The internet gives children incredible opportunities to learn, play, and connect—but it can also give strangers direct access to them. Online predators can hide behind fake identities, build trust over time, manipulate children, and use threats or blackmail to exploit them.
The best protection is awareness, communication, reasonable supervision, and teaching children what warning signs to recognize.
Quick Facts Parents Should Know
Online predators can target children on social media, messaging apps, online games, livestreaming services, and video platforms.
A person online may not be the age, gender, or identity they claim to be.
Predators may spend days, weeks, or months building trust before making inappropriate requests.
Sextortion can begin with a seemingly innocent conversation, compliment, gift, game-related offer, or fake romantic relationship.
Once an intimate image is sent, the sender loses control over where it may be copied or shared.
Predators don't only target girls. Boys are also frequently targeted, particularly in financially motivated sextortion schemes.
AI and manipulated images can make it increasingly difficult to determine whether online photos, videos, or profiles are genuine.
Common Tactics Used by Online Predators
1. Pretending to Be Another Child
A predator may create a fake profile using stolen photographs, a fake name, or information designed to make them appear to be the child's age.
2. Flattery and Attention
They may give a child compliments, excessive attention, encouragement, or emotional support to create a sense of trust and importance.
3. Grooming
Grooming can involve gradually testing boundaries and normalizing increasingly inappropriate conversations, requests, or behavior.
4. Building an Emotional Relationship
A predator may pretend to be a best friend, boyfriend, girlfriend, mentor, or someone who "understands" the child better than anyone else.
5. Gifts and Money
They may offer game credits, gift cards, money, expensive items, subscriptions, or other rewards in exchange for attention, photographs, or conversations.
6. Moving Conversations Somewhere Private
A predator may try to move a child from a public game or social platform to private messaging, disappearing messages, encrypted chats, or video calls.
7. Asking for Personal Information
They may gradually collect information about a child's school, friends, neighborhood, sports, family, schedule, or location.
8. Sexualizing Conversations
A predator may introduce sexual topics gradually, ask increasingly personal questions, send inappropriate material, or encourage the child to reciprocate.
9. Requests for Photos or Video
Requests may begin innocently and become progressively more private or sexual.
10. Sextortion and Blackmail
After obtaining an intimate image or video, a predator may threaten to send it to the child's parents, friends, school, or followers unless the child sends more material or money.
11. Threats and Intimidation
Predators may threaten violence, exposure, embarrassment, account hacking, doxxing, or harm to people the child cares about.
12. Encouraging Secrecy
One of the biggest warning signs is someone telling a child to hide their relationship or conversations from parents.
13. Isolating the Child
A predator may tell a child that parents or friends "don't understand," attempting to make the child increasingly dependent on the predator.
14. Arranging an In-Person Meeting
An online relationship can eventually become an attempt to meet the child in person.
Where Predators Can Find Children Online
Predators can use virtually any platform that allows strangers to communicate. Parents should pay attention not only to traditional social media but also to:
Social networking apps
Messaging and direct-message apps
Online multiplayer games
Gaming consoles and their chat systems
Livestreaming platforms
Video-sharing platforms
Voice-chat services
Community and discussion platforms
Private group chats
Dating or chat applications
Photo-sharing platforms
Anonymous or disappearing-message services
Virtual worlds and metaverse-style platforms
Apps that allow users to meet or communicate with strangers
The specific platform matters less than whether strangers can contact your child privately.
Warning Signs Parents Should Watch For
Changes in behavior can sometimes indicate a child is experiencing something they don't know how to discuss.
Pay attention if your child:
Suddenly becomes extremely secretive about their phone
Receives messages from unknown accounts
Quickly switches between apps or closes screens when you approach
Has an online "friend" they refuse to explain
Receives unexpected gifts, money, or game credits
Becomes unusually anxious after using a device
Suddenly deletes accounts or messages
Appears frightened about something being posted online
Becomes distressed when asked about a particular person
Starts communicating with someone significantly older
Talks about an online relationship they want to keep secret
Suddenly changes their sleeping or device-use habits
A single behavior does not prove exploitation. Look for patterns and, most importantly, maintain an environment where your child feels safe telling you what happened.
What Parents Can Do Today
1. Know What Your Child Uses
Know the games, apps, social networks, usernames, and communication features your child uses.
2. Review Privacy Settings
Make accounts private whenever possible. Review who can message, follow, friend, call, or interact with your child.
3. Disable Location Sharing
Review location permissions for social media, photographs, games, and other applications.
4. Limit Stranger Contact
Teach children that an online friend is still a stranger unless their identity is independently known in real life.
5. Teach the "No Secrets" Rule
Tell your child that no online friend, adult, coach, influencer, or romantic interest should ever require them to keep a secret from you.
6. Teach Them Not to Send Intimate Images
Make it clear that they can always come to you—even if they already sent something.
7. Don't Rely Entirely on Parental Controls
Parental controls are useful, but they cannot replace communication and supervision.
8. Keep Devices Out of Bedrooms at Night
Consider charging phones, tablets, and other connected devices in a common area overnight.
9. Know Who Your Child Is Talking To
For younger children especially, regularly review friend lists, followers, messages, and gaming contacts in an age-appropriate way.
10. Establish a "Tell Me Anything" Rule
Your child should know that telling you about a dangerous online interaction will never result in them being punished for being victimized.
If Your Child Is Being Threatened or Blackmailed
Stay calm. Do not blame your child.
Tell them:
"You are not in trouble. You did the right thing by telling me."
Do not encourage them to keep sending images or money simply because the predator demands it. Preserve evidence such as usernames, messages, profile information, URLs, and screenshots when safe to do so.
Report serious exploitation or threats to law enforcement and the appropriate online service. In the United States, suspected online child exploitation can be reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's CyberTipline or the FBI.
The FBI specifically advises victims not to delete chats or shared images and to seek help rather than complying with blackmail demands.
The Most Important Lesson
You cannot completely eliminate the risk of online predators.
You can make your child harder to target and much more likely to tell you when something goes wrong.
Teach your children:
You can say no.
You can block anyone.
You don't owe anyone a picture.
You don't have to keep an online secret.
And you will never be in trouble for asking for help.
The goal isn't to make children afraid of the internet. The goal is to make them informed, confident, and comfortable coming to a trusted adult when something doesn't feel right.