Turning online threats into digital confidence for kids with Trent Ray, Cyber Safety Project

Tune in for an illuminating conversation with Trent Ray from the Cyber Safety Project and Kay Vasey from k-ID exploring:

• Why explaining the “why” behind online safety rules helps kids take them seriously
• Practical strategies to engage with your child’s gaming world—no expertise required
• Small adjustments and language shifts that build trust instead of frustration
• The power of including kids’ voices in shaping safe online experiences
• Approaches that foster connection and confidence, rather than fear or bans

Discover how to equip children with the knowledge and tools they need to thrive in digital spaces, while staying safe and feeling understood.

Let’s empower families and reshape the digital landscape, together.

Transcript

Transcript

Kay Vasey Intro
Hello, it's Kay, and today I'm chatting with Trent Ray, co-founder and director at Cyber Safety Project based in Melbourne, Australia. Trent is dedicated to creating safer communities through the development of the National Cyber Safety Curriculum Programme for Australian Schools. His work focuses on designing and delivering engaging learning experiences that help students, teachers and the wider community develop future-ready skills, lifelong habits and self-regulation when using digital technologies for work, life and play. Hi there, Trent. I'm so pleased to able to talk to you. How are you doing today?

Trent Ray
I'm excellent, thank you Kay. It's the end of the school year here in Australia. So everybody is limping to the finish line, know, important work never stops.

Kay Vasey
So we're going to just dive straight in today. And I want to ask you, from your perspective, whether as a parent yourself or from the parents and kids that you actually work with, can you share with us a little story that really brought home the importance of creating safer online spaces for children?

Trent Ray
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm a primary school teacher and taught for a number of years in schools and myself and Sam McCauley, who is the co-founder of Cyber Safety Project, were teaching together for a number of years and there was actually a student in our school. I'll call him Jake for the purpose of this story, but he was playing online at a very popular game,

And it was in the really infancy stages or early stages of this game really taking surge, particularly with young children. And it was here where they actually met a perpetrator online that was posing to be a 13 year old girl.

And Jake was pretty excited about meeting this perpetrator, getting a chance to make a friend who is a girl, he was 11 at the time, she was 13, accordingly, and this perpetrator was really building trust with Jake very quickly in the game, but it's pretty hard, I think this perpetrator took advantage of that and encouraged Jake to download Skype at the time, and it was here that some...

challenging behaviors started to occur. And that was things like the perpetrator encouraging Jake to send photos of himself to them, but also using the multimodal communication, which at the time was really innovative of conference calling, turning on his webcam and this perpetrator was then able to

scan, screen record these and use these, I guess, in any way that they wanted to and completely unbeknownst to Jake. And how did we find out about it? It was through our school. We discovered it on Jake's device on his laptop at school and we had to let his parents know. And obviously there was a whole range of challenges that we were faced with as a community. Multiple students in our school had been talking to the same perpetrator through the game as well. And it really highlighted to us

the imperative for really having a proactive approach to helping young people to learn the skills that they need to be able to navigate online gaming. And there are so many harms and challenges that exist for kids and they don't necessarily always know what those challenges are. And if we can't assume that they know how to protect themselves. And so that was a real eye-opening experience for Sam and I. And a few years later, we then created the Cyber Safety Project to try to address that through our education programs in schools here in Australia.

Kay Vasey
goodness. what it turned out to be, who was this 13 year old girl? Was it another teenager? Was it, this stereotypical hairy old white man? Or who was it?

Trent Ray
Yeah. That's right. Yeah.

Yeah. So it was discovered that it was actually a 42 year old man based in the United States. And it was through a pretty long investigation that that was discovered. luckily for Jake, he's he's OK now. It's many years on. He's in he's an apprentice here, a tradie in Australia, and he's doing really well. But there was a lot that we had to work through to be able to help him and his friends overcome that challenge. And we were lucky that we were able to catch it when we did. But the harm had already been done, unfortunately.

Kay Vasey
Interesting. so that it was really the kind of like stereotypical one where it's like, the ones that kind of parents all worry about that there's just this old, old man somewhere who's posing as this girl who then, doesn't know your child at all. And then some of the other amazing safety organizations we've been talking to actually have highlighted the fact that actually a lot of the time, unfortunately, perpetrators are not only known to, the children, but also are perhaps

even other teenagers.

