A new report from Thorn, a nonprofit focused on building technology to protect children from sexual abuse, indicates concerning trends in online child sexual exploitation.
The report shows increasing instances of minors producing and distributing sexual images of themselves, whether consensually or through coercion. It also highlights rising predatory interactions between youth and adults online.
“In our digitally connected world, child sexual abuse material is easily and increasingly shared on the platforms we use daily,” said John Starr, VP of Strategic Impact at Thorn. “Harmful interactions between youth and adults are not isolated to the web’s dark corners.”
These findings align with data from other child safety groups. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children saw a 329% increase in reported child sexual abuse files over five years. In 2022 alone, it received over 88 million such files.
Driving factors likely include:
- More platforms deploying hashing technology to detect known abusive images
- Online predators using new tactics like chatbots to entice minors
- Increase in minors generating explicit content themselves
This content poses risks for any platform hosting user-generated content. Hashing technology allows companies to identify and remove child sexual abuse material while avoiding hosting and spreading such content.
Hashing converts files into unique digital fingerprints. These hash values are compared against databases of known illicit media. This allows platforms to detect and eliminate child sexual exploitation material at scale.
Thorn’s Safer tool offers access to a 29+ million known abusive image hashes database, enabling anonymous sharing between companies. In 2022, Safer hashed over 42 billion files, identifying 520,000 instances of child sexual abuse material.
Technology companies and NGOs must work together to eliminate this content from the internet. Widespread adoption of proactive detection tools is critical to reverse the alarming proliferation of child sexual abuse online.
