Media literacy classes for teachers and parents in Romania, participatory theatre in Spain, hotlines and cyber police in Ukraine. These are just some of the solutions organisations and institutions are using against the ever evolving forms of violence children and teenagers face more and more often in their digital lives.
From cyberbullying and cyberharassment, exposure to harmful content and hate speech, to online child sexual abuse and exploitation, statistics show they are all on the rise, and digital safety for the youngest citizens has become a global concern. The accelerated development of AI only adds complexity, generating new forms of cyberviolence, like deepfake nudes and deepfake porn, which only deepen the already serious emotional and psychological risks brought by long screentime.
For many parents and educators, the digital world feels overwhelming. A Flash Eurobarometer from 2023 shows that 82% of the people in the survey agree that tools like parental control are no longer enough to keep children safe online. Schools are only just beginning to face the complex forms of violence kids experience in their everyday lives, while authorities, often unaware or unequipped, struggle to respond. Legislation lags behind, and tech companies remain mostly silent about the threats perpetuated on their platforms and networks.
In this intricate context, what tools, laws, or protection measures do we have against the amplifying forms of online violence that affect millions of young people? What’s actually working and how can we, as societies, build safer and more supportive online spaces for children and teens?
How to Keep Minors Safe from Digital Violence and the Challenges of AI
This report is the first in an international investigation conducted by Maldita.es (Spain), Scena9 (Romania), and Rubryka (Ukraine). The project explores the problem of digital violence and its impact on minors, as well as the various initiatives that seek to identify solutions, prevent these situations, and protect victims. This investigation was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe and the mentoring and support of Transitions.
How is digital violence affecting minors? Facts and numbers
A 12 year old Romanian boy was tricked by older school colleagues to show his genitalia in front of the phone camera. They photographed him and shared the images on several Whatsapp groups, humiliating and blackmailing the boy. In Spain, 16 high-school girls reported their images had been modified with AI to show them naked. The material —created by a minor— was distributed on social media and a website. In Ukraine, a stranger offered a girl a job. The essence of the job was that the girl had to take and post her intimate photos on the Telegram channel.
These cases may all seem different, but they are all forms of online violence children and teenagers have been experiencing more and more in the last years. Children today grow up with technology, often mastering devices before they can speak. The majority of kids get their own smartphones by the age of 10, but many of them are already exposed to screens since they are toddlers. By the time they are 12, 75% to 97% of European kids usually own their own smartphone. According to a study in 19 European countries, 80% of children aged 9–16 use their phone daily or almost daily to go online and the time they spend online keeps expanding. On average, a 12 year old kid in the EU spends about 3-4 hours online everyday, but the actual numbers may be considerably higher. 27% of the Romanian children and teenagers in a recent survey by Save the Children admitted their daily screen time is around 6 hours.
Behind those screens, there are risks and dangers with a particular characteristic: digital violence never ends; it lasts 24 hours, 7 days a week. A 2022 study led by the International University of La Rioja found that 6% of adolescents in Spain suffer constant cyberharassment and girls are, to a significant extent, more likely to be continuously cyberbullied than boys.
According to the World Health Organisation, almost 17% of European children aged 11 to 15 have been bullied by their peers online. Since 2018, this number has been steadily growing. Spain has reported a 57.5% prevalence in cyberbullying, the highest among the other countries analyzed in a study conducted by Frontiers in Public Health. Half of Romanian children also admit they were humiliated or harassed online, and in Ukraine, online violence against children has only been aggravated by the full scale Russian invasion.
39.8% of Ukrainian children aged 8-10 saw pornographic content on the internet for the first time, and in most cases, this happened unexpectedly, through ads on social networks or games. A report by UNICEF found that a significant number of children aged 12–16 have been exposed to violent, sexual or other inappropriate content online, which can contribute to psychological distress. Spain and Romania are among the countries where children have the highest risk of accessing harmful content online.
