Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>Background Online sexual exploitation of children (OSEC) is an urgent safeguarding and public health concern. Digital technologies have expanded children’s access to online spaces while enabling offenders to contact, groom, coerce, and exploit them through social media and other platforms. Although digital technology facilitates OSE, how it contributes to OSEC victimisation is poorly understood. This study examines how school staff in Hong Kong perceive technology’s role in facilitating OSEC from the perspective of routine activity theory. Methods This qualitative study based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews involved 80 school-based participants (school principals, teachers, social workers, teaching assistants). Participants were recruited from 20 primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong via purposive sampling to capture variations in school type, size, religious affiliation, and geographical location. The interviews focused on participants’ perceptions of the OSEC prevalence, contributing factors, and digital technology’s role. Using NVivo 12, thematic analysis of the interview transcripts combined deductive coding based on routine activity theory with inductive coding to identify emergent themes. Results The participants perceived OSEC as a substantial and increasingly common concern in schools. Thematic analysis identified four major themes and nine subthemes. Under the theme of vulnerable targets, two subthemes showed that technology increased students’ reachability, visibility, and vulnerability through tech-emotional dependency. Under motivated offenders, three subthemes indicated that technology facilitated offending through online anonymity and disinhibition, adaptable and scalable grooming and coercion tools, and increased opportunities to locate potential targets. Under guardianship, two subthemes showed that technology weakened parental supervision and school-based monitoring. Under place management, two subthemes revealed digital platforms’ age verification and content filtering failures. Conclusion Overall, the findings demonstrate that technology has reshaped the OSEC opportunity structure in Hong Kong by increasing targets’ suitability, expanding offenders’ opportunities, weakening guardianship, and exposing digital place management deficiencies.</p>