A roll-play game where two players pretend to have a conversation via Instagram. A cardboard is placed in the middle of the two people, like a computer screen, so that the two people cannot see each other.

Person A, without person B noticing, is given some disguising objects to make him/her look like an older person (glasses, moustache, etc.). 

They are told to have a random conversation and, when they finish, they are both asked who they have been talking to.

At that point, the cardboard (screen) between the two is removed and person B discovers that they were not talking to the person they thought they were talking to because person A is an older and completely different person to the one they thought they were talking to.

This roll-play will lead to a moment of group reflection on grooming.

It is advisable to isolate persons A and B before starting, to explain to the rest of the group that they are not allowed to laugh or make comments during the roll-play, so as not to reveal what is going on before the time.

The activities and the type of material to be used must be calibrated on the age of the participants.

The guys sit in a circle and the adult ask them what they know about grooming. The adult gives a definition, explains what it consists of, under what circumstances it can happen, and the mechanisms that are established. Anyone who has tales of similar stories in their own life, or about people who know directly, can share them with the rest of the group, if it want. Finally, the group can watch an example video.

True stories are told about this issue. A lot of things can be proposed: film clips, interview videos or newspaper articles to read together. Then the experiences are commented on together by stimulating children with questions, therefore going to work above all on the empathic dimension. The adult ask them what they think the victims in the story might feel, why they act in a certain way, and what they would do in their place. The group reflect together on the causes that lead some young people to take refuge in the virtual world. With the little ones, cards representing emoticons or facial expressions can be used to indicate the emotion that is perceived.

Show images, screenshots of possible conversations and messages on a device, and let the children identify which ones they think are harmless and which are potentially dangerous. The group looks at the final result together and indicates what the alarm bells are, highlighting certain typical phrases that must warn the person who is reading.

Provide illustrative cards related to drawings that show all the possibilities to prevent a risky situation or to ask for help if you are in a dangerous situation.

The following methods can be reported in the cards:

• Ask parents to make sure they activate the updated parental controls and antivirus on the different devices the children use;
• How to block a person on a chat, how to delete the conversation, how not to be tracked through account changes, profiles, etc;
• Indicate people to talk to and to contact: parents, friends, school teachers, adult reference figures;
• Indicate protected places to talk about it, such as counseling centers, listening desks if children don’t feel like turning to people in confidence;
• Indicate alternative channels of communication if they don’t feel like exposing themselves, as toll-free numbers, protected sites with listening and welcoming chats that give support.

Everyone writes on paper what advice they would give to a friend who might be in that situation. Collect all the sheets and then read them together and comment on them, invite children to express their opinions by asking why an advice can be good or not, favoring different points of view. Choose the most suitable ones, combine them all together and stick them on a billboard or rewrite them on a single sheet.

Give notes to children with correct and incorrect behaviors to keep, they have to insert them in a column of the billboard, on the Yes or No column, deciding whether it is a safe behavior or not. Comment together why they have chosen one column or the other, ask the group if they agree and finally explain why the choice of the guys was correct or not.

Children are divided into small groups to design a powerpoint or a mini website, where they can collect what they have learned; each group can deal with a specific part and then joins the work obtaining a final elaborate. In this way, from just listeners they can themselves become promoters of knowledge on the argument, tailored to their peers. With simple and accessible language at their age, they can re-propose what they have assimilated with their own offspring, reporting good standards, advice, indications and explanations on the topic. These works can then be disseminated by the children and taken to their classrooms, proposed for the sites of the schools or places they frequent, such as sports or other aggregation ones.