From Detection to Prevention: A Place for Help-seeking in Child Online Safety

​A participant-driven event organized by Children's Online Safety and Privacy Research (COSPR).

​Event description

​Spurred by Australia’s social media ban for under-16s, child online safety has become an urgent policy priority. Proposed measures range from the social media ban (Nigeria, Malaysia) and the prohibition of targeted advertising (Brazil) to device-scanning for child sexual abuse materials and grooming (EU, Philippines). It is long overdue that the tech industry be held accountable, but the proposals follow a troubling trend: They frame online harms as a stranger danger problem and rely heavily on tech-powered solutions. As a result, the solution space is overdetermined by criminalization and looks to platform companies, law enforcement agencies, and technologists as problem solvers.

​As online harms becomes an urgent policy priority, it is imperative that interventions take an evidence-based approach rooted in child sexual abuse prevention. This workshop invites child sexual abuse prevention practitioners, advocates, and researchers to build a conceptual framework for contextualizing the role of technology in CSA and develop a prevention agenda for breaking cycles of harm, both online and offline. The workshop aims to upskill practitioners’ knowledge and confidence about the role of technology so that they can – and not tech companies – can drive the policy agenda. A networking event will follow for participants to continue the discussion.

​About

​Dr. Kate Sim is the Director of the COSPR Program and a Visiting Scholar at UCLA School of Law. She has over 15 years of experience in sexual violence prevention and response, having worked across community organizing, frontline support, government, academia, and industry in Australia, the EU, the US, UK, and South Korea. Her research examines the political economy of the emerging child online safety field and the sociotechnical implications of automating help-seeking. Prior to COSPR, she worked at Google as a product policy advisor for child safety issues. She holds a PhD and MSc from the Oxford Internet Institute and a BA in Gender and Sexuality Studies from Harvard University.