How to safeguard when the internet becomes the new youth club 

For Sexual Health Week, we’re exploring how being Chronically Online is influencing our attitudes and behaviours around sex and relationships. In this blog, Eloise Brame, Brook’s Senior Safeguarding Coordinator, talks about how safeguarding has changed in response to young people spending more time online. 

You may have heard the phrase “chronically online” used to describe young people. Always on their phones, in front of a screen, gaming, ‘in their own world’. We hear from parents saying they feel like they’ve lost their children to the internet, struggling to get their attention, struggling to connect.   

Without looking at the reasons why this may be, it can sound dismissive, as if being on screens all the time is a frivolous obsession. But when we look closer, being online isn’t always about choice, for many young people, it’s about necessity, it’s about connection and community. 

Offline “third spaces”, the places outside of home and school where young people used to spend time, have been steadily disappearing. Over the last decade, cuts to youth services, libraries, and leisure spaces have left fewer safe and welcoming places for young people to gather. Affordable cafés, community centres, and even town centres have become less accessible. With these vital spaces closing, the internet has become the new youth club. 

Online as a lifeline 

For many, especially those who are LGBTQ+, living in rural areas, or facing stigma offline, digital spaces provide vital support. Online communities, group chats, and forums offer belonging, connection, and information that might be missing in their day-to-day lives. 

It’s easy to criticise screen time, but online spaces can be protective. They can reduce isolation, support mental wellbeing, and connect young people with peers who understand their experiences. For some, finding affirming conversations about relationships, gender, sexuality, or consent online can be life-changing. 

Rather than seeing the internet only as a risk, it helps to understand why it has become a lifeline. Safeguarding practice should start from the reality that young people need these spaces, and that telling them to simply “log off” ignores the lack of safe, affordable offline alternatives. 

Disclosure in the digital age 

Another important shift is how young people choose to disclose harm. Increasingly, the first time a young person tells someone about abuse, exploitation, or struggles with mental health, it’s online. That might be in a direct message to a trusted adult, through an anonymous chat service, or even in a post on a forum. 

There are reasons for this.

Disclosing online can feel safer and less intimidating.

Young people have more control, they can type, delete, edit, and choose when to hit send. They don’t have to sit face-to-face with someone when they’re not ready. 

For professionals, this means we need to take digital disclosures seriously. A message typed late at night, a cryptic post, or a conversation on an online platform could be an early warning sign that a young person is struggling. Our safeguarding practice has to be flexible enough to respond in the spaces where young people feel comfortable opening up. 

Risks and realities 

Of course, being chronically online brings risks too. Online grooming, sextortion, exposure to harmful content, and the pressure of social comparison are very real concerns. But these risks don’t mean the solution is to restrict or dismiss young people’s online lives. Just as we wouldn’t close down a busy youth club because harm might occur there, we shouldn’t ignore the importance of digital spaces. 

Instead, we need to apply the same safeguarding lens we use for physical environments. That means equipping young people with the tools to navigate risks, training professionals to understand online harms, and ensuring that our responses to safeguarding concerns recognise the digital dimension. 

Reimagining safeguarding  

If third spaces are disappearing offline, then safeguarding must follow young people into the places they now spend time. That requires a shift in mindset, changes to training and assessment and also ensuring our online spaces lend themselves to safely support people who choose to disclose there. Online communities are not just distractions or dangers, they are real spaces of friendship, learning, identity, and sometimes, disclosure. 

By reframing “chronically online” as a reflection of disappearing offline opportunities, we can move away from blame and towards understanding. Young people aren’t retreating into screens out of laziness or obsession; they’re building community in the only spaces left open to them. 

But the bigger picture matters too.

If we want to reduce online risks, we also need to invest in offline spaces.

Restoring youth services, funding libraries and community centres, and creating safe, affordable places for young people to gather would give them real alternatives. Until then, safeguarding must recognise the internet as the new youth club, a place where young people’s wellbeing, safety, and voices deserve to be protected.