One in three children experiences cyberbullying. Two of them built the app to stop it.

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July 2, 2026

One in three children experiences cyberbullying. Two of them built the app to stop it.

Cyberbullying hit one of them personally. Today the two protect thousands of families while the world is still debating bans.

MUNICH, July 2, 2026 — One in three children experiences cyberbullying. More than one in five is targeted by groomers. The industry's answer has been to limit screen time or restrict access. Helmit's answer is to make every minute online safer.

Leonardo Benini and Alexander Wolters, both 23, have known each other since kindergarten. They went to the same school, the same university, spent their teenage years on the same platforms. One of them was cyberbullied. Both decided to do something about it.

Today, Helmit launches its mobile app, bringing real-time protection from cyberbullying, cybergrooming, and dangerous content of any kind directly to every family's phone.

Helmit detects threats on platforms like WhatsApp, Instagram, Discord, Signal, and YouTube the moment they emerge and alerts parents before harm occurs. Parents cannot read their child's messages. When Helmit detects a threat, they receive a notification showing only the content that triggered the alert. Nothing more. Everything runs on-device. No data ever leaves the family's control.

The cases are real. Since launching, Helmit has already uncovered more than 1,000 incidents of digital violence across its user base. Parents regularly share what Helmit caught: grooming attempts, coordinated bullying, explicit content sent to children by adults.

"Helmit alerted me the moment bullying started in my son's class chat. He wasn't the one being targeted, but I was able to talk to him right away and let the other parents know. I would never have noticed otherwise." — Paul M., father of an 11-year-old

"I know firsthand what it means to be targeted online," said Leonardo Benini, co-founder of Helmit. "I know how it feels, and how little parents can do in that moment, because they simply don't know it's happening. When it happened to me, my family had no way to react. That is exactly what we set out to change."

The ban doesn't solve the problem

Australia has banned social media for children. The UK is following. In Germany, the debate is dominating the headlines. What started as a local discussion has become a global movement, driven by growing frustration that the major platforms have no intention of fixing the problem themselves.

"The platforms have the data, the algorithms, the resources. They know exactly what is happening on their services," said Alexander Wolters, co-founder of Helmit. "But their business model runs on engagement, regardless of the price children pay for it. A ban is not a solution, it just moves the problem. WhatsApp, Discord, online games are not covered by the ban, so children and dangers migrate there, while parents believe the problem is solved. We give them a tool that actually works instead."

The debate has focused almost entirely on usage: how much time children spend online and on which platforms. That misses the point. The question is not how long a child is online. It is what happens to them while they are.

Leonardo and Alexander are products of the same digital generation the debate is about. They grew up with Instagram, WhatsApp, and Discord. They know how these platforms work, how children actually use them, and what parents miss. Both are EWOR Fellows and Sigma Squared Fellows, two of the world's most selective programs for exceptional founders. Leonardo studied mathematics at the Technical University of Munich and the University of Toronto, where he graduated among the top of his class. He was coding by age 12 and reached over 100 million views on Instagram with a company he built in high school. He also worked at Allianz as an actuary. Alexander studied electrical engineering at the Technical University of Munich and the National University of Singapore, also graduating among the top of his class, before moving to ETH Zurich to specialize in privacy-preserving machine learning. He previously worked at BMW as an AI engineer and at Boston Consulting Group.

Helmit already protects over 1,000 families across Germany and Europe, holds a 4.8-star rating, and is SOC 2 certified and GDPR compliant. Available on iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows. The mobile app is free to try for 14 days. Pricing starts at €9.99 per month or €79 per year, covering unlimited children and unlimited devices.

About Helmit

Helmit is a child safety platform for social media and messaging services. It detects cyberbullying, cybergrooming, and dangerous content of any kind in real time and alerts parents before harm occurs, without giving parents open access to private messages. Helmit runs on-device, covers WhatsApp, Instagram, Discord, Signal, and YouTube, and is available on iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows. Founded in Munich in 2025 by Leonardo Benini and Alexander Wolters. SOC 2 certified. GDPR compliant. www.helmit.org