Online Safety
A comprehensive guide to keeping children safe in the digital world. From social media to gaming, messaging to privacy.
Device Guides
Set up parental controls on every device
App Guides
Privacy settings for popular apps
Emergency Help
What to do when something happens
Online risk topics
Cyberbullying
Understanding cyberbullying, recognising the signs, and practical steps to protect your child from online harassment and intimidation.
Online Grooming
How to recognise online grooming behaviour, protect your child from predatory adults, and respond if you suspect grooming is taking place.
Sextortion
What sextortion is, how it targets young people, and what to do if your child is being blackmailed with intimate images.
Privacy & Oversharing
How children can accidentally reveal too much personal information online, and practical steps to help them protect their privacy.
Screen Time & Digital Wellbeing
Practical guidance on managing screen time for children and supporting healthy digital habits without constant conflict.
Gaming Safety
How to keep children safe while gaming online, including managing in-game chat, spending, and contact with strangers.
Livestreaming Safety
Understanding the risks of children livestreaming and how to manage live video features across popular platforms.
Social Media Safety
A practical guide to keeping children safer on social media platforms, covering privacy, content, and contact risks.
Group Chat Risks
Understanding the risks of group chats for children and how to help them manage group messaging safely.
Contact from Online Strangers
How strangers make contact with children online, the risks involved, and how to teach your child to stay safe.
Scams Targeting Children
How scammers target children online and practical steps to help young people recognise and avoid fraud.
Harmful Online Content
How children encounter harmful content online and what parents can do to reduce exposure and respond supportively.
AI Risks for Children
Understanding the risks that AI chatbots, image generators, and AI-powered features pose to children, and how to guide safe use.
Location Sharing Risks
How location-sharing features can put children at risk and practical steps to manage location privacy across devices and apps.
In-App Purchases & Loot Boxes
How in-app purchases and loot box mechanics target children, and practical steps to prevent unwanted spending.
Emergency Contact Planning
How to create and maintain an emergency contact plan so your child always knows who to reach and how.
Missing Child Preparation
How to prepare in advance so you can respond quickly and effectively if your child ever goes missing.
Unsafe Secrets & Manipulation
Recognising when a child is being asked to keep unsafe secrets, whether by peers or adults, and how manipulation tactics work both online and offline.
Peer Pressure & Digital Behaviour
Understanding how peer pressure influences children's behaviour online, from sharing content they are uncomfortable with to engaging in risky challenges.
Photo & Video Sharing Risks
Understanding the risks of children sharing photos and videos online, including loss of control, misuse by others, and long-term digital footprint consequences.
Photography & Filming Policies
Understanding and implementing appropriate photography and filming policies at events, schools, and organisations involving children.
Online-to-Offline Meeting Risks
The risks when children arrange to meet someone in person that they first met online, and how to reduce the danger.
Online Gambling & Loot Boxes
Understanding how children are exposed to gambling mechanics through loot boxes, skin gambling, crypto gambling, and sports betting apps — and what parents can do.
Digital Self-Harm
Understanding digital self-harm, where children create or seek out harmful content targeting themselves online, and how to recognise and respond to this cry for help.
Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE)
Understanding child sexual exploitation — how it differs from grooming, the warning signs, and how to report concerns.
Peer-on-Peer Abuse
Understanding abuse carried out by children against other children — including bullying, sexual harassment, violence, and sexting — and schools' duties under KCSIE.
Harmful Sexual Behaviour (HSB)
Understanding age-inappropriate or harmful sexual behaviour in children and young people, and how to assess and respond using evidence-based frameworks.
Modern Slavery & Child Trafficking
Understanding how children are trafficked and exploited within the UK and internationally, and how to make a National Referral Mechanism referral.
Child Criminal Exploitation (CCE)
Understanding child criminal exploitation beyond county lines — including cuckooing, fraud, and theft — and the safeguarding response.
Sexual Harassment in Schools
Understanding unwanted sexual comments, touching, and online harassment between pupils, and schools' duties under KCSIE Part 5.
Upskirting
Understanding the criminal offence of upskirting under the Voyeurism (Offences) Act 2019, and how to report it.
Viral Online Challenges & Dares
Understanding the risks of viral online challenges and dares, recognising when a challenge may be dangerous, and knowing how to respond if your child is involved.
Influencer Culture & Its Risks for Young People
Understanding how influencer culture affects children's self-image, spending habits, and behaviour, and how to have helpful conversations about it.
