off communication with others.
5. Introducing sexualization
The groomer initiates conversations into topics that are sexually driven. This includes asking for explicit images and having inappropriate and sexualized conversations either via messenger apps or calls.
6. Exploitation
When a victim stops complying with sending images, or videos, or tries to cease conversation, the predator uses any images or videos sent to blackmail the child. For example; threaten to send it to their parents, peers at school or anyone else in their personal life, if they do not comply with their demands.
Preventative measures
Having faith that your child won’t fall victim to becoming groomed online or relying on their school teachers to provide the right information is not enough. Taking action at home is key.
Kaspersky maintains three rules when it comes to children and their online activity:
- Control - monitor your child’s activity both physically and online, especially with younger children.
- Protect - filter websites and use management tools to ensure your software is up to date and nothing is getting past firewalls.
- Educate - explain to your children why you use parental app controls and restrict online time, so they understand that the reasoning is not personal.
Talk about internet safety
Be open about the dangers and potential threats on the internet. Allow your kids to disclose the sites and apps that they use, and work with them to ensure that their privacy settings are in line with both of your preferences.
Research devices first
If it’s time to provide your child with their own device, ensure you have set up a child account and install all the basic applications yourself. Craft a set of rules for the device so that your child understands the responsibilities that come with it and the expectations of them in their ownership.
Establishing trust
It’s up to parents to create and maintain an environment of trust with their children, to ensure that their kids know they can always approach parents for help. As your kids get older
Protect their devices
Kaspersky Safe Kids allows parents to monitor their children’s online activity and track their device’s whereabouts. You can also filter malicious or inappropriate websites and manage their screen time completely.
With Safe Kids, parents can:
- Monitor contacts and messages on their mobile devices and identify inappropriate contacts or bullying behavior from peers.
- Block access to inappropriate websites of your choosing, especially sites that allow predators to initiate contact or where the content is unsuitable.
- Apply restrictions to search results on popular websites like YouTube to prevent children from seeing inappropriate content.
Stay protected with Kaspersky
As the online world continuously evolves, parents must maintain their due diligence to protect children from explicit content and online predators.
Kaspersky Safe Kids software protects children from inappropriate online activities, such as fraud or predators. Groomers infiltrate children’s profiles from numerous sources, making it difficult to monitor every platform individually.
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