Protecting Children From Online Grooming: Cross-Cultural, Qualitative and Child-Centred Data to Guide Grooming Prevention and Response: Finland Snapshot

With funding from the Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund, in 2023-24, Save the Children Hong Kong partnered with the Young and Resilient Research Centre at Western Sydney University and six Save the Children offices, primarily in the global South, to explore how children from diverse backgrounds experience the various pleasures and pressures of engaging with unknown others online, and what steps they take to protect themselves from potential harm. This report presents analysis of data generated with children aged 9-12 in Finland, as part of the broader study with children from Australia, Cambodia, Colombia, Finland, Philippines, Kenya and South Africa. The study addressed the following key questions: How do children in different contexts judge whether it is safe or unsafe to connect with an unknown other? What tools and strategies do they use to keep themselves safe? What tools and strategies do they use to keep themselves safe? To what extent do gender, age, and culture affect children's online engagements with unknown others? What might prompt children to report unwanted contact from unknown others online? What do children need from governments, technology platforms, NGOs, educators and parents to enable them to prevent or respond effectively to incidents of online grooming? By listening carefully to children, the study aimed to identify how governments, technology platforms, services, educators, and parents in each country might channel children's insights into the design of more effective policies, programming, product features, and systemic change to better support children to prevent, respond to, and report OCSEA. We hope that the data contained herein can productively inform policy and practice targeting children's online safety in Finland.