TY - JOUR
T1 - Parental guardianship and online sexual grooming of teenagers
T2 - A honeypot experiment
AU - Kamar, Eden
AU - Maimon, David
AU - Weisburd, David
AU - Shabat, Dekel
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2022/12
Y1 - 2022/12
N2 - Although previous research has examined the association between the absence of guardianship and online sexual grooming victimization, no previous study has examined the impact of parental supervision on the progression of an online grooming event. To address this empirical gap, we designed three honeypot chat bots that simulated young female users on online chatrooms and deployed them on a list of 21 popular chatrooms commonly accessed by youth and online groomers from all around the world. The first chat bot was designed to convey an active guardianship style to a grooming suspect (treatment 1), the second chat bot was designed to convey a passive style of parental guardianship, and the third chat bot was designed to convey no guardianship (control group). The chat bots were deployed over a period of 2.5 months. Findings indicate that online unstructured socializing with peers in the absence of parental supervision increased online groomers’ likelihood to persist in an online sexual grooming event. In contrast, online groomers were less likely to continue their online grooming once believing their targets were communicating online in the presence of parental guardianship (both passive and active).
AB - Although previous research has examined the association between the absence of guardianship and online sexual grooming victimization, no previous study has examined the impact of parental supervision on the progression of an online grooming event. To address this empirical gap, we designed three honeypot chat bots that simulated young female users on online chatrooms and deployed them on a list of 21 popular chatrooms commonly accessed by youth and online groomers from all around the world. The first chat bot was designed to convey an active guardianship style to a grooming suspect (treatment 1), the second chat bot was designed to convey a passive style of parental guardianship, and the third chat bot was designed to convey no guardianship (control group). The chat bots were deployed over a period of 2.5 months. Findings indicate that online unstructured socializing with peers in the absence of parental supervision increased online groomers’ likelihood to persist in an online sexual grooming event. In contrast, online groomers were less likely to continue their online grooming once believing their targets were communicating online in the presence of parental guardianship (both passive and active).
KW - Honeypot. guardianship
KW - Online sexual grooming
KW - Situational crime prevention
KW - Unstructured socializing
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85136481027&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.chb.2022.107386
DO - 10.1016/j.chb.2022.107386
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AN - SCOPUS:85136481027
SN - 0747-5632
VL - 137
JO - Computers in Human Behavior
JF - Computers in Human Behavior
M1 - 107386
ER -