Can you share with us though, is there kind of one unexpected lesson that you've learned along the way in all of the important work that you do?

Trent Ray
Yeah, when we've really early in on our journey, we started working with some young kids in grade five. And it was really interesting when we finished the session with a group of students, one of the things that really resonated and that stuck with us every time we think about what we create around our learning materials was that this young child came up to us and said, that was really good. We have had lots of these types of sessions at school before.

This is the first time that anyone's ever told me why it's not safe online. you know, our parents keep telling us that, we've got to be safe and make sure you're safe. But that real understanding to give them that imperative of, why do parents care so much? Why do trusted adults care so much about their safety? And that really hit home for us.

we've really made sure that from here on in or then onwards that we've thought carefully about how we can appropriately at the right age, give young people that knowledge that they need to be able to understand why we're having this conversation in the first place to really get them to listen and tune into what we're sharing with them.

Kay Vasey
And what do you think are maybe some of the most prevalent and important or most kind of dangerous online harms that parents should be aware of today when it comes to things like social media and online spaces?

Trent Ray
I think it's exposure to adult content, adult-based content, extremism content, content that is just not designed for young eyes. But the ease of access to that content is a real challenge and problem. And I think young people are really being exposed to this content at a super early age. And that's really impacting on what they know about the world and I guess growing up really quickly or having to be in situations where they've got to try to understand what this content means to them.

Kay Vasey
That's right. think it's interesting because when the internet first came about, it wasn't designed with children in mind, yet year on year we have more and more kids being online, right? Because the average age, for example, of getting a smartphone around the world is like kind of 10. It can be as low as 10 in some countries, right? So more and more kids are there, whether we like it or not. And then we therefore have to work together to make sure that we have these more age-appropriate experiences.

online. so it's and work in a way where we say well it's probably not the best idea to just try and shut them out entirely and exclude them. Why don't we look at it through the lens of inclusivity and then being able to provide good age-appropriate experiences that encourage healthy online habits. with the best will in the world I think just shutting kids out is

really, really tough because how do you then get to implement that? And how do you police that? how do you, knowing that children are extremely resourceful and are able to get around things in ways that shock us? Like, how did you get access to that? I thought I shut everything down. I think we need to...

pull together more and make sure that there are lots of amazing, really positive online experiences. At the same time, doing the really important work that you do in the real world.

raising awareness, opening up those conversations and keeping everyone informed and reminding them to stay vigilant at all times. And so in terms of the work that you do, I would love you to walk us through like what is a typical day in the world of the Cyber Safety Project and what does it look like for you creating these Cyber Safe communities for children?

Trent Ray
Yeah.

Yeah, there's no one day that's ever the same, but why don't I just share what happened today, just to give you a bit of an insight. So we work primarily with three groups of people, young people in schools, educators through schools as well, and parents and that as a whole community approach. So this morning I was working with our most junior students, our foundational prep age students here in Australia.

dancing to a song that we called the Stop the Safety song. And then later in the afternoon, I was running teacher professional development for 90 educators. So I had to kind of switch back into that adult mode of delivery. And now I'm talking to you, having a really good professional conversation. So we're really lucky here that we have an opportunity to work with different stakeholders. And it's certainly never a dull moment to be able to switch into different modes. And that's what keeps it really exciting and fun for us as well.

from our content creation perspective too. We've always got to be thinking about our key audience and who we're talking to.

Kay Vasey
I love that. I wish I'd been there this morning. It's brilliant that you get to have such a varied day and you're approaching it through that wonderful whole community approach. we must not get into the danger zone of perhaps trying to point fingers at each other.

you child need to regulate your own activities and get off that screen. And then parents meet, how am I supposed to do this and learn everything by myself? And then also the educators being like, goodness, how am I supposed to teach all this stuff? So it's all of us coming together and then aided by amazing organizations like Cyber Safety Project that facilitate and enable that conversation to be had in a more open and honest way.

And in relation to that, what impact do you think that so far in your journey to date have you been most proud of?

Trent Ray
Being able to measure this can be sometimes difficult because we're talking about skills and behavioural change. Something that we're so proud of is that every year we work with about 125,000 young people, 5,000 educators, around 15,000 parents to really support them on their journeys around this at different parts of the child development.

one of the things that I think is crucial is that we've been able to open up those conversations through our resources.

