Latvia: Dangerous friendship on the Internet

“Dangerous friendship on the Internet” is a project that aims to prevent children from becoming victims of online grooming. The project includes: a campaign to inform society about grooming risks; the development of an online test for recognising and preventing grooming and encouraging people to seek help; and the development of educational and awareness materials – posters, brochures and online posts for dissemination throughout the country. A self-help test (sos.drossinternets.lv) helps with recognising online grooming. The results provide advice on what to do and where to go. Since its launch in February 2022, the test has been filled out by 6,677 children and youngsters. Analysing the answers, we can conclude that 20% of children who have online friendships have been victims of online grooming. This is more than 1,300 children during a six-month period. If we compare these results to statistics from the state police, it is clear that the latency of these crimes is high.

The project started in June 2021 and is still running.