ABSTRACT
Societies worldwide online more than ever before. With this, young people are online more than ever before. The age of a typical cybercriminal is decreasing. Understanding the human factors behind youth cybercrime is essential for tackling crime worldwide. This chapter shares novel empirical findings from interviews with 36 global youth cybercrime experts, conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Interviewees highlighted multifarious aspects of youth pathways in and out of cybercrime, crucial to the prevention of juvenile cybercrime and the protection of youth audiences online. Findings evidenced the gravity of social contexts, teenage curiosity, device usage, and access to cyberspace. This chapter presents key findings identified during thematic analysis and establishes an interdisciplinary understanding of the human factors behind youth cybercrime, one of the least understood and intractable factors that underlies modern-day criminality. The findings informed the design and development of the youth survey (discussed in Chapter 4) and the stakeholder outputs (discussed in the Chapter 6).
