A groundbreaking study by researchers at the University of Edinburgh has revealed that over 300 million children worldwide fall victim to online sexual exploitation and abuse each year. It means about one in eight children globally is being targeted by unscrupulous operators who use the innocence and unsuspecting nature of children as their capital for extorting money and sexually abusing them. The exponential growth of social media has proved to be both a boon and a curse. Children are spending more time online than ever before. Around the world a child goes online for the first time every half second. Through computers, smartphones, gaming consoles, and televisions, children fast become adept at using social networks. When used in the right way – and accessible to all – the internet has the potential to widen the horizons of children and spur creativity the world over.
But with these opportunities come serious risks. This has prompted researchers at the University of Edinburgh’s Childlight Global Child Safety Institute to conduct the survey. The findings should make governments aware and draw up a strategy to deal with the pervasive, pernicious influence without delay. The study estimates around 302 million young people have experienced non-consensual taking, sharing, and exposure to sexual images and videos over the past 12 months. This disturbing trend highlights the vast scale of online abuse affecting children and teenagers worldwide.
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The types of offences vary widely, ranging from ‘sextortion’—where perpetrators extort money from victims by threatening to release their private images—to the misuse of artificial intelligence (AI) technology to create deepfake videos and images. Solicitation, including unwanted ‘sexting’ and sexual requests by adults or other youths, has also been reported at similarly alarming rates.
Considering the severity of the issue it would not be an exaggeration to say, as experts are suggesting, that the menace has become a global pandemic that has remained hidden for far too long. There is an urgent need for coordinated international response to address the exponential growth of online child exploitation and abuse.
It is pertinent to note that the report follows recent warnings from UK police about criminal gangs in West Africa and Southeast Asia targeting British teenagers through sextortion scams. These scams that have been increasing globally, particularly affect teenagers. Perpetrators often pose as peers on social media, moving to encrypted messaging apps to elicit intimate images from their victims before making blackmail demands.
Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) has responded by issuing alerts to hundreds of thousands of teachers, urging them to be vigilant about the threats their students might face. The NCA’s warning highlights the rapid escalation of these scams, with blackmail demands often made within an hour of initial contact. The primary motivation of these scammers is financial extortion rather than sexual gratification.
There are several reasons for the vicious spread of online child abuse. A key to success of perpetrators is the rules followed by social network purveyors that prevent parents from accessing their children’s accounts. For this there has been clamour for allowing parents to watch the content used by children at least up to the age of 13.
However, government response in this regard has been tardy. Political parties and the governments they run globally act with alacrity to regulate online operators each time their political interests are hit. But, they are not so prompt in reining those same crooks in when children are abused seemingly to protect the latter’s business interests. It is time governments the world over and especially concerned parents make all out efforts to break the cash nexus without delay and save children from psychological trauma and mental health issues.
