E096 · Participation, relationships & agency
Vulnerability when others use pressure, persuasion or manipulation
What might make it harder for a young person to recognise, resist or get help when another person deliberately uses social pressure, persuasion, deception or manipulation to influence them?
Phoenix Encyclopaedia
Overview
Manipulation is something one person does to another.
That distinction matters.
Young people are sometimes described as:
- gullible
- naive
- easily led
- vulnerable.
Those descriptions can subtly relocate responsibility from the person exploiting them to the person being exploited.
Phoenix should resist that.
A young person may be particularly vulnerable when another person uses:
- friendship
- status
- gifts
- affection
- threats
- secrecy
- group pressure
- repeated persuasion
- deception
- promises
- fear of exclusion
to influence their choices.
Certain characteristics or circumstances may make that influence harder to identify or resist.
But the manipulation remains the manipulator's action.
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What this might look like
A young person might:
- go along with a group despite feeling uncomfortable
- believe somebody who repeatedly lies to them
- accept gifts that later become associated with expectations
- share information because someone presents themselves as a friend
- find it difficult to recognise gradually escalating requests
- agree because they fear being excluded
- keep secrets that make them uncomfortable
- lend possessions or money repeatedly
- follow a socially powerful peer
- be persuaded to share images or personal information
- defend somebody who is exploiting them
- minimise harmful behaviour because the relationship also contains kindness
- struggle to tell an adult because they fear losing the relationship.
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Developmental expression
At this stage
Early childhood
Young children necessarily depend on adults and have limited experience of complex deception. Protective adults carry substantial responsibility for creating safe environments.
Early childhood
Young children necessarily depend on adults and have limited experience of complex deception. Protective adults carry substantial responsibility for creating safe environments.
Middle childhood
Friendship and group belonging create new forms of peer influence. Digital communication may also increasingly widen access by people outside immediate supervision.
Early adolescence
Peer acceptance, identity, romantic relationships and online participation can make social influence especially powerful.
Later adolescence
Greater independence expands social networks and access to relationships, employment and online spaces while adult oversight decreases.
Choose each stage to see how the presentation and surrounding expectations may change over time.
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Strengths and differences
Characteristics that can become vulnerabilities in exploitative environments may be valued qualities elsewhere:
- trust
- loyalty
- generosity
- optimism
- desire for friendship
- willingness to believe people
- strong rule-following.
Phoenix must be very careful here.
We should not teach young people that the solution to exploitation is to become:
- suspicious of everyone
- socially withdrawn
- less generous
- less trusting.
The goal is discrimination, agency and access to protection, not universal mistrust.
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Top tips for support
- Avoid blaming the young person for having trusted somebody.
- Teach manipulation as something people may deliberately do.
- Explore how pressure can build gradually.
- Teach that gifts do not create obligation.
- Make explicit that friendship does not remove the right to say no.
- Discuss online and offline scenarios.
- Teach routes out of situations.
- Keep help available even when the young person has broken a rule.
- Avoid “I told you so.”
- Maintain trusted adult relationships.
- Teach that exploitation remains wrong even if the young person initially agreed to something.
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Things needing careful planning
Young people with additional needs can face increased risks of exploitation, but Phoenix must not translate population-level vulnerability into assumptions about an individual young person.
A 2024 mixed-methods systematic review found particular vulnerabilities to child sexual exploitation and abuse among young people with SEN, including intellectual disability and autism, and examined the need for education that helps young people recognise and report exploitation. (1)
A systematic review of cybergrooming identifies a range of manipulation processes and risk factors within young people's online experiences. (2)
Research concerning disabled young people online also describes offender tactics including deception, gifts, coercion, threats and grooming. (1)
This evidence should increase system responsibility, not increase surveillance of young people.
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Practical support principles
Support may include:
- explicit manipulation/grooming education
- relationship and consent education
- digital literacy
- scenario-based learning
- recognising gradual escalation
- refusal and exit strategies
- trusted-adult networks
- low-shame disclosure
- supported decision-making
- advocacy
- strong safeguarding systems
- meaningful opportunities for safe social connection.
From understanding to support
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Often useful
- safeguarding education
- consent and relationship education
- self-advocacy
- digital-safety approaches
- trusted-adult networks
- supported decision-making
Worth considering
- targeted exploitation-prevention programmes
- therapeutic support following exploitation
- specialist safeguarding services
- communication adaptations.
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Evidence and cautions
A major danger in prevention work is producing a young person who is better trained to follow safety rules without becoming more able to recognise manipulation and act autonomously.
That is exactly the distinction between:
generalising compliance
and
generalising capability.
Similarly, preventing exploitation by simply restricting all friendships, internet access or independence may reduce one observable risk while creating new losses of:
- autonomy
- social learning
- belonging
- access.
Phoenix therefore has to subject the safeguarding intervention itself to formulation.
The relevant outcome is not:
“The young person has fewer opportunities to take risks.”
It is:
“The young person has greater capability, stronger protection and more routes to safe participation.”
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Public evidence sources
- Online sexual exploitation and abuse of children and young people with disabilities — mixed-methods systematic review.
- Cybergrooming of children and adolescents — systematic review.
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Possible explanatory lenses
Relevant factors may include:
- social communication
- desire for belonging
- previous isolation
- fear of rejection
- communication
- learning needs
- understanding of relationships
- difficulty managing social ambiguity
- power imbalance
- previous exploitation
- limited access to trusted adults
- environmental safeguarding weaknesses.
About this entry’s source
Open Beta · read the evidence notes and limitations
Source status describes the underlying material. The current site edition is Open Beta; the evidence notes and limitations remain part of the entry.