Situational and Social Prevention of Children Victimization in Cyberspace

Cyberspace has brought numerous benefits to various aspects of human life; however, in some cases, it becomes an insecure environment for committing crimes, which is one of its disadvantages. The present study addresses the important issue of crimes against children and children victimization in cyberspace and evaluates situational and social prevention strategies against it. Because children are the victims of such crimes and there is social sensitivity toward this age group, it is obvious that certain expectations of criminal law are conceived that have been examined in this study. The results showed that there are various crimes through cyberspace against children with a variety of reasons, including sexual crimes, virtual pornography, pedophilia, leaking information through children, insulting, drug dealing, harassment, and assault among others. In response to such crimes, situational and social prevention strategies have been developed, such as providing children-specific SIM cards and the Internet, which are vindicable and have resulted in reduced crimes against children in cyberspace. However, there is still room for further in this area, which should be considered by the relevant governmental and non-governmental institutions, and in this regard, the experiences of other countries may be employed.