Summary
On 15 October 2025, academics and industry partners gathered for the third annual Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund convening – this time in Singapore – to share evidence, exchange perspectives, and explore how cross-sector collaboration can strengthen the global response to online child sexual exploitation and abuse (OCSEA).
Hosted by the Tech Coalition and Safe Online on the margins of the TSPA APAC Summit, the event gathered nearly 40 participants, representing 11 funded research projects and 11 leading tech companies.
The focus: bridging the gap between research and implementation, with a particular focus on insights from the Asia-Pacific region, where digital inclusion and safety challenges intersect in complex ways.
Setting the stage
Opening the day, Kay Chau, Vice President of Programs and Member Success at the Tech Coalition, underscored the Fund’s growing impact and role in helping the industry strengthen evidence-based approaches to child online safety.
Snigdha Bhardwaj, Director of Trust and Safety at Google, followed with reflections on the opportunities and challenges posed by generative AI, highlighting how innovation and responsibility must advance hand in hand.
From there, discussions throughout the day focused on the key insights and learnings shaping how research and industry can work together to strengthen child online safety.
Evidence that drives design
Across studies funded through the Research Fund, a consistent message is emerging: effective online safety starts with understanding how people actually use technology. Evidence from the region – the Philippines, Cambodia, Nepal, Kenya, and Australia – paints a picture of how children and caregivers navigate their online lives.
Researchers discussed children’s protective strategies and caregivers’ role in online safety. For industry, the takeaway was that safety tools and interventions work best when they’re baked into how people already engage online. Understanding children and caregivers can help designers create features that are intuitive, context-sensitive, and globally relevant.
Collaboration that works
Discussions peeled back the curtain on what collaboration between researchers and companies can really look like when it works. Several grantees shared experiences of designing and implementing studies in collaboration with tech platforms. Most importantly, speakers were candid about the practicalities of collaboration: access to real-world systems, internal approvals, sensitivity reviews, and the need for legal agreements to protect competitive information.
By defining clear boundaries, including being aligned on independent research questions while protecting research independence, partnerships can generate insights that neither side could achieve alone. This model not only enhances scientific rigor but accelerates the translation of research into product design and policy decisions across industry.
From insights to action
The event closed with an interactive workshop where groups of researchers and industry discussed how to make research both more inclusive and more actionable. Participants emphasized the importance of systematically evaluating child online safety initiatives to identify which approaches are most effective and why.
Sharing these findings – how interventions improve user experience and ultimately safety – can help all stakeholders make a stronger case, both internally and externally, for continued and scaled focus, effort, and investment.
Collective momentum
The convening closed with collective commitments to deepen collaboration, strengthen knowledge-sharing, and expand professional networks across disciplines and regions. Above all, participants reaffirmed a shared responsibility: ensuring that research doesn’t stay in reports, but informs the systems and tools that shape children’s online lives every day.
To date, the Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund has invested $2.75 million in independent research, building a growing evidence base that guides tech companies in developing safer, more effective solutions.
The 2025 convening underscored how this investment continues to pay dividends – not only in knowledge, but in tangible progress toward safer digital spaces for children everywhere.
Thank you to Google for hosting this year’s convening, and our partners at Safe Online for their continued collaboration.
