About Online/Offline Parental Guidance
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 can't see, and don't speak the native language of, those spaces. Bad actors do. Online/Offline Parental Guidance exists to close that gap.
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 beside the “See current threats” button — 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.
Our principles
- Transparency is the product. Every advisory explains exactly how a threat works.
- Always actionable. Every advisory carries warning signs and protective actions.
- Honest urgency. Our threat level is computed from active advisories, never hand-set.
- Sourced and dated. Every advisory cites authoritative references and shows when it was updated.
- No fear-mongering. We explain risk in proportion, with calm, concrete guidance.
How an advisory is built
Each advisory is structured the same way: a plain-language summary, the mechanics of how the threat works, the warning signs a parent might observe, the protective actions to take, and the sources behind it. That structure is deliberate — it turns a vague worry into something you can recognize and act on.
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.