Key definitions

There are many different terms relating to online safety, some of which you may not have heard before. We’ve compiled a list to help you understand what they mean. Read them below, or download our one-page guide.

Bullying, including cyberbullying: Unwanted aggressive behavior by another child or group of children. It involves repeated physical, psychological, or social harm and often takes place in schools and settings where children gather, including online.

Child protection systems: Formal and informal structures, functions, and capacities that have been assembled to prevent and respond to violence, abuse, neglect, and exploitation of children. These may include human resources, finance, laws and policies, governance, monitoring, and data collection, as well as protection and response services and care management. It also includes different actors – children, families, communities, those working at subnational or national level and those working internationally.

Child sexual abuse material (CSAM): CSAM refers to material depicting acts of sexual abuse and/or focusing on the genitalia of the child. Child sexual exploitation material (CSEM) encompasses all sexualized material depicting children, including child sexual abuse material. The distinction between CSEM and CSAM is generally one of legal status. A decade ago, there were less than one million reports of CSAM. By 2019, that climbed to 70 million, with many cases remaining undetected.

Digital citizen: A person using information technology in order to engage in society, politics, and government. Effective digital citizenship is being responsible, safe, and effective on the internet and when using digital devices.

Digital divide: The gulf between those who have ready access to computers and the internet, and those who do not.

Digital literacy: The ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills.

Livestreaming of online child sexual abuse: Involves the coercion of a child to participate in sexual activities, alone or with other persons. The sexual activity is transmitted live or ‘streamed’ over the internet and watched by others remotely, often by those who requested and/or paid for the sexual abuse of the child. This crime transcends national borders allowing perpetrators to abuse their victims from any location.

Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (OCSEA): Sexual exploitation or abuse of children is facilitated by technology, for example over the internet or other wireless communications. It can include sexual exploitation that is carried out while the victim is online; identifying and/or grooming potential child victims online; or the distribution, dissemination, importing, exporting, offering, selling, or possession of, or knowingly attaining access to, child sexual exploitation material online.

Online grooming: This is a tactic used by perpetrators to establish and build a trusting relationship with a child using the internet or other digital technologies in order to manipulate, exploit and abuse them online and/or offline.

Online sexual harassment: Unwelcome sexual advances, requests or demands for a sexual favor, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature. Sexual harassment refers to sexual conduct with the explicit intention to violate the dignity of another person, and conduct of a sexual nature that a person experiences as offensive or intimidating.

Sextortion: Where an individual is blackmailed using self-generated, explicit images of that person in order to extort sexual acts, money, or other benefits from her/him. The blackmailer typically threatens to share the material without the consent of the person, for example by posting the images on social media. The blackmailer may coerce children or young people into continuing to produce sexual material, and/or to perform distressing acts, by threating to expose their photos or videos to other people. Sometimes the abuse spirals so out of control that victims attempt self-harm or commit suicide.