About the Child Financial Harms programme
Children now have the opportunities, incentives and means to make, spend and lose money online – a reality we haven't yet adapted to. As with other areas of life, digital technologies have increased access, scale and pace.
Industry points to parents having better oversight, but the reality is that children’s digital financial behaviours are opaque and obfuscated in multiple ways.
What are Child Financial Harms?
Children are exposed to financial risk at multiple points in their daily digital lives. Through phishing and scams, whilst gaming, and as a result of pseudo-currencies. These are just a few examples. Online industries are developing in ways which facilitate harm, in the absence of models that consider harm reduction.
We define Child Financial Harms (CFH) as 'any harm caused to a child through the direct loss of money, reputational damage, and/or introduction to financial behaviours which put children, their family or acquaintances at risk'.
Child Financial Exploitation and Abuse (CFE/A) includes any harm in which finances are used to facilitate child harm, exploitation or abuse by perpetrators.
What can we do?
Preventing child financial harms requires system-level response. As usual, parents are the frontline of that response. While we continue to uncover the scale and nature of child financial harms and exploitation, we are starting to consider how to build the defences.
“The UK is facing an increasing number of children living in poverty. It’s likely that an unprecedented surge in the cost of living will lead to more children experiencing risk online and possible harm. As children are able to buy, trade and earn online more easily, those risks and harms will increasingly include financial harms. The response from the system to child financial harms is still at a nascent stage compared to other areas of harm – but with Nominet’s funding, this can be changed.” – Vicki Shotbolt, CEO and founder, Parent Zone
Working together
The Child Financial Harms consortium – led by Parent Zone and supported by Nominet, the guardians of the U.K domain, through their Countering Online Harms Innovation Fund – is working to enhance cross-sector understanding of online financial risk and to answer the critical questions about why, where and how we should respond in order to reduce the harms that young people experience online.
The PSHE Association, UK Finance, Cifas, Dr David Zendle (University of York), and Reason Digital are working with us to bring together expertise from across education, finance, gambling and fraud – providing a unique perspective on the multi-faceted nature of online financial risks and harms.
Over three years, the consortium is identifying opportunities, testing interventions and sharing learning that will contribute to a system change in how online financial harms are acknowledged, tracked and responded to – so that we can improve outcomes for children now and in the future.
“As many activities, such as gaming, went online, it pioneered financial mechanics that are now encouraging young people to engage in dangerous behaviour for reward while also providing new avenues for abusers to engage, manipulate, and control children. As a society, we are currently ill-equipped to understand and respond to this issue. I'm proud that Nominet is able to give critical funds towards the development of solutions that will prevent and mitigate this rising category of harms." - Paul Fletcher, CEO, Nominet
Innovation, collaboration and research
As with all things digital, financial risks and harms do not exist in a vacuum; there are multiple intersections between on and offline experiences, individual and collective vulnerabilities and between other forms of harm and exploitation.
Acknowledging online financial harms as a distinct factor whilst understanding how it relates to other aspects of families’ experiences is critical for affecting change. Ensuring change reaches families in their everyday lives requires innovation, collaboration and a deep understanding of parenting in today's rapidly evolving connected world.
