A Crime Against an Avatar Is Ultimately a Crime Against a Child

The metaverse was once framed as the language of new opportunity.

Children created avatars, met friends in virtual spaces, played games, attended performances, and built another identity—one that could be difficult to create in the physical world. Companies described it as the next generation of the internet. Educators saw a new learning environment. Industry saw a new market.

But criminals entered the spaces children entered first.

Crimes targeting children and adolescents in the metaverse are no longer merely virtual problems. Offenders create attractive avatars, give away paid items, suggest role-playing games, and build trust. They then move conversations to other messaging platforms, steer children toward sexual dialogue, or demand photographs and videos of their bodies. Contact that begins in a virtual world can lead directly to real-world digital sexual exploitation.

A study by Lee Hyejin and Shin In-Soo shows how crimes against children and adolescents emerge in the metaverse—and why existing institutions struggle to respond. The researchers conducted a content analysis of 122 relevant Korean news articles published between 1990 and October 2022. Their findings suggest that sexual crimes were at the center of metaverse-related risks, while the characteristics of young users, the structure of platforms, legal blind spots, and the limits of platform operators and investigative agencies combined to deepen harm.

Sexual Crime Was at the Center of Metaverse Crime Coverage

The most frequently appearing word in the articles analyzed by the study was “metaverse.” But the terms that followed were equally revealing: “sexual crime,” “avatar,” “online,” “ZEPETO,” “victim,” “sexual harassment,” and “sexual exploitation.”

This suggests that public discussion of metaverse crime had moved beyond abusive language or game-related fraud. It had increasingly become centered on sexual exploitation and grooming.

Many of the 122 articles examined in the study covered sexual harassment, avatar-based sexual abuse, online grooming, and the production of sexual exploitation material on platforms primarily used by children and adolescents.

Media coverage surged after specific incidents. In April 2022, reports intensified after the arrest of a man in his thirties accused of producing sexual exploitation material involving 11 children and adolescents he had met on a metaverse platform. Approximately 73 percent of all articles analyzed in the study were published in 2022.

The rise in coverage does not necessarily mean metaverse crime suddenly appeared that year. Rather, it indicates that existing forms of online sexual exploitation were becoming visible as they migrated into new platform environments.

In the April 2022 case, the offender reportedly designed his avatar to appear youthful and approachable, offered paid virtual items to victims, and cultivated trust. He then deepened those relationships through role-playing and private conversations before requesting sexually explicit photographs and videos.

The metaverse, in other words, was not simply the crime scene. It was a new channel through which offenders could identify victims, gain access to them, and design relationships for exploitation.

Crimes May Begin With an Avatar, but the Harm Remains With a Real Child

The study classifies crimes against children and adolescents in the metaverse into sexual crimes, fraud, threats and coercion, insult, invasion of privacy, and cyberbullying. Of these, sexual crime emerged as the most serious category.

The range of conduct was broad. It included sexual harassment through text or voice chat; avatar-based behavior intended to simulate physical sexual contact; stalking through persistent pursuit of another user’s avatar; online grooming through paid items and gifts; and the production and distribution of sexual exploitation material through demands for photographs or videos.

What matters is that these crimes are often not isolated from one another.

Sexual harassment may begin with conversation. Conversation can develop into intimacy. Intimacy can then expand into requests for personal information or invitations to move to an outside messaging app. Threats and coercion may follow, eventually leading to the production or distribution of sexual exploitation material.

The researchers draw particular attention to the way children and adolescents may perceive their avatars. For many young users, an avatar is not merely a game character. It can function as an extension of the self—a “second self” or digital double.

When an avatar is sexualized or harassed, users may not experience it as something happening only on a screen. Even without physical contact, shame, fear, anxiety, and helplessness can remain intensely real.

This is why the absence of direct physical contact should not be used to minimize harm. As immersive virtual reality technologies become more sophisticated, visual, auditory, spatial, and movement-based experiences may make such harms feel even more real to users.

Children’s Vulnerability Comes Less From Digital Inexperience Than From the Structure of Relationships

It is true that children and adolescents are familiar with digital environments. They often adapt to new platforms faster than adults and understand the language and culture of virtual spaces naturally.

But knowing how to use a platform is not the same as knowing how to respond to risk.

The study notes that young users may fail to recognize that what they experienced was a crime. Even when they do recognize it, they may hesitate to report it because they fear being scolded by parents or blamed for what happened.

This vulnerability becomes even more pronounced in environments where accounts, followers, paid items, and scarce digital goods function as important resources for peer relationships and self-expression.

Offenders exploit exactly this point.

“I’ll give you an item.”
“Let’s be friends.”
“Let’s take a couple photo.”
“Let’s play a role-playing game.”

These phrases can appear ordinary within a platform. But when they are followed by repeated conversations, gifts, requests for secrecy, and invitations to move to external platforms, they can become part of a recognizable grooming pattern.

The metaverse makes it easy to form relationships with strangers. Avatars can conceal a user’s actual age, gender, and intent. Children may talk to avatars that appear to belong to peers, while having no reliable way of knowing who is behind them.

Offenders can use anonymity and role-playing to approach children they might not be able to reach as easily in the physical world.

