What is online grooming?

 
Grooming is when someone seeks to build an emotional connection with a child to gain their trust
for sexual purposes. It happens both online and face to face. Children may often meet people
through social media or gaming that aren't who they say they are so it's important to discuss the risk
with them. Groomers use fake profiles on social network to connect with children and start to build
relationship with them. Once groomers have gained a child’s trust, they may encourage them to
share sexual images or video of themselves, live stream or arrange to meet. 
 
How does online grooming happen? 
 
It’s easy to pretend to be someone else on the internet, which is frequently known as online
impersonation. Children can sometimes end up having conversations with people whose real
identities they may not know. Groomers may go to a social network used by young people and
pretend to be one of them. They might attempt to gain trust by using fake profile pictures,
pretending to have similar interests, offering gifts and saying nice things to the child. 
Where can online grooming happen? 
 
Online groomers will target children on sites and platforms that are popular with young people. On
social media, online groomers will often target a number of young people at any one time by
sending out friend requests to see who responds. Through online forums and online games, they
may strike up a conversation to build a relationship with a child and ask them to continue talking on
another platform or chat privately. 
How to  protect from being groomed? 
Keep personal information private 
Private details which could identify them in the real world – name, age, gender, phone number,
home address, school name, and photographs – should only ever be shared with people they know. 
Privacy settings 
Spend time together looking at the privacy settings. It’s always best to assume that default settings
are public and should be changed accordingly. We’ve got some advice on using privacy settings on
the most popular social apps. 
Reviewing apps, site, apps, and games they use 
You will probably use social networks yourself, but you might want to know about new ones that
your child is using or wants to use. Use them yourself and set up your own account so you can
experience what your child might see. There are also many child-friendly social networks they could
use while they get ready for the likes of Snapchat and Instagram. 
Know who their friends are 
Talk to them about being cautious about what they share with people online. Remind them that
even though people they’ve met online might feel like friends they may not be who they say they
are. 
Stay safe online and in real life 
Never arrange to meet someone they only know online without a parent present.