Leveling Up Safety: A Caregiver’s Guide to Safe Gaming for Kids & Teens

Online gaming has become one of the most popular ways for kids and teens to connect, unwind, and express themselves. But like any online space, gaming comes with risks—especially when kids begin to interact with strangers, join group chats, or explore games with mature themes.

In recent years, there is a new troubling trend of violent online networks and extremist groups using gaming platforms to target older kids and teens. These groups often hide behind humor, memes, or edgy content to slowly pull young people into harmful beliefs or communities.

Why Gaming Safety Matters More Than Ever

Gaming isn’t just about games anymore. Many games now have chat abilities, livestreams, private messages and online communities. These features can be entertaining but also create opportunities for cyberbullying, grooming and exposure to violent or hateful content.

Kids don’t always recognize these risks, especially when they feel accepted or validated by online peers.

Safe Gaming Tips for Every Age

Parents and caregivers can begin to build healthy online gaming habits early with young children and continue those healthy habits into the teen years.

For younger children:

Use kid‑friendly platforms with strong parental controls. Most gaming consoles and online platforms offer settings like:
- Time limits
- Chat restrictions
- Content filters
- Purchase controls
Keep gaming devices in shared spaces, like a living room.
Turn off chat features whenever possible.
Play games together to model safe behavior and learn how they use games and who they can communicate with.
Teach kids that if someone makes them feel uncomfortable, to tell you right away.

Safety features help but it’s also important that parents and caregivers continue to check in and talk openly about gaming expectations. Talk regularly to kids about:

How much screen time is ok and offer things they can do when their screen time is over. It helps to model healthy screen time behavior in the home as well.
What kinds of games are ok to play and what are they allowed to play.
Who are they allowed to chat with or talk to in a game?
Remind kids they will not get in trouble for telling you they felt uncomfortable about something that happened in a game or online.

For older children:

As children get older and reach the tween years, continue checking in and talk about awareness and boundaries.

Review privacy settings together and talk about what personal information never to share, especially nude photos or photos they wouldn’t want others to see.
Talk about why they never have to accept friend requests, especially from people they don’t know, and how it is much safer to only connect with people they know in real life. Encourage them to question motives of friend requests, verify identities, and recognize when something feels “off.”
Encourage offline hobbies, sports, and face-to-face socializing to help create more balance in their screen time.
Help them grasp that once something is shared online, it can be impossible to fully erase, and everything they do online, even gaming, creates a digital record.

For teenagers:

For teenagers focus on critical thinking and how to spot manipulation This is the age group most targeted by violent online networks. Help teens learn to spot love-bombing or flattery from strangers, pressure to move conversations to private chats and conversations that shift towards hate or violence.

Often times an early sign of grooming, exploitation or extremist recruitment is when people online get angry when boundaries are set.

The FBI has reported that there has been an increase in violent and extremist networks who target teens online. Older teens are especially targeted through:

Gaming chats
Discord servers
Meme pages
YouTube or TikTok commentary channels

Many times, these groups often start with dark humor, edgy memes, content or jokes. They often go after kids looking for a sense of belonging. Talk to teens about groups that encourages hate, violence, or secrecy, and about why it’s not a safe community.