Keeping your family safe

Tech-based domestic and family violence can impact your whole family, including your children. 

The abuse can be from a partner, ex-partner, family member, someone you share a home with, or someone you’re dating. It can happen online or using digital technologies like phones and apps.

It can be difficult to protect children and young people from tech-based abuse while you’re dealing with domestic and family violence. Understanding the risks as well as the benefits of staying connected will help to keep your family safer.

On this page:

• How does tech-based abuse affect children?
• How to talk about tech-based abuse with children
• Online safety tips for your child
• Tips for co-parenting families
• Schools, clubs, activities and events
• More information

Children and young people can experience tech-based abuse directly as part of domestic and family violence. This includes:

• monitoring or stalking
• harassment, threats or intimidation
• blocking communication.

When it happens within domestic and family violence, it's important to recognise that even though the abuse may be intended to harm the parent or adult in the relationship, children and young people can also be harmed.

Children and young people can also be indirectly affected by the abuse you’re experiencing through their own use of technology and can be negatively impacted by seeing you experience tech-based abuse.

When a pattern of this abuse is established, it is referred to as tech-based coercive control.

The abuse can undermine self-worth, confidence and independence. The abuser often uses it to:

• pressure or threaten people to make them do things, or to stop doing things
• track where they are going and what they are doing using apps such as Life 360 or apps and services with location tracking.

They may also use tech to:

• cut people off from social supports such as friends, family, services and money
• ‘gaslight’ them to make them feel unsure about what is real
• isolate them so they feel trapped.

Tech-based abuse can cause distress and harm to children, including negatively impacting their mental health, their relationship with the non-abusive parent or carer and their everyday activities.

It can be difficult to protect children and young people while you’re also experiencing the impacts of domestic and family violence. However, there are steps you – and those you’re caring for – can take to stay safe while using online devices and accounts. These include talking about the situation in ways that are appropriate for your children and setting some rules around how devices and accounts are used.

Take a moment to consider using eSafety’s family tech agreement, to help you put boundaries in place around tech use and online safety.

If you need to protect your and/or your child’s location, such as when you’re seeking help, it may be best to disable their location services and turn their devices off completely or reset them. This is so the abuser can’t track your child’s location. (Consider leaving your child’s device at home while you’re out or leave it at another location.)

Regularly check your child’s devices with them to make sure they’re safe, including their phones, tablets, computers, fitness trackers, smart watches, headphones, earbuds and toys that use location tracking services or GPS.

Explore our parental controls page for tips on how to do this with common devices, apps and platforms. If your child spends time with the abuser, small tracking devices could also be hidden in things such as their bags, clothes or toys. Be careful of anything new they’re given by the abuser when they return to your care.

It may also be helpful to take these safety steps with your child, especially if they use social media accounts:

• Help them restrict who can see their location. Adjust the settings on social media, gaming accounts, messaging services and other apps to show a rough location rather than a specific address. You could also suggest they disable location services while not using the app or turn them off completely. Find out how to adjust location settings on different apps and accounts in The eSafety Guide.
• Ask them to avoid checking in online or tagging locations and people. This includes restaurants, cinemas, suburbs and places as well as any friends and family you visit together, because it could reveal your whereabouts.
• Ask them to avoid sharing photos, videos or backgrounds on social media, gaming or video calls that could identify their location. Explain how the backgrounds can include street signs, landmarks, school or club uniforms, or details in your home which may make your location easy to work out.

Find out more about how to protect your location information.

Review online accounts and settings

Talk with your child and set rules together about which online apps and services they can use and what’s safe to share online. It’s best for them to be cautious and avoid sharing information publicly if you think it may not be safe.

These are some things you can do (but you may need to modify them if your child needs to keep in contact with an abusive parent or carer):

• Check settings on all social media, gaming accounts and other apps are at the highest security level. Make sure your child’s accounts are private and they don’t use their full name or a profile picture that identifies them, because this might be seen publicly online. For more information on privacy settings in games, apps and social media, check The eSafety Guide.
• Talk about safer ways to communicate with you and with their friends. This might include only using a limited number of specific direct messaging apps that you agree on.
• Review your child’s friend and follower lists together. Encourage your child to remove anyone they do not know, who can’t be trusted, or who might share information accidentally with the abuser.
• Talk about when to accept new friend or follower requests. It may be important to limit friends and followers on social media and gaming sites to people you know and trust. Discuss fake accounts and explain how people may pretend to be someone else to get information about where they are and what they’re doing. Read our Young people pages together for more tips.
• Talk with them about restricting what others can see online. If the abuser is already friends with the child on social media or a gaming app, it might be unsafe to remove them – but the child may be able to put restrictions on the account so the person sees only limited content. You can find out about the safety features available on a range of platforms and devices in The eSafety Guide.
• Ask your child to limit what they post about online, delay posting until it is safer, or not to post at all. For example, it may not be safe to post details about what they’re doing, the people they’re seeing and where they are (particularly if their address, suburb or school has changed for safety reasons).
• Ask your child to talk with their friends about not sharing content about them or tagging them in photos or videos. It may be useful if you help them to practice what to say to their friends. This can include helping them use phrases such as ‘It’s not safe for me to,’ ‘I’m not allowed to’ or ‘I don’t want to.’

For more tips on how you and your child can use apps and services including social media more safely, see our online safety checklist.

Tech-based abuse may affect children and young people in co-parenting situations in different ways. Strategies to help keep them safe include:

• setting up different devices in each household
• turning off location tracking apps and services
• blocking communications from an abusive parent, if it’s safe to do so.

You can find out more about how to support children dealing with tech-based abuse when you are co-parenting with an ex-partner at Women’s Services Network (WESNET).

If it’s appropriate and safe, you can have a private conversation with any person or organisation that may share information about your child online. This includes your child’s school, clubs, community organisations or groups associated with any of your child’s other activities.

• Ask them to not post photos or information about your child online without your permission.
• If appropriate, request that they do not share information with the abuser if contacted.
• Check whether you have previously provided consent for sharing images of your child; and remove this permission.
• Make sure to include your child in these conversations or let them know what you are doing.

You could also talk with organisers or managers of venues or events involving your child and ask them not to share photos or information about them online. Watch out for when people are taking photos, including group shots that might end up online, and make sure your child is not included if you need to protect their location.

For more information on updating your devices, social media, apps and online account settings see our online safety checklist, The eSafety Guide and our ‘how to’ videos.

eSafety has more resources to help you understand how you and your children can stay safe online. 

See our advice for parents and carers and our advice for kids and young people. You can also share our advice on online dating, consent and sexting and sending nudes with older children.

Frontline workers can use eSafety’s tailored resources to help children and young people dealing with tech-based abuse in domestic and family violence.