What works to prevent violence against children online?
Date
2022
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Publisher
World Health Organization
Abstract
The report, What works to prevent online violence against children, presents ways to address the growing worldwide concern of keeping children safe online, with a specific focus on two forms of online violence: child sexual abuse including grooming and sexual image abuse; and cyber aggression and harassment in the form of cyberbullying, cyberstalking, hacking and identity theft. The report recommends implementing school-based educational programmes that have multiple sessions, promote interaction among youth and engage parents. It highlights the need for improvements in several areas including:
the need for more violence prevention programmes that integrate content about online dangers with offline violence prevention, given the overlap of these problems and their common approaches to prevention;
less emphasis on stranger danger as strangers are not the sole or even the predominant offenders in online violence against children;
more emphasis on acquaintance and peer perpetrators, who are responsible for a majority of offenses; and
more attention to healthy relationship skills, since romance and intimacy-seeking are major sources of vulnerability to online violence.
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Keywords
child abuse, online sexual exploitation, online victimization, internet, prevention, child sexual abuse material, International Resources
Citation
World Health Organization. (2022). What works to prevent violence against children online?