So starting conversations and having them, it's never too early, but it's also just about feeling confident to know what type of conversations we can have with our young people and how we can really support them to know where they're at with what they understand and build their knowledge over a period of time. And as you say, banning technology is a really big deterrent for that conversation to get started because I know that many young people tell us that, they might not reach out to a parent or a trusted adult like a school teacher because

they've heard rhetoric or they've heard conversations with their parents or they've experienced them with their parents where they're talking about banning them and restricting them and that technology is bad. And so that's immediately a brick in the wall that they're starting to build with their young person. So as much as we want to have, tell kids about the harms and the challenges, we also have to have a balance around the great positive things that technology can do too. So we're seeing that our program enables those really open conversations and gets the conversation started.

Kay Vasey
Thank you so much for the work that you do. And I was wondering then, in terms of looking ahead, if I was to give you a crystal ball, what kind of initiatives are you most passionate about that are coming up? And how do you hope that they're actually going to change this online landscape for kids?

Trent Ray
Yeah, we really want to think about how we can creatively get young people's voice into the learning materials that we're creating. That's really important. We want young people to feel super empowered here. As you say, they're experiencing the online world in different ways than what, their trusted adults may be. And so our programs are really starting to gear towards getting a lot more young people voice in the program, having them participate in the learning design so that we can support them to really help.

communicate what they want their parents to know about the online world, the good, bad, and the ugly. I love how you were talking about curiosity and that's framing everything that we do around questions and starting conversations is crucial. It's important for us to help parents as well to understand strategies that are simple and little small adjustments that they can make at home that can actually make a big difference. We often say things like, if your young person loved playing sport, you'd be out there shooting hoops with them.

And it's the same, if your child's showing a lot of interest in gaming, well, jump in and play with them and take that opportunity as not a, I don't wanna play this game. It's like, I wanna spend time with my young person. And if we can bring it around that time conversation, that this is actually can be quality time because we're sitting next to each other, I'm learning from each other and we're having some fun. And kids tell us that they don't necessarily wanna be their parents to be an expert at playing the game that they're playing.

But what they want them to know, they want to be confident in is that their parents would maybe know how to help them and support them if something went wrong for them online. And that's your opportunity when you play with them to actually give them a few insights about what you know about, well, that if someone's talking to online that you don't know, can you show me how you might block them, for example, all of those sorts of ways that you can integrate this into the play and it's real time learning. It's not like we're going to sit down now and have a cyber safety conversation. Let's bring it into the real environment about where we're learning.

And even when you're on your device as a parent, know, having your children come in and support you, like, haven't updated my Facebook settings for a while. Can you sit down with me? And we might go through them. There might be some new ones we can switch on or turn off, and maybe you can help me decide. if we can bring kids into the conversation and help them have a voice that enables them to be critical thinkers and start thinking really about practical ways that they can embed these digital habits in their own lives.

Kay Vasey
That's absolutely right. we at k-ID are all about trying to assess the digital maturity of each child and then tailoring, enabling those trusted adults to then tailor make the experience for that particular child. And so those trusted adults are really going to be, hopefully the best ones that know their child, right?

But if you don't understand the digital maturity of your child, how do you do that is by opening up that conversation, being curious, exactly as you're saying. If something happened right now, what would you do? And would you think that you'd give that person all of your details and tell them where you go to school and everything about you, your inside leg measurement?

or not, that kind of thing. And I love what you say about, kind of jumping in as well, like, to the game. think I mean, I've learned that so much as well. I learned it hard way initially. So I was one of those parents who initially was like, it's dinner time. It goes off right now, whether or not you like it done, right? You've had enough time. That's done. But it wasn't until I actually talked to them about why are you so angry with me, actually?

I was like, because you don't understand how much I have spent time grinding in this game. And I was literally 60 seconds away from getting victory Royale in this game. If you had let me play one more minute, I probably would have won. So I'm like, my goodness. And at that moment, I thought, what I should have done with that 60 seconds? I should have sat down and cheered him on. Right. And that would have like brought me so much closer to him.

And so that's what I've done since. I've tried also to go into the game, failed massively, by the way. And they love to see me in this vulnerable position where I'm trying desperately to play, but I instantly get shot or whatever, or I die and I fall into the void and all of these things. But then they are then...

