How we work

Children spend hours every day in spaces that are presumed safe — Minecraft servers, Roblox experiences, Fortnite lobbies, Discord communities, and social feeds. The adults responsible for them often cannot see, and do not speak the native language of, those spaces. Online/Offline Parental Guidance exists to close that gap: to turn what is actually happening into guidance a parent can act on, without turning every visit into an emergency.

Why “offline” is in the name. A harm does not stop being ours because the object is physical. A gel-filled squishy toy became a burn injury because a short-video trend told children to microwave it; a plush bear with a general-purpose language model inside is an unfiltered chatbot handed to a five-year-old. Those arrive through the same feeds and the same shops as everything else here, so the toy shelf is a surface we cover, not an exception we make.

Scoped to your child. Set the age groups in your household once — in the top bar, or under “Show guidance for” on the home page — and every advisory, news clip, and platform page narrows to what can actually reach them. Choose more than one band if you have children in different age groups, or leave it on All ages to see everything. The selection never leaves your browser.

Our principles

• Transparency is the product. Every advisory explains exactly how a threat works.
• Always actionable. Every advisory carries warning signs and protective actions.
• Relevance before volume. The useful number is not how many issues exist; it is how many are relevant to your child's age and the platforms they use.
• Action before alarm. Every advisory leads with the recommended next step, not a severity score. We reserve red for situations where delay changes what we would advise.
• Sourced and dated. Every advisory cites authoritative references and shows when it was updated.
• Restraint. Early signals do not always become widespread issues. We track them, look for independent confirmation, and publish when the evidence warrants it.

How an advisory is built

Each advisory is structured the same way: what is happening, why it matters in concrete terms, what to watch for, what parents can do, words to open the conversation with, what to do if it is happening right now, and the sources behind all of it. That structure is deliberate — it turns a vague worry into something you can recognize and act on.

What our labels mean

We deliberately do not publish a single site-wide danger level. One word cannot answer six different questions — how serious this could be, how commonly it is happening, how recently, how likely it is for your child, how strong the evidence is, and whether anything needs doing today — and a level that only ever reads “severe” stops meaning anything by the second visit. So we separate them:

• Recommended next step. Priority guidance — a timely conversation, settings check, or safety step is recommended. Review soon — worth reviewing or discussing this week. For awareness — useful context; no immediate action is suggested.
• Current status. New and Updated mean something changed in the last 30 days. Resurfacing means a quiet topic is being reported again. Ongoing means recent or continuing reports meet our evidence threshold. Watching means it is quiet and we are still checking. Nothing stays “new” because it was once new.
• Evidence. Confirmed means two or more independent organizations. Developing means credible but still filling in. Early signal means one credible source, published labelled rather than held back. This is derived from the sources on the advisory, so it cannot be talked up.
• Time-sensitive. The only label we render in red, and the only thing that may interrupt an inbox. It is reserved for a newly published priority advisory — the case where a delay materially changes what we would recommend — and it expires on its own.
• Potential impact. Stated in plain words (“serious burns requiring medical treatment”) rather than as a score. Specificity is more useful than an adjective, and usually calmer.

What this is not

Online/Offline Parental Guidance is an awareness resource. It is not emergency, legal, or clinical advice. If a child is in immediate danger, contact local authorities. To report online exploitation, use the NCMEC CyberTipline.