The Law Was Designed Around Physical Bodies, While Crime Adapted to Avatars

One of the most complex challenges in responding to metaverse crime is the legal gap.

Much of criminal law was designed around direct physical contact, tangible property, and actions taking place in physical space. As a result, sexual conduct, stalking, or harassment directed at an avatar may not always meet existing legal thresholds, even when the victim experiences significant psychological harm.

The study does not reduce this question to a simple call for harsher punishment.

Some experts argue that new laws or legal amendments are necessary to address metaverse crime. Others caution that rushed legislation—developed without sufficient understanding of the technology and platform environment—could unduly restrict freedom of expression or obstruct innovation.

The issue, therefore, is not simply legislation versus no legislation.

What is needed is a more precise legal standard: one capable of protecting real victims without indiscriminately criminalizing every form of expression or interaction involving avatars, games, and virtual spaces.

Conduct that leads to real-world digital sexual exploitation of children and adolescents should be addressed through active enforcement of existing laws and stronger investigative capacity. At the same time, conduct involving avatars and virtual expression requires more nuanced legal standards that consider the reality of harm, repetition, coercion, power imbalance, and whether the conduct extends beyond the platform itself.

Platforms Are Not Just Places to Connect. They Are Responsible for Safety.

Another central finding of the study concerns the role of platform operators.

Metaverse companies are not merely providers of technical spaces where users gather. They are operators who determine who can enter, what language and content are allowed, how reports are handled, and how repeat offenders are blocked.

Yet the articles analyzed in the study repeatedly pointed to gaps in platform responses. Identity verification procedures were often weak. Users could allegedly re-register with disposable email accounts. Keyword filtering could be bypassed by inserting numbers or symbols between prohibited terms. In some cases, reporting systems appeared opaque, and responses were limited to temporary account suspensions.

For platforms heavily used by children and adolescents, safety features must not be treated as after-the-fact measures. They must be built into the service by default.

This includes age-appropriate safeguards, detection of high-risk language and repeated approaches, immediate blocking features, links to counseling after reports are filed, and systems for the rapid preservation of evidence in cooperation with investigative authorities.

When signs of sexual exploitation or child grooming are identified, a platform’s role should not end with suspending an account. It should be able to detect high-risk conduct, preserve evidence, and coordinate with law enforcement when necessary.

Self-regulation has value. But child protection cannot be left solely to the voluntary choices of platform companies.

Investigations Must Begin With Understanding the Platform

Metaverse crime also presents new challenges for investigative agencies.

A victim may be located in one country, the offender in another, and the platform server in a third. Accounts may change repeatedly. Conversations may disappear. Evidence may be scattered across the platform, messaging applications, and social media.

The study argues that investigative agencies need stronger knowledge of metaverse platforms and greater professional capacity. This does not simply mean acquiring digital forensic tools. It also requires understanding how relationships form in virtual spaces, what kinds of language and conduct may signal grooming, and why victims may hesitate to report abuse.

Investigations should not stop at describing the incident as something that happened “in a virtual space.” Investigators need to understand the victim’s avatar-based experience and the social context of relationships within the platform in order to identify the scale and structure of the crime.

International cooperation is equally important. Crimes on cross-border platforms cannot be effectively addressed by domestic police or platform operators alone. Coordination with foreign law enforcement agencies, procedures for requesting platform information, and international standards for preserving digital evidence must all be strengthened.

Metaverse Safety Education Is Not Only a Task for Children

The study stresses the need for education aimed at children and adolescents. But it also makes clear that children should not be the only ones expected to learn.

Parents, teachers, investigators, platform operators, and policymakers must also understand metaverse culture.

Children need more than generic advice to “be careful of strangers.” They need concrete guidance on warning signs: people who repeatedly offer paid items or gift cards, ask for secret conversations, suggest moving to external messaging apps, request photographs or personal information, or threaten to spread rumors when refused.

Parents and teachers, meanwhile, should avoid treating the metaverse simply as something to ban or dismiss as a game. They need to understand where children spend their time, whom they meet, how they form relationships, and what may be making them anxious.

Only then can a child’s disclosure of harm lead to protection and reporting rather than blame.

Digital literacy is not merely the ability to use a platform effectively. It must also include the ability to recognize harmful relationships, establish personal boundaries, report abuse, and respect the avatars and identities of others.

The Future of the Metaverse Will Be Decided by Protection, Not Technology Alone

The study’s central message is clear.

The metaverse is not separate from reality, and crimes committed there do not end as virtual harm.

For children and adolescents, the metaverse is not a future space. It is already part of everyday life. It is where they meet friends after school, express themselves, play, and build relationships.

Its safety should therefore be treated with the same seriousness as safety in playgrounds, schools, private academies, and public streets.

No single institution can solve the problem of metaverse crime alone. Platforms must strengthen safety-by-design. Investigative agencies must develop expertise and international cooperation capacity. Legislators must create precise legal standards that balance victim protection with freedom of expression. Schools and families must build environments in which children can ask for help without fear of blame.

As technology becomes more like reality, safety must rise to the same standard.

A crime directed at an avatar is ultimately directed at the child behind it. Before discussing the future of the metaverse, society must first ask whether children can live safely within it.