They feel very much more empowered in the relationship I have with them now because they teach me things. And I will have this newfound respect for them in relation to like, actually, you know what? I didn't realize how hard it was. I thought, I just jump into the game and I was just so easy to play. And by breaking down that in my mind, that has brought us so much closer. So I now feel that I'm a lot more respected at home.

because I understand the world in which they are living. And it I have to be there every single gaming session they have, but very occasionally, maybe it's even just once a month or so, just look in and be like, hey, do you want to teach me old grandma how to play again? And they're like, yeah, come on, then sit down. Yeah, there's some new updates and there's a new map and I'll show you around and everything. They love it. encourage you. It doesn't mean that you're just kind of like, you have to become this super uber gamer parent, right? Just a tiny bit can go a very, very long way.

Trent Ray
two little things that is a big difference between how when we grew up playing games is you can't really pause games anymore because you've got a team of people that you might even be playing with that were relying on you. that idea of time we've talked about, like if you've got 30 minutes of time and that timer has gone off, it's like, well, get off the game now and you can come back later. That's actually just not possible, like you said. So just even changing your vocabulary and saying just.

Well, all right, dinner's nearly ready, one more round and then you need to hop off. And that's like that finishing that last 60 seconds, isn't it? And kids tell us, that's what we always like. What do you want us to tell your parents and help them understand? It's like, tell them those two things. We can't pause the game and we just want to be able to finish the round.

Kay Vasey
Absolutely right. That's how I've learned to speak to them, right? And that is also then a punishable moment if I'm like, hey, I can actually see that you've started another round and I did just say one last round and then he literally goes, yeah, no, you're so right. Okay, no worries. I'll turn it off. It's like brilliant because then he also doesn't, he hasn't got so into it. He knows he wasn't actually supposed to go into that second round and he's totally fine.

Trent Ray
And kids will be kids. They'll try and sneak in a little bit of extra, won't they?

Kay Vasey
it's natural, right? but to be able to then set the boundaries and understand those together, that's where I think the real magic has happened for me at home. I think I would like to now pass you a magic wand. And if I could pass you a magic wand and you could solve one issue in online safety right now, what would it be?

Trent Ray
Yeah, only one thing. I think I alluded to this earlier. I think that young people are stumbling across and being exposed to harmful content. And so I would like to be able to wave a magic wand and have spaces online that kids can go to knowing that they can be kids and they can enjoy how they're experiencing it without feeling like something's going to pop up on the screen that I'm not.

comfortable with or that makes me feel confused. think that would be a really wonderful step forward in any piece of magical technology that we could create to be able to help that.

Kay Vasey
I love that. We can hope. We can have hope in the future. suppose the thing is, we can't can't lay the ills of I always think this right. We can't lay the ills of humanity at technology's feet. And so until we are able to solve these problems in the real world, there will always be these bad actors who want to create toxic content, who want to kind of shock people in these particular ways. But the more exactly, as you say, that we are able to perhaps

use technology though in good ways to then maintain and create and maintain these safer online environments for kids because ultimately if you ask kids they want to be safe they want to feel like they're in these spaces with their friends trusting that

there isn't going to be some stranger who then comes and ruins the party. Right. In the same way as if you threw a party at home, you wouldn't want some stranger to walk into your living room like, right, I'm going to like kind of start throwing things around and doing not nice things.

So on the one hand, it is so amazing that we can connect with someone from Vietnam, Uzbekistan, everywhere, all around the world. it places that are far flung that I will probably never ever get to go to myself. If I want to find those people online, I probably can. Right. Noting that, yes, there are still about, I think, approximately two billion people that have never accessed the Internet still. So we shouldn't forget about them either. But wow, what an amazing opportunity. Right. But at the same time,

remembering always that there are bad actors in the world and we're never going to stamp them all out and so be aware of them, know how to spot them.

and always be questioning what you see online. Whether that's in reading an article, watching a video, be curious about it. No, just take it for face value. this is therefore gospel truth because it's online. Always come at it with this critical analysis and critical thinking that can then help children to then pick through what is good content.

and what is potentially harmful content that they perhaps should steer away from.

