Social media becoming easy way to sexually abuse children

New Delhi: Social media has become an easy way to sexually abuse children as, according to a UN report, one in five children in 21 nations faced tech-facilitated sexual abuse, sixty per cent of them occurring on social media.

This is the reason many countries have put a ban on use of social media or restricted its use by children under 16 years of age, and several are proposing to do it, with Australia being the first country to place the platform beyond the reach of this age group since December 2025. Besides Australia, China has also enforced progressive restrictions on use of the platform by children since 20219.

A survey by UN Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) revealed that about 20 million children aged 12 to 17 – one in five across 21 countries – were sexually exploited by perpetrators using technology such as social media. The UN agency has called for for safer platforms and stronger laws to check the crime.

“More than 15 million children in this age group were exposed to unwanted sexual content, nine million were asked to engage in sexual conversations or share sexual images against their will and four million had sexual images of themselves shared without their consent,” the report says.

According to the UN agency, the total number of victims was likely much higher as many children do not report abuse for several obvious reasons.The most common reason was children not knowing who to tell, which left them to undergo deep emotional and mental distress.

Nearly 60 per cent of children were contacted by perpetrators on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and WhatsApp, and 14 per cent happened on online games, with the platforms’ features often used to exploit trust.

“Some 38 per cent of children first encountered the perpetrators online, and evidence shows abuse is often facilitated through intentional features that allow perpetrators to hide their identities…Across the 21 countries, 57 per cent of exploitation cases involved perpetrators the children knew, including peers, friends and family, ” the report said.

After Australia and China, Indonesia and Malaysia and Brazil also restricted use of social media under-16s .

In addition to this, several countries are in the process of drafting laws to check use of social media by children or preparing to implement the laws already passed. These include Greece which is to ban under-15s from Jan 1, 2027; Spain where a law for ban for under-16s is pending parliament in parliament. Besides nations like Austria, Denmark, Slovenia, Germany were also in the same process. The European Union has set up an Eepert committee to draw up recommendations to European Commission on a potential ban for the 27-nation bloc .

UNICEF researchers say that there is the need of combined efforts by tech companies, governments and civil society. Tech companies should include stronger protections for children and improve their reporting systems, while governments should strengthen accountability and enforcement mechanisms, and societies should address harmful gender norms that normalise the sexualisation of girls and stigmatise survivors of sexual violence, it said.

—India News Stream