The Evolving Landscape of Online Child Safety

Abstract

There have been various efforts to understand how youth online safety has been reflected in the news, as news play an important role in shaping public opinions. However, these efforts focused on specific contexts, such as individual countries and specific online risk types. Therefore, there is a need for a holistic view of understanding trends in the news regarding stakeholders involved and various ranges of online risks. In this work, we seek to understand how discussions of online safety for youth has evolved in news publications over the last two decades. We applied quantitative media content analysis and sentiment analysis to 3.9K English-language news articles from 2002–2024, documenting shifts in the portrayal of key stakeholders. Our results showed increased media focus on technology companies and government in youth safety discussions, particularly highlighting cyberbullying as a key risk. We found a generally negative trend in the sentiment toward the perceived safety of youth online, which fluctuates based on societal concerns and policy changes. The significance of this work lies in its analysis of how media discourse has illuminated public perceptions and policy directions concerning youth safety in digital spaces.