Trent Ray
Yeah, I think

too, it's important to really evaluate the apps that young people are exploring and using. if we think about online spaces like bricks and mortar spaces, we expect when we take our young people to those places that there are safety guard rails in place. it's a, if there's a swimming pool there, there's lifeguards, they're supervising because of that danger. And so there are platforms that are safer than other platforms. So knowing

what the dangers are of the platforms that a young person is playing in, and then being able to put things in place around how to make sure that they've got that understanding and knowledge, how to protect themselves in there. Maybe expecting that there are settings within the platform that we can enact and, like a lifeguard, those digital safeguard rails and set things up safely for them. And we know that so many apps now have,

settings within them and tools that allow us to actually really strongly set things up for success at the beginning.

Kay Vasey
Absolutely right. think, know, at k-ID we think about it little bit like a theme park, right? At the theme park, there's lots and lots of different rides, but it doesn't mean that every single child can go on every single ride. There are height restrictions, are, like, please don't go on this particular super crazy roller coaster if you're pregnant, all of these different restrictions, right, for these different rides. So we should take that kind of analogy and thinking into the online world as well, that it should not be the case that actually

actually,

we look at all children as, for example, well, if you're less than 13, you can have these things. And if you're over 13, you just have these things. So we're also trying to think, shouldn't it be that we look at the local laws and regulations of the country?

But we also then able to bring those trusted adults into the picture who are then able to assess through powered conversations by, and help by organizations like yours to then say, OK, well, what is the digital maturity of this child? And let's set those settings based on their digital maturity. And then that piece of technology is going to grow with them as we go. So when they are actually ready to have text chat, voice chat, whatever it is, sure.

As long as there has been an honest and open conversation about what are you going to do with that text chat or voice chat? You must remember, right? What do you think? Do you remember the things that maybe you shouldn't say online or shouldn't share online? And if you do find some slightly toxic and or hmmm...

Strange behaviour. This person's asking me to go somewhere else to have this conversation. Why is that? Why can't we just continue it on the public one here? That's weird, isn't it? Why are we on my bit? Asked to go into a private room. And if you think about it, would you go with a total stranger in the real life to a completely private room for a chat? If you would think twice in the real world, think three times in the online world.

Trent Ray
That's right, because you just don't know

who these people are. too difficult to verify the people that you're playing with. That's right.

Kay Vasey
I don't know.

That's right, and in the real world, we're able to kind of assess like body language and, know, like use your eyes and your other spidey senses to kind of, assess someone. In the online world, it's just not there, right? It's really...

Trent Ray
We often say here at

the Cyber Safety Project that there's, young people today have two sets of social skills that they need to be navigating. When we grew up, we just had to learn about how to interact with people in the offline world and build empathy and show integrity and be responsible, citizens. there are a set of skills that you need as a human in a face-to-face interaction. And there are sets of skills that you need specifically when you're engaging with people in a digital format. And so young people have twice as much to learn right now.

Kay Vasey
I love that. Well, yeah, I love it. Well done. think that's it's so important the work that you're doing and thank you so much for it. So why do you think then that partnerships like ours between Cyber Safety Project and k-ID are going to be crucial for addressing online safety challenges?

Trent Ray
Well, we have a motto here, together we achieve more. And I think that not one person has got the solution that's going to cover every element of such a multifaceted challenge that we're faced with. So we need to be able to empower young people, parents and educators and carers with knowledge and skills to be able to navigate these spaces. But we also need platforms to be able to provide safety guardrails around that. We need legislation and laws to help to address some of these really big challenges and

hold certain platforms to account as well. And so from our perspective, whenever we can partner with anybody that is in this space with the mission to protect young people, that we need to find a way that we can complement the work that we do. And so I think it's highly crucial that none of us are working in silos here that we're actually together and we can do this in a really effective way when we all work together in this space.

Kay Vasey
It's absolutely magic to my ears, I think it's so, so on the nose. think I went to the We Protect Summit in Abu Dhabi and they were saying exactly that, right? It's a together approach. We cannot just be pointing fingers at, the government should be doing more or tech companies should be doing more or, know, like, parents just need to control their children, frankly. My goodness me, no. And it cannot be the job of one safety organization to be able to, wave their magic wand

and just be able to fix these problems, right? So all together, multi-stakeholder approach is what we need. And so I'm super looking forward to shining a massive spotlight on the important work that you guys do and bringing able to, through the use of leading technologies such as AI, being able to then perhaps transform some of your existing materials and make them more accessible to people perhaps in Vietnam and Uzbekistan, like we saying earlier, right? So it should not be the case that online safety information is trapped in

the world of people who read English, for example, or people even who know how to speak English and listen to English. So I think one of the big opportunities there is in really making the world's online safety information accessible and actionable by all, powered by amazing organizations like yours. And we don't want to add more noise to the already fragmented information that there is out there. We want to be the enabler or the convener who brings organizations like yours together.

