How People Use the Internet to Sexually Exploit Children and Teens

It may seem like the best solution is to restrict or remove access to digital media, but this can actually increase the risk of harm. A youth may then become more secretive about their digital media use, and they therefore may not reach out when something concerning or harmful happens. Instead, it’s crucial that children and youth have the tools and the education to navigate social media, the internet, and other digital media safely. See our guide for Keeping Children and Youth Safe Online to find tips on child porn preparing for internet safety.

Teens hit with child porn charges after tweeting their group-sex video

Using the phrase ‘child pornography’ hides the true impact of perpetrators’ behaviour. The lawyer added that enactment of a law requiring website operators and internet service providers to check the products on sale on their websites would help to prevent child porn from being sold online. NAGOYA–Dozens of people across Japan have stepped forward to confess to child pornography purchases and sales following an investigation into a supposedly secure overseas adult video website, sources said. Access guidance, resources and training to help you respond to and prevent incidents of problematic sexual behaviour and harmful sexual behaviour, including child-on-child and peer-on-peer sexual abuse. This review of the literature about online harmful sexual behaviour (HSB) was carried out to help inform and update guidance for practitioners working with children and young people with harmful sexual behaviour. Illegal images, websites or illegal solicitations can also be reported directly to your local police department.

This is, of course, particularly the case for the age group we are looking closer at in this study. 3-6-year-old children are sexually naive and would not normally be aware of the possibility of this type of sexual behaviour without someone else telling them or showing them what to do. They are easily manipulated and are therefore an easy target for predators who are looking to exploit them. “Dark web child sex offenders…cannot hide from law enforcement,” the UK’s National Crime Agency investigations lead, Nikki Holland, said. A young person may be asked to send photos or videos of themselves to a ‘friend’ that they might have met online. These photos and videos may then be sent to others and/or used to exploit that child.

Artificially generated or simulated imagery

• Child sexual abuse material covers a wide berth of images and videos that may or may not show a child being abused – take, for example, nude images of youth that they took of themselves.
• The newspaper reported that OnlyFans’ revenue grew by 553% in the year to November 2020, and users spent £1.7bn on the site.
• It was a free market, a trade in images of child sexual abuse, with real images, some self-generated images, and other images produced by artificial intelligence,” said Thiago Tavares, president of SaferNet Brasil.
• Most of the time these children are initially clothed and much of what we see is a quick display of genitals.

Even though this person is not putting their hands on a child, this is child sexual abuse and yes, it should be reported. Please know that we’re not a reporting agency, but will share information with you about how to go about making this report, as well as considering what else you can do. Many people don’t realize that non-touching behaviors including taking photographs of a child in sexual poses or exposing your genitals to a child for sexual arousal are child sexual abuse. In addition, many other non-touching behaviors, such as routinely “walking in” on children while they are dressing or using the bathroom, can be inappropriate and harmful even though they may not be illegal. It is important both for the sake of the child and for the person who is acting harmfully or inappropriately that adults intervene to protect the child and prevent the person from committing a crime.

Up to 3,096 internet domains with child sexual abuse materials were blocked in 2024 amid Globe’s #MakeItSafePH campaign. Young people, including children and teenagers, may look for pictures or videos of their peers doing sexual things because they are curious, or want to know more about sex. Many youth who look for this content do not realize that it is illegal for them to look at it, even if they are a minor themselves. Where multiple children were seen in the images and videos, we saw that Category C images accounted for nearly half.