Following the IX Global Summit of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), held in Vitoria-Gasteiz in October 2025, Spain has reinforced its position as an international reference in the protection of digital rights and the responsible use of technology. As 2026 unfolds, the Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection Research Group (GiCP), part of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), continues to provide the empirical and technical foundation for Spain’s digital defense strategy.

Through its participation in the European project SafeHorizon and the regional initiative CIRMA, GiCP contributes to the implementation of the V Plan de Gobierno Abierto (2025-2029), which places the right to truthful information and the protection of minors at the core of national digital policy.

1. SafeHorizon: Countering Organized Exploitation and “Crime-as-a-Service”

SafeHorizon addresses the emerging threat of Crime-as-a-Service (CaaS), gathering intelligence across the clear, deep, and dark web. GiCP’s contribution focuses on understanding and dismantling the infrastructure exploited by criminal networks. Research into organized harassment groups, including “764” and “CVLT,” has documented tactics of rapid grooming and the deliberate creation of emotional dependency, used to coerce minors into self-harm or further criminal activity. A recurring pattern in this research is the “onramp” effect: perpetrators first make contact through mainstream games such as Roblox, then migrate victims toward encrypted channels like Discord, Snapchat, or Telegram, where corporate moderation no longer reaches. To support Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs), SafeHorizon also monitors dark web hacking forums and tracks emoji-based signposting, such as the use of “💿” for Discord or “👻” for Snapchat, employed to evade automated content filters.

2. CIRMA: Strengthening AI Resilience in the Madrid Community

CIRMA (Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence Resilience for the Madrid Community) is a regional initiative aimed at improving resilience against emerging digital threats through applied AI. By developing homegrown toolboxes, CIRMA reduces dependence on external technologies, a factor that matters directly for protecting critical infrastructure and citizen data. The project also aligns with Commitment 5 of the V Plan, favoring automated systems that remain transparent, explainable, and oriented toward human rights rather than purely economic metrics.

3. Platform Governance: Video Games as a Vector, Not Just a Pastime

GiCP’s research treats gaming platforms as complex social ecosystems rather than mere entertainment products, and this is precisely why they are exploited for purposes well beyond gaming itself: to make contact with minors, to build trust, and ultimately to manipulate. Comparative analysis shows that Steam operates as a decentralized distribution hub, where extremist identities can circulate through what researchers describe as performative infighting, while Roblox functions as a centralized attention economy, where a high density of minors creates its own systemic vulnerabilities. GiCP also monitors tools such as real-time AI chat rephrasing, which raise a distinct concern researchers call authorship substitution: cases where a platform’s AI rewrites user messages to enforce civility, potentially masking toxic behavior or early signs of radicalization in the process.

4. The Limits of Prohibition: What the Evidence Shows

Given how central video games are to this threat landscape, restricting or banning access is often the first policy response proposed. The evidence, however, suggests this alone is not sufficient. In South Korea, the 2011 Shutdown Law blocked online game access for players under 16 between midnight and 6 a.m., with the stated aim of curbing internet addiction and protecting adolescent sleep. Research published in the Journal of Adolescent Health evaluated the policy’s real impact on internet use, addiction indicators, and sleep duration, finding that a blanket access restriction does not straightforwardly translate into the intended behavioral or health outcomes. Minors tend to route around fixed technical barriers rather than change the underlying behavior.

A parallel case comes from China, where national mandates limited the hours minors could spend on online games. A 2023 study in Nature Human Behaviour, led by Zendle and colleagues, examined whether these playtime mandates reduced heavy gaming activity in the segment of the industry under study, and found no clear evidence that they did.

Together, these cases point to a structural limitation. Prohibition operates on a single layer, access, while the actual drivers of harm, grooming tactics, addictive design, social vulnerability, and lack of digital literacy sit on other layers entirely. A restriction that only closes one door, without addressing why minors are targeted or why the behavior is reinforced, tends to produce displacement rather than resolution. This is the core argument for a multi-stakeholder approach. Protecting minors online is not a purely technical problem, nor one that legislation can solve on its own; it requires the coordinated involvement of educators, the broader school community, platforms, service providers, and technologists alike.

5. The European Regulatory Pillar: DSA and DFA Enforcement

The evidence GiCP generates feeds directly into the enforcement of the EU’s core legislative instruments, which place the burden of proof on providers to demonstrate their services are safe by design. The Digital Services Act (DSA), now fully operational, requires platforms to mitigate systemic risks to minors, ensure accounts are private by default, and grant vetted researchers access to relevant safety data. The Digital Fairness Act (DFA) complements this by targeting dark patterns and addictive design choices, such as infinite scroll and aggressive influencer marketing, placing minors’ consumer rights at the center of European digital law.

A Multi-Layered, Humanist Digital Transformation

Addressing the 2026 digital threat landscape requires an alliance across layers: the academic rigor of GiCP, the operational intelligence of SafeHorizon, and the regional resilience work of CIRMA. As the evidence on prohibition-only policies shows, no single layer, technical, legislative, or platform-level, is sufficient on its own. Under the V Plan de Gobierno Abierto, sustained progress depends on bringing educators, families, platforms, providers, and technologists into the same conversation, so that the digital environment for the next generation is genuinely safe by design.

References

Lee, D. et al. (2018). Effect of the Online Game Shutdown Policy on Internet Use, Internet Addiction, and Sleeping Hours in Korean Adolescents. Journal of Adolescent Health.

Zendle, D. et al. (2023). No evidence that Chinese playtime mandates reduced heavy gaming in one segment of the video games industry. Nature Human Behaviour.