And what would you say then that is one thing that parents can start doing today to then create that healthier balance between online and offline activities for kids?

Trent Ray
Absolutely. I think show your kids right? Just show them what you know. I think that's a really important mantra to have is to not shy away from these conversations, to show them that something about the digital world, whether that's sharing your own personal stories and experiences with them to then give that light and opportunity for them to open up and talk back to you. I think that that's a really important thing that they can do.

to really support their young person to start to learn the skills that they need to be able to do it self-regulate eventually when they get to the point where they are independently navigating technology and being able to have that balance with friends and family and learning and connecting and playing and finding ways that they can integrate technology into their world that is going to be successful for them. So I think just show them how to get help, show them something about technology and it'll be amazing what

kind of conversations it starts.

Kay Vasey
I couldn't agree more. I've been doing exactly that with my kids, trying to just stay on top of like, when are the games that they play going to be updated? So it's very easy, simple information that you can just Google online. I think they really appreciate me kind of getting a bit excited about it, did you know about it? Yeah, yeah, did actually, and we'd been talking about it all day at school. It's true, because then I can then, as you say, like almost surprise them with my knowledge. And they're like, yeah, cool. You speak our lingo too.

Trent Ray
Yeah,

it builds a great relationship and it's an opportunity. You don't need to know absolutely everything about every single app or game. If you know what your young person is interested in right now, if you do a little bit of research and get the notifications that you need about the latest mods and things that are being released, then that's just that opportunity that you have to spark that connection.

Kay Vasey
It's true. I'm going to pose you a really hard question now, because I know that you have such a wealth of knowledge, but if you just had one single message to parents raising kids in today's digital age, what would it be?

Trent Ray
Okay, this is tricky.

I think it would be really good for parents to play with your kids. Play online with your kids. Because technology is not going away. It's here and it's going to be here to stay. And it's the gateway to that relationship that you can build with your young person. So play with your kids.

Kay Vasey
I love it, well done. think I couldn't, absolutely, as you know, I couldn't agree more and it really has transformed the relationship with my two boys. So I think I couldn't encourage you enough listeners to just give it a go. And as you're saying, you don't need to become a full-time gamer, just a tiny little bit of effort can go really, really long way to building that trust and love with your kids to know that...

you are not that scary parent who's just going to go in there and turn it off and just keep telling them that it's just a waste of time and that they should be spending more time studying and they're going to end up doing nothing with their lives because they just spend too much time online. Please change that narrative if that's something, if you're stuck in that rut and follow the wonderful organizations that we are partnering with because they do have some brilliant resources that will really help power that conversation. And so finally, and I wish I could talk to you all day, but I do have, we do have to come

to an end. So again though, if you could sum up your vision for the future of online safety in only three words, what would they be?

Trent Ray
Okay.

I'm going to say empower, so we want to build skills in everyone around us. Educate, so keep those conversations moving and we've all got something we can learn. And protect, I think that's a big one, we need to protect each other. We've all got a role to play in the online world and we can all help each other, stay safe.

Kay Vasey
Brilliant. Thank you so much for your time today. And I really, really look forward to working with you in 2025 and beyond. And I hope to be able to maybe meet you one day as well in person. So that'd be really super cool.

Trent Ray
Yeah, we're

excited about collaborating and doing whatever we can to work together to make an impact.

Kay – Outro
Thanks so much to Trent Ray from Cyber Safety Project, who reminds us about the importance of giving young people a voice and taking their ideas and experiences into account when thinking about how to regulate the online world. As parents, we should take up opportunities to jump in and play with our kids online to build a deep appreciation of the positive things that technology can do and be more aware of the potential harms. Until next time, this is Kay Vasey, handing back to Kieran Donovan at k-ID with a quick reminder.