Technology is a Tactic, Not a Form, of Violence. What Does That Mean for Prevention?

Part 2 of a 3-Part Series on Protecting Kids in Digital Spaces

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In Part 1, I made the case that we keep failing kids online because we keep misreading the problem — treating the internet as the cause of harm rather than a tactic used to carry it out. That's not just a semantic distinction. It changes what prevention looks like, what evidence applies, and where we should actually be putting our energy.

The core idea:

Technology is a tactic, not a form of violence. Which means the entire evidence base for preventing violence applies to preventing online harm — and we don't have to start from scratch.

The online safety field has largely been building its own evidence base from the ground up, while decades of rigorous prevention science in adjacent fields sits largely untapped. That's the gap worth closing.

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Awareness is the first step, not the last one.

Knowing that online grooming exists, that sextortion is on the rise, that radicalization happens through social media — that knowledge matters. It's where prevention starts. But awareness without the tools to act on it doesn't protect anyone.

Real prevention requires skills practice, not just information. Peer interaction. Repeated exposure over time. Environments that reinforce the same messages outside the classroom. The goal isn't to make kids (or parents) more afraid. It's to make them more capable. Most current online safety efforts stop at awareness.

That's the gap we need to close.

What the evidence says about preventing technology-facilitated violence.

Cyberbullying is the area with the most direct evidence for online harm prevention. KiVa (Finland) has multiple randomized controlled trials behind it and consistently shows meaningful reductions in both perpetration and victimization. NoTrap! (Italy) was evaluated in two independent controlled trials, with effects sustained at six-month follow-up. Cyber Friendly Schools (Australia) was tested across 35 schools in a group-randomized trial. In the U.S., the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program has the strongest domestic evidence base and includes online bullying.

But cyberbullying is a narrow slice of the problem. Programs addressing sexual violence, teen dating violence, in-person bullying, youth delinquency, community violence, and suicide all work on the same risk and protective factors that shape online behavior. Programs that build healthy relationship skills, strengthen social-emotional competencies, challenge harmful norms, and connect young people to trusted adults are doing online safety work — whether anyone calls it that or not.

What all the strongest programs across these areas have in common: none of them succeed because of a single lesson, safety tip, or clever curriculum. They work because they change the whole environment — school climate, teacher behavior, peer norms, family engagement — together and over time. And implementation matters as much as program selection. One rigorous study found teachers delivered only one-third of a strong program's content, with predictably weaker results. Choosing a good program is the beginning, not the end.

For parents, the Healthy Relationships Toolkit (HeaRT) — free through CDC's VetoViolence platform — includes a free, online parent training component that builds exactly the conversation skills families need: how to talk about healthy relationships, boundaries, and the signs of manipulation. It's one of the most accessible evidence-informed resources out there, and it was updated and re-released just this year. Many organizations, like Common Sense Media, offer widely used K-12 digital literacy curricula that give families and educators practical frameworks for navigating online life with young people.

Reducing the number of people who want to harm children is online safety work.

We have decades of evidence on what reduces sexual violence perpetration — healthy relationships education, bystander intervention, social norms change, and programs that address masculinity and entitlement. All of it applies here because the perpetrators are the same people. Someone who has internalized healthy relationship norms and genuine empathy is less likely to groom a child online. Someone who has been part of effective bystander programming is more likely to report exploitation when they see it in a digital space.

This isn't a new idea. It's just an underused one. The violence prevention field has been building this evidence base for decades. The online safety field has largely looked past it. That disconnect is costing us.

The same logic holds for social-emotional learning and community investments in belonging. Programs that build empathy, self-regulation, and healthy relationship skills make young people less likely to become perpetrators and less vulnerable to becoming victims. We already have this infrastructure. The work is to connect it explicitly to online safety and fund it like that's what it is.

Where we're still building the evidence — and why that's not a reason to wait.

For grooming, sexual exploitation, and radicalization specifically, the evidence base for prevention programs is still thin. We don't have the same rigorous trial data we have for cyberbullying. Programs like NetSmartz are valuable — but they haven't been tested to the same standard.

That's not a reason to hold back. It's a reason to act on what we know while investing seriously in building the evidence we still need.

The risk factors for online harm are largely the same as those for offline harm. So are the protective factors. Strong relationships, healthy norms, social connection, trusted adults — these protect kids across the board. We don't need a separate evidence base to justify investing in them. We just need to do it.

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Interventions that give kids and parents information, skills, and tools is essential, but it isn't the whole answer. It may not even be the most important part of the answer.

In Part 3, I'll get into what needs to change at the environmental level: platforms, policy, and the structural solutions that protect every child, whether or not they ever received a single lesson on online safety.

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Sarah DeGue, PhD, is the founder of EVOLVE Violence Prevention.

Translating research into practical strategies for organizations and communities is what we do.

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