Caregivers’ Awareness and Protective Strategies In Safeguarding Children from Technology-Facilitated Sexual Exploitation and Abuse: A Scoping Review

Background: Technology-facilitated sexual exploitation and abuse (TFSEA) has increasingly emerged as a pervasive global threat to children, with evidence suggesting a 16 percent prevalence rate in their lifetime. Growing research evidence has emphasized the role of caregivers in protecting children from TFSEA because of the limited capacity of interactive technology platforms such as social media, gaming, and messaging applications due to their weak self-regulation system, profit-driven model and under-resourced moderation systems. Despite the responsibility, these calls for empirical evidence on caregivers’ awareness and protective strategies in safeguarding children from TFSEA remain fragmented, which may undermine their capacity to inform practical interventions. This study seeks to coalesce existing international evidence mapping (1) reports about caregiver awareness of TFSEA, (2) the protective strategies they employ, and (3) the barriers they face in implementing these strategies to better inform preventive programs and interventions.

Method: A protocol for the review was published in PROSPERO (CRD420251074126) with pre-specified inclusion and exclusion criteria. Studies were screened and extracted from six databases including PsycInfo, PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Criminal Justice Abstracts, PsycINFO and PROQUEST (Social Science Premium). After an initial title and abstract screening of 12155 articles, 16 studies were found eligible for the final review.

Results: Study designs were predominantly quantitative (n=10), including an online field experiment; qualitative (n=6), and one mixed-methods study. Studies spanned diverse settings across North America, Europe, Asia, South America and Africa. The study revealed caregiver protective strategies involving active mediation (n=11), including open communication and supervision of children's online activities; restrictive mediation (n=6), such as rules and limits on access to interactive technology platforms and technical controls (n=3), such as privacy settings and blocking tools. Barriers included caregivers’ workload constraints, limited internet access, and finances.

Recommendations: Findings point to priority actions, including scalable caregiver digital literacy support, culturally appropriate tools for caregiver-child communication about risky online behaviors, platform and policy measures that make safety tools usable and accessible without heavy surveillance.