Online Age Play or Child Predation?
Distinguishing between kinky role play and sexual exploitation of children.
Posted April 2, 2025 | Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer Ph.D.
Online communications are notoriously untrustworthy as strangers frequently misrepresent themselves in public chat interactions. Nearly everyone with an email account has received a plea from a celebrity or Nigerian prince that promises the recipient untold riches if they can just help out financially for a short time. People who have surfed Instagram are (ideally) well aware that even photographs are not necessarily what they appear or may not represent the way the person pictured actually looks. Savvy internet users know that they should not take everything they see online at face value. While in some circumstances this may present a fun mystery to explore in chat rooms or social media , this lack of clarity can lead to negative consequences when it comes to distinguishing between someone who is attempting to engage in age play from those who are seeking to have sex with children.
Age play is a popular form of kinky sex or BDSM in which one or more people pretend to be a different age than they are in real life. In almost every case, age play is regressive, in that people pretend to be younger than they are chronologically. Far fewer people engage in progressive age play in which they pretend to be older than their chronological age. Frequently the submissive person in the interaction is pretending to be younger than they truly are, and the dominant person maintains their true chronological age.
The age people select to play varies widely by person in that some pretend to be infants, small children, tweens, or teens. Usually kinksters will choose one age to play, though some move among or between ages in their play. Those who like to be in an infant mind-set sometimes identify as Adult Baby Diaper Lovers (ABDL) and generally use props like diapers, bottles, pacifiers, and plushy stuffed animals to enliven and support their role play. Other popular categories include littles who play as pre-school and elementary aged children or Lolitas (especially women) who play as tweens and young teens.
Crucial to all forms of age play is the awareness among the kinksters that everyone involved in truly an adult who is pretending to be an infant or child, and that no one is actually underage. That is because the age players want the sophisticated responses associated with playing with a 46-year-old person who is pretending to be 14 and not an actual 14-year-old.
In sharp contrast, people who want to engage in sex with children are often seeking someone who is truly young, vulnerable, and unsophisticated. Pedophilia is the desire for pre-pubescent children, hebephilia is the sexual interest in kids undergoing the process of puberty, and ephebophilia is sexual attraction to older children who have completed puberty but are not yet of legal age for sexual relationships. Even though these are diagnoses of mental disorders, ephebophilia is so common that entire categories of pornography fall under “barely 18” and the schoolgirl uniform is a popular sexy Halloween costume for adults. Some argue that being a minor attracted person (MAP) is an orientation that the people experiencing it do not choose and cannot change. Others assert that pedophiles select children because they were sexually abused as children themselves, or that they prefer to manipulate partners who are far more vulnerable and less powerful than adults.
Prior to the advent of internet communications, people would age-play in person with others whom they could see were fully adults. With the popularity of social media and expectation of pretense in online communications, many people who want to experiment with age play seek their interactions online. The problem comes when it is not clear if the person with whom they communicate is truly an adult or actually a child.
Seeking to keep children safe and prosecute predators, law enforcement officials sometimes arrange stings in which they employ an adult to hang out online in chat rooms and other social media sites pretending to be a child who can be cajoled into sexual interactions with adults. Law enforcement officials keep records of the interactions and attempt to arrange meetings between the adult and supposed child in order to arrest the predatory adult.
Significant misunderstandings can arise between online age players and law enforcement officials when kinksters think they are chatting with an adult pretending to be a child, while in fact they are actually communicating with an officer pretending to be a child willing to explore sex with an adult. While in a sense these kinksters are correct in that they are chatting with an adult pretending to be a child, the adult law enforcement official puts a lot of effort into coming across as an actual child/tween/ teenager in order to build a case for prosecution of online predatory behavior. Depending on the experience and skill of the kinkster, they may or may not adequately negotiate the scene to determine the real age of the recipient of their messages. In some cases this ends up with the law enforcement officials arresting an age-playing kinkster for predatory sexual behavior when they were simply bad at negotiating age play.
In order to remain safe in online age play, kinksters who are truly seeking to play with adults should always ask for the actual age of the person with whom they are interacting. While this may seem like it will ruin the role play by breaking character and introducing too much reality, it is in fact the only way to establish if the person is an adult pretending to be a child. Avoiding prosecution for accidental interactions with law enforcement is worth suspending the role play briefly to ascertain the true age of the people involved in the play. Minor-attracted people who are truly attempting to engage sexually with children should seek treatment from a competent psychologist who can help them to understand their desires and redirect their libido to a more appropriate adult partner.
To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory .
Sheff, E. (2021). Kinky sex gone wrong: Legal prosecutions concerning consent, age play, and death via BDSM. Archives of sexual behavior , 50 (3), 761-771.
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Elisabeth Sheff, Ph.D. , is an expert on polyamory and sexual-minority families with children. She is the author of Stories from the Polycule: Real Life in Polyamorous Families.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.