How strangers make contact with children online, the risks involved, and how to teach your child to stay safe.
Online Strangers is the risk posed by unknown people a child encounters on the internet, who may hide their identity or intentions to gain a child's trust for harmful purposes.
Children can be contacted by strangers through social media, gaming, messaging apps, and online forums. While not every unknown contact is dangerous, some strangers deliberately seek out children for harmful purposes. Teaching children to recognise and manage contact from people they do not know is a fundamental part of online safety.
Strangers may send friend requests, direct messages, or comments on public posts. In gaming environments, they may join voice chats or send in-game messages. Some use fake profiles that appear to be a similar age to the child. The initial contact is usually friendly and flattering, designed to build trust before any harmful intentions become apparent.
In your child's behaviour
On their device
Agree the 'people we actually know' rule
Agree that your child only accepts friend requests and messages from people they know in real life, and that a friend-of-a-friend or a fellow gamer they've never met doesn't count. Say it as one clear line now so there's a rule to fall back on later.
Lock contact settings to friends-only
Go through each app your child uses and set messaging, friend requests, and (in games) who can talk to them to 'friends only' or 'contacts only'. Doing it together shows them where the settings live so they can keep them locked down themselves.
Role-play what to do if a stranger makes contact
Practise it out loud: how to block, how to report, and what to say to you — with no fear of losing their device. A scenario they've rehearsed once is one they can actually act on when it happens for real.
In immediate danger: call 999. For non-emergency police matters, call 101.
Concerned about a child but it's not an emergency? NSPCC helpline 0808 800 5000. Childline for young people 0800 1111.
This is practical educational content to support families. For case-specific concerns about a child's safety, contact the NSPCC helpline on 0808 800 5000 or your local safeguarding team.
Myth: I've taught my child about stranger danger, so they know not to talk to strangers online.
Fact: Online, a stranger rarely feels like one. Contact comes through the ordinary 'add friend', follow and 'people you may know' features of the games and apps children use, so it looks friendly and familiar rather than like the classic 'stranger at the door'. Traditional stranger-danger warnings were built for the offline world and often don't fire online, which is why the practical rules — keeping contacts to people known in real life, and always telling you about a new one — protect a child better than the word 'stranger' does.
Myth: My child only talks to people they already know, so strangers aren't really an issue for us.
Fact: Online the idea of someone you 'know' is blurry. Friend-of-a-friend suggestions, shared game servers and lobbies, and group or Discord chats routinely place children alongside people they have never actually met but who feel connected and trusted. It takes only one accepted request or one open voice channel for an unknown adult to become part of your child's day-to-day conversations.
Myth: An online stranger is only really a danger if my child tries to meet them in person.
Fact: A great deal of harm happens entirely on the screen, with no meeting at all. Someone can coax a child into sharing personal information or images and then use those to threaten or blackmail them — a pattern known as sextortion — or spend weeks grooming them towards secrecy and control, all remotely. Keeping a relationship online is not the same as keeping your child safe.
Keep contact locked to people they know in real life, and agree the simple rule that they always tell you if a stranger messages them — in a game, an app, or anywhere.
As gaming and social apps open up, talk about how people online can pretend to be someone else, keep chat set to friends-only, and rehearse block-and-tell.
Discuss the pull to move conversations onto private apps, why personal details stay private, and that a long online friendship is not proof someone is who they say they are.
Focus on independent judgement — verifying who people really are before trusting them — and the reporting routes if contact ever turns coercive or sexual.
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