PwC's Trust and Safety Outlook 2026 research found that the areas most often ranked in respondents' top three priorities for more company investment are controls over who can contact minors at 44 percent, content moderation for harmful and inappropriate content at 38 percent, and age assurance and verification at 38 percent. The research notes that concerns about child safety are shaping expectations of online platforms, and that robust child safety measures are increasingly influencing platform trust, adoption and retention. The report identifies that AI technologies, particularly generative AI models and AI-powered chatbots, are reshaping how harms facing minors manifest, with rapid innovation marked by continuous release of more capable AI models accelerating their reach, while increased personalization and more human-like interactions are deepening engagement and dependency, creating new risk vectors.
Industry consensus on contact control as the highest investment priority validates the operational model Guardii delivers at scale. The platform monitors direct messages in real time across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other environments, applying anti-grooming, anti-sextortion, anti-CSAM, cyberbullying and abuse-of-athletes detection modules that block or flag hostile contact before it reaches the minor. This addresses the 44 percent priority investors identified without requiring platforms to implement blanket age-verification gates for all users or restrict access for compliant minors, instead targeting detection resources at the moment and method of harm while preserving open access for age-appropriate engagement and surfacing acute-risk signals to the parent, school or professional responsible for intervention.
