Key Details
The UNICEF Innocenti report Through Children’s Eyes: How Digital Technologies Enable Child Sexual Abuse draws on the Disrupting Harm research project, conducted with ECPAT International and INTERPOL.
Finding | Evidence reported |
|---|---|
Scale of abuse | An estimated 20 million children aged 12–17, or about one in five internet-using children across the 21 study countries, experienced at least one form of technology-facilitated sexual exploitation or abuse in a year. |
Forms of harm | Approximately 15 million received unwanted sexual content, 9 million were pressured into sexual conversations or sharing images, and 4 million had sexual images shared without permission. |
Where it occurred | Nearly 60% of incidents occurred on social media and 14% in online games. |
Relationship with perpetrator | In 57% of cases, the perpetrator was already known to the child; in 38%, the child first met the perpetrator online. |
Disclosure | More than four in ten cases were disclosed to no one. Fewer than 1% were reported to the police, a social worker or a helpline. |
Reason for silence | The most frequently reported barrier was not knowing where to go or whom to tell, cited in 25% of cases. |
Associated harm | Affected children were four times as likely to report suicidal thoughts and behaviours, four times as likely to report self-harm, and had anxiety levels around 11 percentage points higher than their peers. |
Research base | Nationally representative surveys of approximately 21,000 internet-using children across 21 countries, supplemented by interviews with affected young people and more than 500 frontline and law-enforcement professionals. |
India was not among the countries surveyed. Pakistan was the only South Asian study country, so the prevalence estimates should not be presented as measures of conditions in India.
Abuse Runs Through Platforms Children Use Every Day
The report’s central finding is that technology-facilitated sexual abuse is not confined to obscure websites or anonymous corners of the internet. Almost 60% of reported incidents occurred on social media, with children identifying Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok among the platforms involved.
The platform percentages overlap because an incident could involve more than one service. They should therefore not be added together or interpreted as market shares of abuse.
The risks identified include unsolicited messages to child accounts, movement from public interactions into private chats, fake profiles, resharing of content and the ability of perpetrators to re-establish contact after being blocked. The report argues that these are partly design and governance questions, because platform features can either facilitate contact and amplification or place barriers in their way.
Familiarity Does Not Make the Harm Less Technology-Enabled
In 57% of cases, the perpetrator was someone the child already knew. This complicates the common assumption that online safety is primarily about protecting children from strangers.
Digital tools can allow acquaintances, peers or other known individuals to extend coercion beyond physical settings, preserve and redistribute images, conceal their identity or use threats of disclosure to maintain control. In 38% of cases, the child first encountered the perpetrator online, confirming that stranger contact remains a significant risk.
The evidence also shows different gendered pressures. Girls may be silenced through stigma and victim-blaming, while abuse of boys may be minimised or accompanied by threats exploiting expectations about masculinity or sexual orientation.
Formal Reporting Systems Are Barely Reached
The disclosure findings reveal a substantial distance between children and the institutions intended to protect them. More than four in ten incidents were disclosed to no one, while fewer than 1% reached the police, a social worker or a helpline.
When children did speak, they most often approached a friend, followed by a sibling or mother. This suggests that the first person receiving a disclosure will frequently be outside the formal child-protection system.
Silence was not simply a failure to recognise harm. Children feared blame, punishment, stigma or losing access to their devices. The report cautions that responses centred on confiscating phones or restricting internet use can create another reason not to seek help.
Mental-Health Associations Raise the Cost of Weak Responses
Children subjected to technology-facilitated sexual abuse reported sharply worse mental-health outcomes than their peers. They were four times more likely to report suicidal thoughts and behaviours and four times more likely to self-harm.
These are associations rather than proof that every difference was caused solely by the abuse. They nevertheless show that the consequences can extend beyond the incident into children’s mental health, education, relationships and everyday functioning.
An effective response therefore requires more than removing content or investigating an offence. It must also connect children with trauma-informed health, counselling, social-protection and justice services without requiring them to repeatedly recount what happened.
What Constitutes Technology-Facilitated Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse?
The term covers sexual exploitation or abuse in which digital tools or platforms enable, extend or amplify the harm. It includes unwanted sexual content, pressure to engage in sexual conversations or share images, non-consensual circulation of sexual material, grooming, sexual extortion, livestreamed abuse and AI-generated sexual content depicting children. The underlying abuse may occur entirely online or move between digital and physical settings.
Policy Relevance
The report does not establish how prevalent these harms are in India, but it provides a useful test of whether the country’s laws, platform regulation and child-protection institutions operate as a connected response system. India already has multiple legal and reporting channels; the policy question is whether children can reach them easily and receive coordinated support.
Platform safety and children’s data: The POCSO Act, IT Act and IT Rules, 2021 address sexual abuse material and intermediary responsibilities. Section 9 of the DPDP Act, 2023, when operative from May 2027, will further restrict processing harmful to children, behavioural monitoring and targeted advertising. The remaining policy question is whether India needs more explicit privacy-by-default and child-safety standards for platform design and adult contact.
Accessible reporting: India has multiple channels, including the POCSO e-Box, Child Helpline 1098, police and the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal. The report highlights the need to ensure these channels are visible, child-accessible and connected to timely protection and investigation.
Child-sensitive response: POCSO provides an institutional framework for investigation and support. Effective implementation requires preserving digital evidence and securing platform cooperation without subjecting children to repeated testimony, breaches of confidentiality or avoidable trauma.
Inter-agency coordination: Responsibility spans MWCD, MeitY, MHA, I4C, NCRB, State police and district child-protection systems. The central policy challenge is ensuring that a disclosure leads seamlessly to protection, investigation, removal of abusive material and continuing support.
India therefore does not primarily lack laws or reporting channels. The report’s more relevant test is whether children recognise and trust those channels, platforms prevent foreseeable risks, and agencies can convert a disclosure into protection without blame, delay or repeated trauma.
Follow the Full Report Here: Through Children’s Eyes: How Digital Technologies Enable Child Sexual Abuse