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Playing with people your child has never met is now an ordinary part of online gaming. In an Ofcom survey of 2,522 parents of 3- to 17-year-olds and 1,719 children in the UK, published on 13 October 2026, 55% of children who game online said they play at least sometimes with people they have never met in real life, and 20% do so all or most of the time, as reported by LBC. We found no comparable recent figure for India, but the advice below applies to any online game.
Most of those strangers are simply other players. The risk comes from the few who use chat to build trust.
Is my child safe playing online games with strangers?
It can be, if chat is set up well and your child knows the warning signs. A common pattern, reflected in Ofcom's red flags below, is a stranger trying to move the talk somewhere private. Police forces across the UK recorded 7,263 online grooming offences in the year to March 2025, almost double the 3,728 recorded in the year to March 2018, according to NSPCC figures reported by the Irish News. Where the platform was identified, around 40% of those offences happened on Snapchat, a messaging app rather than a game.
Which chat settings should you change first?
Ofcom's advice to parents starts with checking who can contact your child (LBC). India's Ministry of Education prepared an advisory on safe online gaming that CBSE sent to schools in a circular in September 2021. Sit with your child and let them show you each game's privacy settings; they often know the menus better than you do.
Messages: friends only, or off for younger children.
Voice chat: off, or friends only.
Friend requests: only people your child knows offline.
Screen name: one that does not reveal their real name, as the advisory recommends.
Spending: no in-game purchases without your consent, no card saved in the app, and OTP-based payments with a limit per transaction.
Place: play in a shared room, not behind a closed door. The advisory asks that children go online from a computer kept in the family space.
What should children never share in a game?
The Ministry's advisory is blunt: children "should never share personal information with people in games and on gaming profile." In practice, that means:
full name, school, class, area or home address
phone number, email or other social media handles
photos of themselves, especially in school uniform
passwords, login codes, OTPs or UPI PINs
when they are home alone or where they will be
Anyone offering free coins, skins or upgrades in exchange for a login or an OTP is trying to take the account, or your money.
What are the warning signs of grooming or a scam?
In the chat, Ofcom's five red flags (listed here) are a player who asks personal questions, asks to move the chat elsewhere, asks for a private voice call, encourages your child to keep a secret, or says "Don't tell your parents."
At home, the Ministry of Education advisory asks parents to watch for:
unusually secretive behaviour about what they do online
a sudden rise in time spent online
switching screens when you walk in
seeming withdrawn or angry after being online
many new phone numbers or contacts on the device
How do you talk so your child tells you when something feels wrong?
If telling you might cost them the game, a child has a reason to stay quiet. Remove that reason before anything goes wrong. A script you can use:
Ask with curiosity: "Who do you play with these days? Show me your favourite one."
Make the promise: "If anyone asks for photos, asks where you live, or says to keep it secret, tell me. You won't be in trouble, and I won't take the phone away for telling me."
Practise one line together: "My parents check my chats." It ends any awkward chat.
If they do tell you, stay calm and say: "Thank you. You did the right thing."
Then act together. Do not delete the chat. Take screenshots, as the advisory recommends, then block and report the player in the game.
According to Kerala Police, 1930 is available 24 hours a day, and the national portal takes reports of online crimes directly. If your child seems shaken afterwards, Tele MANAS is a free national mental-health helpline offering counselling round the clock on 14416 or 1800-891-4416.
For how much gaming is reasonable, read what research says about video games and teens and our screen-time rules that protect homework, or the guide to CBSE's Class 11 cyber safety unit. And when some of that screen time goes to study, Fermi's AI tutor works out what your child already knows and builds a plan for the session.
