Online Safety IRL

Empowering Malaysians through a new age of online safety

What's it about?

Our flagship online safety programme empowered content creators and youth leaders to make a difference in the most pressing online safety issues faced by Malaysians.

The Cause

  • Youth Empowerment
  • Online Safety

Year

2024-2025

Our Services

  • Attitudes & Behavioural Change Programmes and Fellowships
  • Branding for Social Impact
  • Strategy Development
  • Strategic Communications

What’s the Social Issue?

Online safety awareness is relatively low despite rising cases of digital manipulation and millions lost in Malaysia, making individuals vulnerable to online fraud. Understanding of child online safety issues is even more limited, in addition to poor online etiquette. This leads to misinformation, cyberbullying, and unhealthy digital interactions - all of which highlight a great need for stronger digital literacy.

The Challenge

Despite there being an oversaturation of online safety content on the internet, yet this does not necessarily translate into more scam resilience and prevention, more protection of children, or kinder online interactions. With so much information available, individuals struggle to identify reliable guidance, apply what they learn, or stay engaged with online safety messages. As a result, gaps in digital literacy continue to persist.

What We Did

01

Through Creators IRL, we brought together 10 content creators through a series of online safety masterclasses to familiarise them with online safety issues and how to integrate impactful messaging into their own content style.

Here, they turned their newfound knowledge into 30 videos packed with tips, real stories, and must-know info on scams, cyberbullying, and child online safety.

02

Through Youths IRL, we trained 10 young Malaysians in online safety issues as well as policy basics, giving them the space to push for stronger, youth-centred measures in the country's AI and digital policies.

As a result, the youths authored and presented two policy recommendations to the Ministry of Communications in 2025 - which were later presented in Parliament by the Deputy Minister of Communications as well.

03

We advocated for Malaysians to have deeper empathy for scam survivors, more collaborative family approaches to child online safety, and to better understand how cyberbullying harms others.

04

For our most iconic feat yet, we created and posted fake advertisements across multiple social media platforms

which led to our website with scam-spotting knowledge made available to the reader, serving as an experiential learning moment that was better felt, than taught.

What are the immediate outcomes after the programme?

30 videos on scams, child online safety and cyberbullying

were created by 10 content creators and disseminated to a wider audience of over 12 million people.

10 aspiring youth fellows wrote two policy papers recommending measures for AI safety in the context of keeping children safe online:

Countering AI’s role in the increase of child sexual abuse materials (CSAM), and; Combating how algorithms and generative AI encourage a lack of digital balance for today’s digital natives.

The Impact

30

Online safety videos

published on various social media platforms by Creators IRL fellows and other UGC creators.

1

marketing award

We won a MARKies Silver award for Most Effective Use — Government Sector/Non-Profit Marketing (2024).

Dharshamini Kesavan, a Creators IRL fellow, was also nominated for a Hashtag Award for her Scam Genie video

12M

views

Our online safety videos received over 12 million views.

Other Case Studies

more works