Author: Lauren Bryant, RESTLESS Development, youth representative

 

Today, there are 1.2 billion young people aged 15 to 24 worldwide, accounting for the largest population of young people in history.

Young people possess immense power to drive social change, and their influence is particularly evident in movements tackling critical issues like online sexual abuse.

Online sexual abuse of children is indeed one of the gravest issues emerging from the rapid expansion of digital connectivity.

Online sexual abuse of children is a growing concern that reflects the darker side of digital connectivity.  Children constitute approximately one-third of all internet users globally. As more children access the internet at younger ages, they are increasingly exposed to various forms of online abuse, including grooming, exploitation, and harassment.

More than 175,000 children go online for the first time every day – a new child every half second – UNICEF. Digital access exposes these children to a wealth of benefits and opportunities but also to a host of risks and harms, including access to harmful content, sexual exploitation and abuse, cyberbullying, and misuse of their private information, the children’s agency has warned.

Yet, we often dismiss young people, particularly children, as too immature to address their needs and shape their future when, ironically, we provide them with gateways to every corner of the world through phones and tablets.  We must listen and learn from them, putting their voices at the heart of policy development and legislative reform.

Safety by design

The Nation Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) noted an 82% increase in online grooming cases over the last five years, with 73% of these crimes involving platforms like Snapchat or Meta. This calls for stricter oversight and greater responsibility from tech companies to protect young users from harm.

In 2023, Facebook took down 699 21 million fake accounts. While that statistic is great, it begs the question of how and why a Facebook account was created maliciously and accessed in the first place.

Tech companies must be held responsible for their website and their content, especially when they make considerable efforts to attract children to their sites., This must include implementing survivor-centered safety features, precise reporting mechanisms, and transparency in handling online sexual abuse reports.

The anonymity and reach of platform features make it easy for perpetrators to target and manipulate children, often with devastating effects. Tech companies must be mandated to integrate child-friendly features and safety-by-design principles to protect children from online abuse effectively. This approach ensures that safety is built into the fabric of digital products and services rather than being an afterthought.

Too often, legislation prioritizes content takedown in a reactive, resistance-based approach, which falls short and usually comes too late after multiple instances of online sexual abuse have already occurred. While the United Kingdom is fortunate to have a regulatory body dedicated to online safety, it is clear that it needs more power, support, and clearly defined expectations to protect users effectively.

The current approach of dealing with online sexual abuse through content takedown does little to address the root of the problem.

Regulations must evolve from simply removing harmful content after the fact to proactively preventing abuse before it happens. The current approach of dealing with online sexual abuse through content takedown does little to address the root of the problem and often fails to prevent further harm.

We need a comprehensive strategy to safeguard vulnerable populations, especially children, including preventive measures, stricter enforcement, and continuous oversight.

The regulatory body in the United Kingdom (UK) Ofcom has made strides. Still, to be fully effective, it requires enhanced authority to enforce regulations, greater resources to monitor compliance, and a stronger mandate to ensure that tech companies prioritize user safety at every stage of their product development and operation.

This includes the power to impose significant penalties on companies that fail to protect their users, particularly children, and the ability to mandate proactive safety measures as a condition of operation.

Effective collaboration between regulatory bodies, child protection experts, law enforcement, and international partners is essential to staying ahead of emerging threats. in the digital landscape

The regulatory body should be expected to collaborate closely with child protection experts, law enforcement, and international counterparts to stay ahead of emerging threats and ensure that online safety standards are robust, comprehensive, and universally applied.

The UK Government will be needed in this space faith, calling on all other countries to follow suit to ensure that they introduce various regulatory bodies that monitor compliance.

Enhancing educational interventions

While implementing rules, regulations, and laws is vital, we must recognize that children are unlikely to read or fully understand these guidelines. To ensure immediate protection, we must reach out to them directly.

Despite the minimum age requirement of 13 on most social media platforms, 60% of children aged 8 to 12 already have their own profiles. Even more concerning is that a parent or guardian assisted two-thirds of these children in setting up their accounts. This highlights the urgent need for digital literacy and online safety programs to be integrated into all school curriculums.

By shifting the focus from the traditional “stranger danger” narrative to a more comprehensive understanding of online risks, we can better prepare children to navigate the digital world safely.

We must empower children with the knowledge and agency to navigate the digital world safely. Instead of focusing solely on the concept of “stranger danger,” we should emphasize the reality that those they know, including peers, can also be potential perpetrators.

The escalation from online to offline violence is a real and immediate threat, often occurring within hours, days, or weeks. Like many of us, children sit in the comfort of their homes, believing they are safe, while unknowingly entering a potentially dangerous online world. However, the online and offline worlds are, in fact, the same; both as real as one another. We need to highlight and challenge this disconnect for children but also for parents, showcasing the escalation from a text or an image sense to poor mental health, bullying, rape, and suicide.

Educational intervention is not just a preventative measure but an essential tool in equipping children with the skills they need to protect themselves and others in the digital age. By incorporating comprehensive digital literacy and safety programs into education, we can help them develop a critical understanding of online risks, recognize signs of potential abuse, and know how to seek help.

Empowering survivor voices

A survivor-centered approach to addressing online sexual abuse allows individuals to tell their own stories. This approach prioritizes survivors’ needs, experiences, and voices at every stage of the process, from policy development to implementation and support services. Their lived experiences are invaluable for shaping necessary protections and solutions.

However, this must go beyond tokenism. There should be established regular, respectful dialogues with survivors,  helping to ensure that their needs and perspectives are consistently reflected in ongoing efforts to combat online sexual abuse.  We must move past one-off youth consultations to establish ongoing dialogues backed by robust funding that enables sustainable, long-term impact.

Making headway with survivor leaders

This is why it is essential for survivor-led actions like the new group of survivors of all forms of violence that will play a significant role at the first-ever Global Ministerial Conference on Ending Violence Against Children.

The creation of the Global Survivor Council (GSC) ahead of the Conference, which will take place on November 7-8, 2024, in Bogotá, Colombia, is a significant step forward in ensuring survivor voices are heard at what will be the most important gathering of world leaders dedicated to ending violence against children.