Youth-Driven Strategies for Safer Online Gaming

Online gaming today takes on a much more advanced form than it has in previous iterations. Divorced from the era of simple in-browser games, online multiplayer titles such as Roblox and Fortnite serve as thriving social arenas densely populated with children and teens in which connection and identity formation take place. However, it is also an emerging frontier for online threats, where data breaches, exploitation, and harassment target its young user base. Current digital safety education offerings, particularly ones that are exclusively developed by adult “experts”, rarely address the cause behind the threats, failing to equip students to proactively respond to these ever-evolving harms.

Cyber Collective, in partnership with Tech:NYC’s FutureReady Program, facilitated and executed a multi-phase, student-led investigative and design project that empowered high school students from Astor Collegiate Academy to research the intricacies of online threats and author an original digital safety guidebook specifically designed to inform their peers.

This project, presented as a workplace-readiness challenge, transformed participants from passive users of gaming platforms into active researchers, analysts, and advocates. Students utilized peer survey results to detect trends in how young people engage in online gaming spaces. They explored how social engineering tactics operate within gaming ecosystems and identified vulnerabilities that are most exploitable by hackers.Their findings were implemented in the creation of the guidebook, informing the students’ design methodology.

The approach of the workplace-readiness challenge mirrors industry practices, where data analytics transform information into actionable tasks. By integrating critical thinking, advocacy, and digital awareness skills, this challenge built the students’ career readiness skills while simultaneously cultivating responsible digital citizenship among their cohort and communities beyond. It has reminded Cyber Collective of the necessity of centering young people in conversations regarding emergent technology, and furthers our argument for a youth-led shift in digital safety education.