Study Including Pakistan Flags Online Sexual Abuse of 20m Children

A major international study that included Pakistan has estimated that about 20 million internet-using children across 21 surveyed countries experienced sexual exploitation or abuse through digital platforms during a single year. The findings highlight the scale of risks facing young people online and raise fresh concerns about how governments, technology companies and child-protection systems respond to abuse occurring through social media, messaging services and other digital spaces.

The research focused on children aged 12 to 17 across countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. More than one in five young internet users surveyed reported experiencing at least one form of online sexual abuse or exploitation during the year before they were questioned. Pakistan was among the countries included in the nationally representative surveys, alongside several other nations from different regions.

The study drew on data collected between 2020 and 2025 from around 21,000 children who use the internet. Researchers estimated that roughly 15 million children in the surveyed countries encountered unwanted sexual material, about nine million were pressured into sexual conversations or asked to share sexual images, and around four million had sexual images distributed without their consent. The overall global number of affected children is believed to be substantially higher because the research covered only a limited group of countries.

Social media was identified as the main environment in which the reported abuse occurred. Nearly 60 per cent of incidents were linked to social platforms, with widely used messaging and social networking applications among the services cited in the findings. Online gaming accounted for another 14 per cent of reported cases, indicating that risks extend across multiple forms of digital interaction rather than being confined to a single type of platform.

The findings also challenge the assumption that perpetrators are usually strangers. More than half of the reported cases involved someone already known to the child, including friends, relatives or romantic partners, while 38 per cent involved people first encountered online. Fewer than one per cent of cases were reported to police, social workers or helplines, revealing a significant gap between the scale of abuse and the number of incidents reaching formal protection systems.

Artificial intelligence is adding another dimension to the threat. In nine countries where relevant information was collected, an estimated 1.1 million children reported that AI-generated sexual images or videos depicting them had been created. The research also found serious emotional consequences among children who experienced technology-facilitated sexual exploitation, with affected children reporting higher levels of anxiety and a greater likelihood of suicidal thoughts or self-harm compared with their peers.

Technology companies have pointed to safeguards introduced on their platforms, including private-by-default accounts for younger users, restrictions on contact from unknown adults, automated detection systems, account removals and reporting tools. These measures are intended to reduce exposure to predatory behaviour, sexual extortion and the unauthorised distribution of intimate material, although the findings suggest that significant risks remain across the digital environment.

For Pakistan, the study is directly relevant because Pakistani children formed part of the surveyed population, although the published findings did not provide a separate national total. The report calls for stronger platform safeguards, updated laws to address emerging threats such as AI-generated abusive material, improved reporting channels and more effective child-protection mechanisms. The next challenge will be translating those recommendations into prevention, enforcement and support systems capable of responding as children's use of digital platforms continues to expand.