TU Dublin Launches GroSafe: Groundbreaking Game to Protect Children from Online Grooming
.jpg)
TU Dublin, in collaboration with ISPCC Childline and Trinity College Dublin, is leading an innovative project, ‘GroSafe’ funded by Science Foundation Ireland’s National Challenge Fund. The project aims to develop a tech-driven solution to strengthen societal resilience against child grooming, under the guidance of Dr. Christina Thorpe and Dr. Matt Bowden from the University’s School of Informatics and Cybersecurity.
The GroSafe project involves a groundbreaking computer game designed to help young people recognise the key signs of online grooming. The team believe that gamified training materials and a user-friendly reporting application have the potential to provide a key tool against online grooming.
Dr. Christina Thorpe said:
The rise in children's online activity, coupled with increasingly sophisticated predators, demands urgent action. NSPCC data shows an 80% increase in online child grooming crimes over the past four years, making it critical to empower children to recognise and report grooming behaviours to enhance child protection in Ireland and internationally
Approximately 400 students from Archbishop McHale College will log on to this multi-level, quiz-based game, which aims to safeguard children from online predators. The students involved have already played a crucial role in the early stages of development, offering feedback on features they liked and areas for improvement and testing will continue.
The ultimate goal is to expand GroSafe to include lessons on the role of pornography in young people’s lives and to support teachers in delivering Relationships and Sexuality Education in schools. With the growing prevalence of online grooming, recently highlighted by a court case where a man was convicted of blackmailing hundreds of victims worldwide, this project is more important than ever.
The GroSafe solution is an innovative platform designed as a technology-enabled solution to build societal resilience against child grooming. Our theory of change is centred on three core functions: INFORM (educating children, caregivers, and stakeholders about current and emerging threats), SUPPORT (guiding users to counselling and reporting services), and REPORT (offering a user-friendly and accessible platform for reporting grooming incidents).
TU Dublin is committed to addressing critical societal issues through innovative research and is excited to be at the forefront of creating impactful, real-world solutions.
Find out more about TU Dublin’s School of Informatics and Cybersecurity
#gobeyondlearning