Mind the Net: Parental Awareness and State Responsibilities in the Age of Grooming

In the digital environment, grooming—classified as a communication-based risk—has shown a steadily increasing frequency in recent years. In Hungary, increasing attention has been directed to the protection of children’s rights in the digital space in alignment with ensuring their online safety, with both parents and the state playing crucial roles in ensuring a safe digital presence. Within this context, the state bears a particular responsibility to educate not only children but also parents. This study explores how public policies and institutional programs in Hungary address the prevention of grooming and the reactive management of this harm through parental awareness. It examines existing measures aimed at expanding knowledge related to prevention and response, based on a qualitative analysis of the normative foundations of the state’s educational obligations and the relevant academic literature. The study relies on questionnaire data collected from parents of children aged 7 to 18 to examine the effectiveness of state measures and parents’ perceptions of them. The findings of the empirical research may support the development of state-led parental education programs and identify current gaps. As such, it can play a guiding role in shaping the direction of a future, large-scale investigation.