Children are believed to be the future of a nation necessitating efforts to protect them and ensure the full development of their potentials. Despite these efforts, a major impediment to their existence, child abuse, still has a high prevalence. The media, as the watchdog of the society, are expected to play a pivotal role in promoting efforts to safeguard children. This, the media can do through providing adequate coverage to issues relating to children, advocating for their rights and giving them a voice. This study sought to find out whether these responsibilities are being adequately carried out by the online versions of three Nigerian newspapers, the Daily Trust’s www. dailytrust. com; the Daily Sun’swww. sunnewsonline. com; and The Nation’s www. thenationonlineng. net. The researchers used content analysis to ascertain frequency of child abuse stories, their depths, frames, and tones as well as the prominence given to the stories. The findings from the study, underpinned by the Agenda Setting theory, were that child abuse stories were few with less-than-desired depths but having more of tones considered favourable to the interest of abuse victims and frames that tend towards advocacy. The overall impression is that more efforts need to be made by online newspapers to further ethically highlight the abuse of children by giving increased coverage to abuse stories, projecting them in the right frames and further improving on the existing advocacy skills of their reporters and online editors.