Author(s): Ms.Deepshikha Bhide,Vikrant Sopan Yadav
The number of Internet-connected devices, social media platforms, and generative AI has significantly increased the scope and nature of offenses involving children, including online grooming, child sexual abuse material (CSAM), sextortion of children, live-streamed abuse, and imagery generated through manipulation. Criminal law, which relies on the pillars of detection, prosecution, and punishment, enters the scene most of the time after harm has been committed, or it grapples with jurisdictions, encryption, anonymity, and underreporting issues. This paper considers the potential of social marketing—the intentional use of commercial marketing techniques to create a socially desirable behavioral shift among children regarding certain activities—as an additional deterrent and protective measure to complement the work of criminal law in preventing offenses against children in the online environment. Based on the doctrinal methodology of charting the legislation and judicial framework across four jurisdictions—India, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union—and a case study examination of prevention programs including Stop It Now!, the Lucy Faithfull Foundation's deterrence work, POCSO e-Box, the framework adopted in India, and WeProtect Global Alliance's Model National Response and the Nudge framework, the paper suggests that social marketing is most helpful when used in tandem as a “primary prevention” complement to law—to change social norms among potential offenders; to give children and caregivers social skills of “protective behaviors"; and to nudge technology platforms to make them safer. The paper argues that legal reform and social marketing are complementary, not alternative, tools and sets forth an integrated statutory-behavioral approach to prevention in the digital era.