Gaming, group chats, social media and peer group risk

Risk does not only occur in private one-to-one messages. Multiplayer games, group chats, shared accounts, ephemeral messaging apps, fan communities and social-media trends can all enable humiliation, sexual pressure, bullying, dares, social exclusion, encouragement of self-harm or group-based exploitation. Harm may involve peers from the home, peers from school, or mixed groups of young people and adults.

Staff should watch how one child's online activity affects others in the home. A degrading group chat, circulated sexual content or a damaging rumour can quickly change the mood and behaviour of the whole shift.

Group-based digital risks

• Humiliation and pile-on behaviour: children may be mocked in front of a wider audience.
• Normalised sexual pressure: requests framed as banter or tests of trust make refusal harder.
• Peer-on-peer exploitation: children may be coerced by other young people to comply.
• Shared secrecy: harmful behaviour is harder to report when several people are involved.
• Contagion: unsafe patterns of behaviour can spread quickly through the home.

Digital group pressure can make abuse look normal to the children caught inside it.