Youth Exploitation, Harm, and Violence in Online Networks

Summary of Results of a Systematic Review¹ with Recommendations for Multi-Agency Responses

Online engagement in com groups cannot be explained by individual, standalone factors. Accounting for the range of harms encapsulated by groups such as “764”, requires a wider, multifactorial approach. This report draws on the findings of a recently completed systematic review1 to establish potential engagement pathways to com group involvement as victims and as perpetrators. 

We find that a range of distal antecedents (such as experience of victimisation or perpetration of online harms such as CSA, self-harm, and extremism), conditions within the societal context (e.g., widespread misogyny) and proximal group processes (such as the pursuit of social status and/or social capital) combine to cause collective extremization. This is a radicalisation-like effect in part driven by the hierarchical incentive structure within com groups.  

Based on the evidence reviewed, we suggest four potential engagement pathways which require further analysis: 

1. Seeking out self-harm and other types of risky content online may result in being identified as vulnerable by exploitative online groups, resulting in being coerced into producing harmful content. 
2. Feelings of a lack of status and significance drive individuals to engage with extreme content and/or com group members to address their perceived significance deficit. 
3. Sustained interaction with increasingly extreme material - produced to gain status within the hierarchical group structure - produces a radicalisation-like effect.
4. The transition from victim to perpetrator is caused by a combination of prior victimisation, and internalisation of com group norms and identity. This may be amplified by the digital environment. 

We identify potential interventions to address both the “supply” and “demand” sides of the problem: 

• Primary interventions: Remove extreme violent content and CSAM online; implement technical safeguards on all social media and messaging applications; increase user resilience through digital literacy campaigns; raise awareness amongst frontline staff through civil society campaigns and public service announcements; destabilise societal conditions of misogyny through digital literacy programmes and popular culture interventions.
• Secondary interventions: Algorithmic threat detection to identify individuals who show an increasing risk of escalation to violence; onward referral of individuals harms to support services.
• Tertiary interventions: Victims should be referred to trauma-informed, supportive, education, health, and social care services; protection programmes should be used to prevent potential ongoing risks; sentencing of youth offenders should be trauma-informed;  for victim-perpetrators, sentencing should recognise the tension between justice for victims and avoiding further harm of child offenders who may also be victims of exploitation. 

¹This report presents an abridged version of the following article:

Smith, L. G. E., Squires, C., Binder, J., Brown, O., Busher, J., Hamilton-Giachritsis, C., Hughes, N., Kloess, J., Lizzio-Wilson, M., & Smith, W. (2026). How social and behavioural science insights can support multiagency responses to youth exploitation, harm, and violence in online networks. Manuscript under review.