Misinformation & Media Literacy
Helping children identify misinformation, fake news, and conspiracy theories online, and developing the critical thinking skills to question what they read.
Dark Patterns in Apps & Games
Understanding how apps and games use manipulative design tactics — countdown timers, fake urgency, and endless scroll — to exploit children's attention and money.
Fake Job Scams Targeting Young People
How fake job listings, advance fee fraud, and identity theft target teenagers and young adults seeking work, and how to spot and avoid them.
Subscription Traps & Dark Patterns
How manipulative website and app design tricks children and families into unwanted subscriptions and recurring charges — and what to do about it.
Online Marketplace Scams
How scammers target teen buyers and sellers on Vinted, Depop, and eBay — and what to do if your child falls victim.
Audio Deepfakes and Voice Cloning
AI tools can now clone a child's voice from just a few seconds of audio — typically pulled from social media — and use it to impersonate them in phone calls to family members.
OnlyFans and Minor Exposure to Adult Content Platforms
Minors accessing OnlyFans content, attempting to create accounts, or being groomed via creator messaging is a growing safeguarding concern with significant legal implications.
Online Radicalisation — Spotting Extremist Pipelines
How children are drawn into incel, far-right, conspiracy, and terror-recruitment pipelines online, and how to use the UK Prevent referral pathway.
Cyberflashing — Unsolicited Sexual Images
Cyberflashing is a UK criminal offence as of 31 January 2024. How to recognise it, support your child, and report unsolicited sexual images sent by AirDrop, Bluetooth, or DM.
Beauty Filters & Body-Image Dysmorphia
Snapchat dysmorphia, AR-filter overuse, and the rise in teen referrals to NHS body-image services. How to spot it and support your child.
Pro-Eating-Disorder Content — Algorithm Pipelines
Pro-ana, pro-mia, extreme-fitness and 'what I eat in a day' content on TikTok, Instagram and Tumblr — how the OSA classifies it and how to get support from Beat.
Crypto Scams Targeting Teens
Fake investment schemes, sextortion paid in Bitcoin or gift cards, in-game rug-pulls and Robux trading scams that bridge to crypto wallets. How to spot them and use Action Fraud.
Drill Music & Online Gang Recruitment
How drill culture, 'trapping for clout', and county-lines recruitment operate on Snapchat and Telegram, and how grooming language overlaps with gang-loyalty language.
Doxxing & Swatting
How personal information published online can be weaponised against children — from doxxing in gaming and social communities through to swatting hoax-emergency calls that put a family in the path of armed police.
Healthy Digital Relationships
What healthy online friendships, crushes, and romantic relationships look like for young people — consent, mutuality, boundaries, and how to recognise coercive patterns early.
VR & Immersive Headset Harms
Risks specific to virtual-reality and mixed-reality headsets like Meta Quest, Apple Vision Pro, and PlayStation VR — harassment in VR, identity blur, motion sickness, time-loss, and in-world groping.
AI Toys & Voice Cloning
AI-powered plush toys, smart pets, and voice-clone services — what they collect from a child, how cloned voices are used to bait families into scams, and how to evaluate one before bringing it into the home.
Predatory Livestream Tipping
How tip-and-gift mechanics on TikTok LIVE, Bigo Live, YouNow, and Twitch can be used to bait or groom children — what to look for, how to switch features off, and where to report.
Animal Cruelty Content
How to recognise and respond when a child has encountered animal-cruelty videos, livestreams, or 'crush' content online — and the right UK reporting routes through the RSPCA, IWF, and police.
Smart-Home Surveillance of Children
Ring doorbells, Nest cams, smart speakers, and indoor cameras have moved into family homes — what UK GDPR and the ICO's Age-Appropriate Design Code say about monitoring your own children, and where the safeguarding line sits.
When Your Child Has Installed a VPN
A calm, conversation-led guide for parents when a child has installed a VPN to get around parental controls — what it actually does, what risks change, and how to respond without a panic.
Family Vlog & Child-Influencer Exploitation
Children featured in family YouTube vlogs, TikTok accounts, and brand deals — consent, labour, monetisation, and the long-term identity footprint, framed against UK GDPR, the ICO Age-Appropriate Design Code, and ASA rules.
Drone & Camera Privacy of Children
Drones, GoPros, action cameras, and body-worn cameras around children — the CAA Drone Code, lawful filming in public, school and park boundaries, and how to respond when your child is filmed without consent.