For organisations working directly with children and families, conversations about safety are constantly evolving. At The Great People of South Africa (TGPSA), our work in communities focuses on preventing gender-based violence, strengthening protection systems, and supporting vulnerable women and children.
Traditionally, these conversations have centred on physical environments, homes, schools, and community spaces. Increasingly, however, child protection concerns are emerging from a different and less visible environment: the digital world.
During a recent GBVF Response Fund Community-Based Organisation review session, partners working in child protection raised urgent concerns about online gaming platforms widely accessed by young children. Among those discussed was Roblox, one of the most popular interactive gaming platforms globally.
For many children, platforms like Roblox are spaces of creativity and entertainment, allowing them to design worlds, solve problems, and interact socially through play.
Technology itself is not the problem. Digital tools support education, creativity, and learning, and many families responsibly integrate tablets and online platforms into children’s development. As practitioners and parents alike, we recognise the educational benefits technology provides. However, as digital participation expands, safeguarding conversations must evolve just as rapidly.
Online gaming environments today function as social ecosystems rather than isolated games. Children communicate through avatars, messaging systems, and multiplayer interaction, often connecting with users beyond their immediate communities or countries. While these features encourage collaboration and imagination, they also introduce risks that many caregivers and even professionals are still learning to navigate.
Globally, child protection agencies are warning about the growing rise of technology-facilitated child sexual violence. Online grooming, where perpetrators build trust with children before exploitation — is increasingly occurring within gaming and interactive digital platforms. Individuals seeking to harm children often disguise themselves as peers, gaining access through shared gameplay and gradually encouraging private communication or secrecy.
Artificial intelligence is accelerating these risks. AI technologies can assist in creating believable online identities, automating conversations, or manipulating engagement patterns that make harmful interactions more difficult to detect. The anonymity provided by avatars allows adults to pose as children, blurring boundaries in ways young users may struggle to recognise. What appears to be harmless friendship within a game can, in some cases, become a pathway toward exploitation.
Through TGPSA’s direct engagement with children, caregivers, and communities, one reality continues to emerge: many families are unaware that digital environments require the same level of safeguarding awareness as physical spaces. Children may be physically safe at home while simultaneously navigating online environments shaped by strangers, algorithms, and evolving technologies.
Importantly, this issue must not be framed as parental negligence. Modern parenting requires balancing access to educational technology with protection in rapidly changing digital landscapes. Even attentive caregivers cannot monitor every interaction in real time. Child safety online is therefore a shared societal responsibility.
Education remains one of the strongest prevention tools available. Open conversations with children about online friendships, privacy, and safe communication are essential. Parents and caregivers should ensure age-appropriate controls are activated, regularly review platform settings, and create safe spaces where children feel comfortable reporting uncomfortable experiences without fear of punishment or device removal.
At the same time, technology companies and policymakers must strengthen accountability mechanisms that prioritise child safety by design. Protective systems must move beyond reactive reporting toward proactive detection of grooming behaviour and harmful interaction patterns.
As organisations committed to ending gender-based violence, we must recognise that violence evolves alongside technology. Safeguarding children today requires expanding protection frameworks beyond physical communities into digital ones. Awareness, collaboration, and continuous learning are essential if we are to keep pace with technological advancement.
Children deserve digital spaces that nurture imagination, learning, and connection — not environments where exploitation can occur unnoticed.
Protecting children in the age of AI is no longer optional. It is a collective responsibility shared by families, communities, institutions, and technology platforms alike.
Because every child has the right to grow, learn, and play safely, both offline and online.
#EndCSV #StrongerTogether
