In today’s world, the internet is more than a tool. It can be a place where friendships are built, identities are explored, and young people find connection. For teenagers, digital spaces are a huge component of their lives. However, the way we talk about online safety often feels like it belongs to another era, one rooted in adult fears rather than young people’s lived experiences. A project led by the Young and Resilient Research Centre at Western Sydney University, in partnership with the PROJECT ROCKIT Foundation with funding from Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, set out to bridge this disconnect. Instead of telling young people how they “should” behave online, the researchers conducted a survey of 104 young people and workshops with 31 young Australians aged 12 to 17 which asked them directly: What does online safety mean to you? What do you wish adults understood? What would your ideal online world look like? How do you want to learn about online safety?
The results were eye-opening and led to the development of a framework to reimagine how online safety education for young people is designed and delivered. More
For decades, online safety education has followed a familiar script: don’t talk to strangers, protect your passwords, avoid dangerous websites, and report cyberbullying. While well-intentioned and undoubtedly important, these lessons have often been framed through a lens of extreme risks of harm, such as online predators, scams, grooming, or violent content. These are serious issues, and of course it is important that young people are aware of them and know how to protect themselves from them.
However, there are other, everyday struggles that young people encounter that tend to be far more nuanced. They wrestle with friendship dramas that spill over into group chats, the pressure of social media comparisons, or the awkwardness of setting boundaries with peers who overshare.
They worry about being misunderstood, about parents who post their picture without consent, about classmates who expect instant replies, and the exhausting pursuit of “likes” and validation.
And while these issues can arise as a result of online communication, they also occur in face-to-face interactions. For young people, the online and in-person spheres are deeply integrated.
Yet, when adults only emphasize the extreme dangers during online safety education, young people feel dismissed. As one participant put it bluntly, “The current way just doesn’t work, isn’t engaging [and doesn’t] teach a lot.” Online safety talks framed as scaremongering not only alienate teenagers but also make them less likely to seek help when real problems arise.
For many teenagers, the internet is not a battlefield of harms but a mishmash of experiences that are good, bad, and everything in between. They describe online life as a spectrum of shades of grey, not black and white.
On one hand, online spaces can be havens: communities where LGBTQIA+ teens find acceptance, forums where strangers become confidantes, and social platforms where friends and family can connect. On the other hand, the same spaces can become toxic, exposing them to bullying or harassment.
The key is not to portray the internet as inherently dangerous, but to acknowledge its complexity. As young people stressed, the online world involves human relationships that play out on a different stage. There are kind people and cruel ones, just as in the offline world. The challenge is learning how to navigate it.
The young people in this project proposed a powerful shift: online safety education should not only be about shielding them from danger but about equipping them with the capacities to thrive.
These “digital capacities” form the foundation of a reimagined approach. These include communicating effectively, which involves learning to listen, to express oneself clearly, and to manage miscommunication. Building respectful relationships is another capacity that entails developing empathy, honesty, and mutual care, even in anonymous exchanges.
Setting and respecting boundaries involves knowing when to share or to withhold, and how to enforce limits. Cultivating resilience is another useful capacity that includes building strategies for self-care and recovery when faced with negativity or conflict. Finally, thinking critically includes questioning the credibility of online information, understanding algorithms and manipulation, and making informed choices.
This approach treats safety not as a set of prohibitions and warnings against serious risks of harm but as a holistic toolkit for navigating life’s common challenges, whether they happen online or offline.
The workshops revealed three big areas where young people felt conventional online safety education falls short. Connecting and interacting with others is the first. Instead of being told “don’t talk to strangers,” they wanted guidance on how to distinguish trustworthy people from those with harmful intentions, and how to manage everyday friendship dramas before they spiral into conflict or bullying.
Next was consent and agency. Beyond lessons about hacking or identity theft, they wanted to learn how to negotiate consent when sharing images, how to control their digital footprints, and how to set boundaries. Finally, getting and giving support. Rather than just being told where to seek help, they wanted to learn how to support their peers without burning out, how to set emotional boundaries, and how to navigate adults who may dismiss their concerns.
These desires reveal that young people see safety as a function of belonging, respect, and support, and not simply the absence of harm.
Just as important as the educational content is the delivery. The young people in this project were clear that they don’t want to sit through lectures filled with outdated warnings. They crave learning that is youth-centred, that values their insights and experiences and involves genuine dialogue with adults. They wish for diversity, and teachers who understand varied cultural, gendered, and social experiences. The young people also wanted interactive and practical education, full of activities and discussions, and learning methods that are open and collaborative. Finally, they wanted authentic and original educational content that addresses real, messy experiences without sugar-coating or resorting to clichés.
These approaches don’t mean abandoning caution about extreme harms like grooming or cybercrime. But it does mean focusing first on the everyday challenges of relationships, consent, and support to empower young people to build resilience that prepares them for both minor conflicts and major dangers.
Ultimately, online safety cannot be taught as fear management. It must be taught as life skills: how to relate to others, how to protect one’s sense of self, and how to build inclusive, supportive communities.
As one participant put it: “We are still learning and growing, we need to make mistakes in order to learn from them.” Safety education, then, should not be about locking young people in a protective bubble but about walking alongside them as they explore, stumble, learn and grow stronger.
The internet is not going away and nor are the potential harms. But neither are its opportunities, including the spaces where young people find community, identity, and joy. If we truly want to support them, we must stop treating online safety as a checklist of don’ts and start treating it as a shared project of building respectful, resilient, and inclusive digital worlds.
The research from the Young and Resilient Research Centre and PROJECT ROCKIT shows us the path forward: a vision of online safety that is not about fear, but about belonging.
