The Effect of Parental Guardianship Style on the Progression of Online Sexual Grooming Events

• In Event: Innovative Approaches Towards Better Understanding Cybercrimes

Abstract

Objective: This study addresses the effect of unstructured socializing on grooming of minors, the effect of active and passive guardianship on the progression of grooming, and whether each style effectively reduce grooming victimization.
Data/Methods: Three honeypot chatbots simulated young female users and were deployed on a list of 21 popular chatrooms commonly accessed by both minors and groomers around the world. The first chatbot was designed to convey an active guardianship style to a grooming suspect (treatment 1), the second to convey a passive style of parental guardianship (treatment 2), and the third to convey no guardianship (control group).
Results: Findings indicate unstructured socializing with peers in the absence of parental supervision increased groomers’ likelihood to persist. In contrast, groomers were less likely to continue once believing their targets were communicating in the presence of parental guardianship (both passive and active).
Conclusion/Implications: The role of parents’ supervision in preventing cyber-victimization of minors is often overlooked. These findings suggest policymakers focus on resources educating parents in the importance of actively monitoring youth’s online activities.

Authors

• Eden Kamar, Institute of Criminology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

• David Maimon, Georgia State University

• David Weisburd, George Mason University / Hebrew University

• Dekel Shabat, Independent Researcher