Last week I was speaking at the Hawkes Bay Primary Principals Association conference about the work I’ve been doing with the 2026 Education Environment Scan. At the event I had the opportunity to sit in on a talk by Ray Finch, CEO of the Laura Fergusson Foundation, on a topic most of us would rather not look directly at: the deliberate, organised targeting of children online by people who want to exploit, manipulate, and ultimately destroy them. It seemed very timely given that this is identified in the Scan as one of the four ‘burning platform’ issues we must address.
It wasn’t a comfortable hour. It shouldn’t be. But I came away convinced that this is now squarely an education issue, not just a policing or parenting one – and that school leaders need a working understanding of what’s happening, even if the detail is confronting.
Here’s the short version of what stayed with me.
This isn’t the radicalisation we’re used to thinking about
Finch drew a sharp distinction between politically or religiously motivated extremism – which has a recognisable shape, a goal, “chatter” that intelligence agencies can track – and what he calls nihilistic violent extremism: harm with no ideological purpose at all, organised chaos whose only real aim is societal destruction. It’s harder to detect precisely because it doesn’t follow any of the patterns we’ve trained ourselves to look for, and its primary target is children.
The recruitment pattern he described is depressingly consistent – a child meets a stranger in a game environment, gets “love-bombed” with intense, round-the-clock affection and attention, then is gradually drawn into sharing something compromising – a photo, a link, a personal detail. From there it escalates into blackmail, coercion, and control, sometimes pushing kids towards self-harm, violence, or worse, with the perpetrator using threats against the child’s family to keep them compliant. Finch shared how colleagues at New Zealand’s DIA and NZSIS have linked some of this activity in NZ.
Why banning platforms won’t fix this
Finch was specific about where a lot of this starts: gaming platforms popular with children, Roblox prominent among them, precisely because they’re framed – and marketed – as safe, social, age-appropriate fun. The danger isn’t that these platforms are inherently malicious; it’s that the safety settings most parents assume are switched on by default usually aren’t, and most adults have no idea what to look for.
But his core argument wasn’t “ban the platform.” Ban one, and the activity simply migrates – to the next app, the next chat tool, the next encrypted corner of the internet. He’s seen it happen repeatedly. The strategy of bad actors depends on constant movement between platforms specifically to outrun whatever gets shut down or legislated against. Treating this as a platform problem we can legislate or block our way out of misreads the nature of the threat.
What actually helps
Finch’s advice to educators and parents was less about surveillance and more about relationship and openness:
- Make online life a normal topic of conversation, not a hidden one. The goal is for kids to come home and talk about what they saw online the way they’d talk about a sports game – not because they’re in trouble, but because it’s just part of the conversation. Secrecy is the enemy here, on both sides. Predators thrive on isolating a child from the adults around them, so the antidote is making sure no part of a child’s online life feels like something they have to hide.
- Watch for behavioural shifts, not “phases.” Sudden withdrawal, increased secrecy about devices, new security-consciousness (VPNs, hidden apps), changes in friend groups, or a marked change in mental health are signals worth a closer look – not dismissed as typical teenage behaviour.
- Know that isolation is the biggest risk factor. Children who are socially isolated, who’ve experienced bullying, or who spend long unsupervised stretches alone online are disproportionately targeted. Vulnerability isn’t about being “the kind of kid this happens to” – loneliness itself is what gets exploited.
- Build digital literacy and resilience directly into how we teach, not as a one-off assembly. Programmes like NetSafe’s Headspace Invaders (aimed at 10–14-year-olds) exist specifically to help kids recognise manipulation tactics in an age-appropriate, non-alarming way.
- Treat reporting as help, not punishment. Finch was emphatic that a child needs to know that flagging a concern – about themselves or a friend – leads to support, not consequences. Pathways exist through schools, NZSIS, and Internal Affairs, but they only work if children and parents know about them and trust them enough to use them.
Why this belongs in our thinking about education’s future
It would be easy to file this under “online safety” and move on. I’d resist that. This sits right at the intersection of the things I keep coming back to in this work – agency, equity, and what it actually means to equip young people to navigate a complex world rather than just protect them from it.
Banning, blocking, and legislating have a role, but they’re floor-building moves. They reduce some risk, but they don’t build the judgement, resilience, and critical awareness a young person needs to recognise manipulation when it shows up in a form we haven’t legislated against yet. That’s a ceiling problem, and ceilings are built through relationship and education, not restriction.
Here’s a question for leaders: if a student at your school tried to describe what’s happening to them online to a trusted adult at your school tomorrow, would they know who that adult was – and would they actually choose to?
If you are in a position where you have come across instances of this sort of thing happening, Finch’s advice is to immediately report it via the NZSIS reporting platform. The concern will be picked up immediately by the specialist team there.
Know the signs of violent extremism grooming
Here’s a video that Finch shared with the group he was speaking to – it’s publicly available and has been designed to help educate parents, teachers and others who are concerned about this issue – you may find it useful to share with staff and others in your school context.
