Online watchdogs are having to remove more child sexual abuse imagery from the internet than ever before as paedophiles are able to gain easy access to minors who are in the supposed safety of their own homes.
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) said on Wednesday that it found 275,655 web pages containing child sex abuse imagery last year alone—an 8% rise on the 2022 figure. It added that each of these “can contain hundreds, or even thousands, of images or videos of child sexual abuse.”
Officials noted that the vast majority (92%) of these web pages contained “self-generated” images, and that more than one in five (54,250 in total) contained the most serious, Category A abuse. Well over 100,000 of these sites containing “self-generated” images also featured imagery of children younger than 10—a massive 66% increase on the year before.
The IWF only reluctantly uses the term “self-generated” abuse, which it says “appears to place the blame with the victim themselves.” It typically refers to children being groomed into producing and sharing sexually explicit imagery of themselves by someone who is not physically present—that is, by predators preying on children with access to a smartphone in their bedroom.
Such content was barely seen by experts just 10 years ago, but is now prevalent. A 2020 IWF paper pointed to lengthy lockdowns as a pusher of this trend.
Wednesday’s report has prompted a debate on tech company Meta’s decision to roll out end-to-end encryption on Facebook Messenger, which will prevent outsiders from accessing chats. Security Minister Tom Tugendhat said this will have “a catastrophic impact on law enforcement’s ability to bring perpetrators to justice.” Civil liberties campaigner Big Brother Watch has, however, previously described the government’s attack on the technology as “a cynical campaign launched in an attempt to justify yet wider and deeper state surveillance of everyday, private conversations.”
What appears to be missing in all this is a wider discussion on parental responsibility and the wide-ranging access to the internet that parents increasingly hand to their children. Ian Critchley QPM, National Police Lead for Child Protection, last week responded to data showing that other children commit more than half of reported British child abuse offences by pointing to “the accessibility to violent pornography.” Upon seeing the IWF figures, he added:
Whole scale use of smart devices by teenagers and now under 10s, gives them increased access to harmful material including violent pornography and indecent images of children, as well as ease of access to offenders who seek to connect with them including in the virtual reality space, often portraying as other young people.
Few other public figures appear willing to draw attention to this inconvenient yet fundamental point.
