When a child is unsafe at home, online spaces may be the only place to ask for help.
That sentence should stop all of us in our tracks.
For millions of children around the world, the internet is not simply a space for entertainment, education or social connection. It is sometimes the only doorway to safety. The only space where they can speak freely and connect with peers. The only place where they can say: I need help.
This is why the launch of the PoP Principles, Protection through Online Participation, matters so deeply.
We have designed systems to block, monitor and protect children from digital spaces. But we have not spent enough time asking how digital spaces can actively protect them.
Online Spaces as Pathways to Support
Child helplines globally know this reality well. Every day, they hear from children and young people who use digital channels to seek help, disclose harm, ask questions and make sense of what is happening to them. Their experiences show us that online participation is not separate from child protection. Increasingly, it is one of the key ways children access protection.
For too long, conversations about children’s online safety have focused almost exclusively on restriction, surveillance and control. We have designed systems to block, monitor and protect children from digital spaces. But we have not spent enough time asking how digital spaces can actively protect them.
The PoP Principles challenge us to think differently.
They recognise something child helplines have known for years: children are not passive users of technology. They are active participants in digital life. They seek connection, support, information and protection online, often long before they reach out to a trusted adult offline.
Many children who would never pick up a phone will send a message. They may start a webchat or reach out anonymously through an online channel because it feels quieter, safer and more within their control. Through these contacts, child helplines hear about abuse, violence, exploitation, mental health struggles and fear. And critically, they also hear what children need from the systems designed to protect them.
Participation is Protection
Digital participation is no longer separate from protection. It is protection. But this opportunity comes with responsibility.
If online spaces are becoming pathways to care, then they must also be designed intentionally, ethically and safely.
Children need digital environments where they can seek help without fear of exposure, shame or harm. They need systems that recognise distress, services that are accessible and support that reflects children’s realities, not adult assumptions.
This is where child helplines have an essential role to play.
Child helplines sit at the intersection of technology, trust and human connection. They hear directly from children every day. They understand the barriers children face when asking for help. They understand why anonymity, accessibility and child-centred support matter. Most importantly, child helplines know that protection begins with listening.
Children’s Voices Must Shape Digital Safety
The PoP Principles provide an opportunity to move beyond seeing children only as vulnerable users who need guarding, and instead recognise them as rights holders whose voices must shape the digital world around them.
That shift matters.
Because when children participate meaningfully in designing digital safety, services become more effective, trusted, and reachable. When they are excluded, we risk building systems that miss the children who most need support: those who are isolated, frightened or hidden behind screens, searching for a way to be heard.
At a time when public debate often centres on whether children should be kept away from online spaces altogether, we need to shift the conversation. Children’s lives are increasingly lived online and child protection cannot remain rooted only in offline models of care.
Child Helplines at the Centre of Digital Child Protection
We must build pathways to protection that reflect the realities of children’s lives today. That means investing in digital safeguarding, strengthening online counselling and support systems. It means embedding child participation into policy and platform design.
It also means recognising child helplines not as peripheral actors, but as critical infrastructure for child protection in the digital age.
The PoP Principles remind us that online participation and child safety are not opposing ideas. When done right, participation itself can become protective.
Children do not simply need safer digital spaces. They need digital spaces where they are heard.
Where they are respected.
Where they can seek help.
Where protection is possible.
And national child helplines must be part of building that future.
Because every child has the right to be heard.
Protection through Online Participation (PoP) is a global, multi-stakeholder initiative bringing together more than 30 partners under International Telecommunication Union Child Online Protection Programme, co-led with the Office of the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children, in partnership with the Global Cybersecurity Forum (GCF).
Executive Director
