E-SCAN 39: ON THE FRONTLINE
E-Scan 39: Digital Mediated Criminality
Gen Z – those born between 1995–2009 – is estimated to account for 28 per cent of the world’s population by 2035. Gen Alpha – born between 2010–2024 – now accounts for more than two billion people, and will make up 23 per cent of the global population by 2035, while Gen Beta – born between 2025–2039 – already represents 14 million children, and will make up 14 per cent of the world’s population 10 years from now. As these generations naturally continue to form a larger percentage of the world population, their habits and behaviours become increasingly important to consider. One of these considerations are the digital habits of such younger audiences.
It has become routine to refer to these generations as digital natives, as living an ‘always on’ digital lifestyle. Rather than a simple lifestyle shift as compared to previous generations, a new report argues that this in fact reflects a deeper structural change in how crime is produced, distributed, and experienced, and where police are able to see and intervene online criminality. This shift in online offending can have implications for existing policing assumptions and models of response.
Digital environments are increasingly structured in ways that blur the line between participation and criminality. Young people engage in behaviours, resharing manipulated content, amplifying harassment, or facilitating scams, that contribute to harm without clear intent to offend.
For example, in multiplayer games, teens are lured into seemingly innocent tasks, like ‘helping with a trade’ or ‘testing a mod’, only to find themselves handling stolen goods or laundering in-game currency. One in five gamers have encountered such scams, yet nearly three in 10 couldn’t recognise the tactics, and only 8 per cent had seen any safety guidance.
Additionally, in the online environment, we have seen criminality operate as a form of social currency. The Australian Federal Police has noted the rise of sadistic extortion, where perpetrators of harm are motivated by status or peer dynamics rather than profit. In order to gain access to certain harmful online communities, prospective members are coerced by group members to produce or live-stream explicit content online. Importantly, this process is both circular and inherently escalatory. Participants are pressured to produce more extreme content to remain within the group, and the material is shared among members, reinforcing a cycle of coercion and harm.
What makes these behaviours particularly challenging for policing is that the line between participant and offender can be unclear. In such environments, individuals may engage with or participate in activities without fully recognising the criminal nature of their actions. This reflects a broader shift in which serious harm can be produced through networked participation rather than deliberate, individually motivated offending.
In response to such behaviour, and the digitally mediated nature of modern-day offending, the natural reaction may be to prioritise technical capabilities. While robust technological proficiencies and capabilities are undoubtedly important, there must also be a recognition that traditional policing assumptions, that offenders can be identified, that intent can be inferred, and that responsibility can be clearly attributed, may no longer hold true.
Harm can be produced through networked participation rather than deliberate, individually motivated offending. As a result, investigations become more complex, attribution becomes more diffuse, and traditional deterrence models, based on the assumption that individuals understand and weigh the consequences of their actions, become less effective.
The point is not that young people are inherently more criminal. Rather, a growing disconnect exists between institutional assumptions about offending and the realities of digital social behaviour. If harm is increasingly produced through participation rather than intent, then policing models built on individual culpability, clear attribution, and deterrence are being outpaced. The challenge is no longer simply identifying offenders, but deciding when, where, and how to intervene in systems where participation itself produces harm.
More from E-Scan 39.
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