Online grooming remains one of the most underrecognized threats facing children and teens today. Unlike the stereotypical “stranger danger” narrative, grooming is a slow, calculated process where predators systematically build trust, create emotional bonds, and gradually desensitize young victims to exploitation. Research from the Crimes Against Children Research Center and the National Center for Missing …
As students head back to school this fall, there is a new threat parents need to know about: AI-powered nudify apps. These tools use generative AI to create fake nude images from ordinary, fully clothed photos — and they are being used to target teens in schools across the country. The National Center for Missing …
Online sextortion is not a rare crime anymore. It is a crisis. New research from the Cyberbullying Research Center, published in the May 2026 issue of Child Abuse & Neglect, finds that 15.4% of U.S. teens aged 13 to 17 have experienced sextortion. That is triple the rate from just five years earlier. Even more …
Conversational AI chatbots are exploding in popularity among teens — and so are the risks. A new nationally representative study published in the Journal of Adolescence found that 60% of US teens ages 13 to 17 have used a conversational AI chatbot at least once. More alarming: of those teen users, nearly half (46.8%) reported …
Online grooming remains one of the most serious threats children face in digital spaces. Predators use calculated methods to build trust, create secrecy, and gradually lower a child’s defenses — often right under a parent’s nose. Understanding how the grooming process works is the first step toward preventing it. Groomers commonly follow a pattern: they …