Among the forms of online violence young people experience in their daily digital lives, those related to sexual abuse are extremely widespread and dangerous. The latest report from Internet Watch shows an increase of child sexual abuse imagery hosted in EU and that “every 108 seconds a report [monitored by the organisation] showed a child being sexually abused” online. In most cases, the images used are „self-generated”, which means that a child has produced images or videos of themselves.
At the same time, schools from all over the world, including Spain, Romania and Ukraine, are facing an “epidemic” of deepfake nudes. Students, especially boys, are using generative AI to create deepfake nude photos of their colleagues or synthetic pornographic videos, which they share without any consent in private conversations, on social media or on adult content websites.
Together with the increasing time young people spend on social media, exposure to such a diversity of digital violence takes a significant toll on their mental health. But despite the staggering statistics, children and teenagers are not always taught how to stay safe online. Families, schools and institutions struggle to navigate the complexities which allow the proliferation of cyberbullying, grooming, sextorsion, revenge porn, deepfake nudes and others.
We searched for effective solutions in Spain, Romania and Ukraine. They appeal to culture, technology and law, as digital violence is not one single problem, but rather an intricate web of problems and challenges, which affect our lives in an unprecedented way.
Theater and other cultural initiatives against cyberbullying and digital violence
In Spain, various cultural and educational initiatives are being promoted to raise awareness and prevent cyberbullying and other forms of digital violence among minors. One of the most notable is theatre, which creates immersive experiences capable of arousing empathy and encouraging reflection.
This is the case with the play Aulas, by playwright Carlos Molinero, which has been performed in Spain some 39 times in three years for around 4,800 spectators. It allows the audience to interact via WhatsApp and decide the ending. This way, it enables spectators to put themselves in roles they have never experienced before. Other productions, such as Girls Like That —an adaptation of a play by British playwright Evan Placey, by the Catalan company Càlam, about the dissemination of intimate images without the consent of the protagonist— or La Liga Contra el Bullying (The League Against Bullying) —with magic and child participation, by the company Espectáculos Educativos— address real issues in a language that is accessible to young people. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the latter company has performed between 150 and 300 shows of all its plays per year.
The experts consulted by Maldita.es agree that these initiatives must be accompanied by educational resources to reinforce the concepts and lessons learned from the performances. Girls Like That provides teaching staff with a dossier that they can use to continue developing activities in the classroom, and the authors of Aulas have developed an interactive teaching booklet with materials and activities for the same purpose. In addition, in both cases, a discussion takes place after the performance.
Participatory theatre encourages communication, creativity and conflict management, generating positive changes in attitudes and behaviour. Furthermore, paratheatrical techniques developed by associations such as AEPAE, the Spanish Association for the Prevention of Bullying, have proven useful in empowering victims: through physical assertiveness tools, camps and psychodrama, children improve their self-esteem, expressive abilities and confidence in the face of bullying. "You can see an evolution in their physical and verbal attitudes. They are no longer children who simply raise their heads and look at you; now they are able to express their thoughts, feelings and emotions," explains Goyo Pastor, co-founder of AEPAE and professor of dramatic arts at the Royal School of Dramatic Arts of the Community of Madrid (RESAD for its acronym in Spanish).
According to a 2023 study on the effects of psychodrama on adolescent health, this technique demonstrated positive effects on various aspects of mental and social health, including reduced anxiety, depression, hyperactivity, frustration, and oppositional defiant disorder, as well as improvements in emotional regulation, aggression, conflict resolution skills, forgiveness, self-esteem, and communication.
Apart from theatre, other culture-based resources are also proposed for prevention and education. Organisations such as PDA Bullying work with series such as Adolescence and Skam, and recommend reading novels such as La Guarida and El infinito en tus manos, which encourage reflection on power dynamics, online humiliation and the responsible use of technology. These materials include teaching guides and activities for teachers and families, which facilitates their integration into the classroom. Research supports their effectiveness, especially when accompanied by discussions and exercises after viewing or reading.
Training programmes, camps and workshops aimed at children, families and teachers are also being developed. It’s the case of initiatives such as E-tic (promoted by the Diario de Navarra Foundation) and its programme on digital education and well-being, which has been running for three years in schools in Navarra (Spain) and has benefited
