Child Online Safety

Child Online Safety

Today’s children are more interconnected than ever before. With over four billion Internet users across the world, the limits of children’s experiences are no longer bound by their bedroom doors, their classroom walls, or the borders of their nation.1 Unfortunately, the same can be said for the rest of the world – including those seeking to harm children. Though the Internet is a web of knowledge, opportunities and connectivity, it was not designed with children’s safety in mind. One in every three Internet users is a child, giving adults unprecedented and uncontrolled access to children across the globe.

As the Internet’s reach grows, every day, the number of children at risk of online sexual exploitation and abuse multiplies. Online child sexual exploitation and abuse Children’s experiences occur in two worlds – the physical and the digital – but more often than not, those worlds blend into one. The same goes with online violence, as abuse does not begin or end online. Rather, the Internet is often used as a pathway to commit physical,
sexual and emotional violence. Abusers can contact children anytime, anywhere, making it very difficult for their victims to escape abuse and exploitation. Even worse, the Internet allows abusive material – including photos and videos – to live in the digital world forever. As a result, these materials can follow children for the rest of their lives. No matter how much they try to rebuild and recover, these children know that somewhere in
the world, someone is watching them at their most vulnerable. These images and videos can fall into anyone’s hands, leaving children exposed to not just their surrounding communities, but their future friends, families, teachers, and colleagues.

Online child sexual exploitation and abuse comes in many forms. An adult may take photos or videos of sexual acts involving children, using them for self-pleasure, financial gain, or dissemination on online platforms. These materials can also be used to blackmail children, perpetuating a cycle of more sexual exploitation and abuse. In 2017, the Canadian platform Project Arachnid found 5.1 million web pages around the world that were hosting child sexual abuse materials. The group now identifies 100,000 unique images every month. In addition, child abuse is regularly live-streamed, creating exploitative, harmful conditions on either side of the screen.

While a perpetrator rapes, assaults or debases a child, another is encouraging that abuse by watching it in real-time. Perpetrators can now pay for a child’s abuse to be livestreamed to them, and for that child to be raped and abused according to their preferences. Child abuse has become a feature of perpetrators’ on-demand entertainment, and both individuals, no matter their physical location, should be held responsible. This form of abuse mostly affects children living in poverty – and in most cases