More than one in five children aged 12 to 17 in countries across Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe experienced at least one form of sexual abuse or exploitation on an online platform in a single year.
The alarming picture of children being sexually exploited on online or digital platforms comes from the latest report by UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency.
The report, published Thursday, said roughly 20 million children across 21 countries were sexually exploited online in a single year. Most of these incidents occurred while children were using social media.
According to the report, roughly 15 million children in the surveyed countries were exposed to sexual content online against their will, whether they sought it out or not. Nine million children were pressured into sexual conversations or into sharing sexually suggestive images.
The report specifically noted that the true number of children subjected to this kind of exploitation or harassment worldwide is certainly several million higher.
UNICEF described the research as among the largest studies of its kind, drawing on nationally representative surveys conducted in 21 countries between 2020 and 2025. The surveys collected data from roughly 21,000 children who use the internet.
Social media under particular scrutiny
UNICEF said roughly 60% of sexual exploitation incidents occurred on social media platforms, with Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok as the main platforms involved. Fourteen percent of incidents occurred in online gaming.
A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, said the survey data is fairly old — collected starting in 2020, meaning before various protective measures recommended by UNICEF were introduced. These measures include not keeping teen accounts open by default and preventing adults with no prior connection to a teen from messaging them.
Meta also said it considers WhatsApp a private messaging app rather than a social media platform.
The spokesperson said: “The report does not provide specific evidence of sexual exploitation. Even so, we will continue working rigorously across all our apps to prevent children from being sexually exploited, and we will cooperate with law enforcement agencies to bring the perpetrators behind this to justice.”
Snapchat referred Reuters to a blog post by Jacqueline Beauchere, the company’s global head of platform safety. In it, Beauchere said the company is actively working against online sexual extortion through early detection, account removal, user-reporting systems and various safety features designed to protect at-risk users.
Meanwhile, TikTok said it has introduced various safety measures to protect minors, including restricting certain features for younger users, not keeping accounts of users under 18 open by default, and using technology to detect potential child sexual exploitation behavior.
The UNICEF report said that in more than half of child sexual exploitation cases, the child already knew the perpetrator beforehand — including friends, relatives or romantic partners. In 38% of cases, however, the child first encountered the perpetrator online.
The research report said fewer than 1% of these child sexual exploitation cases were reported to police, social workers or any helpline.
Concerns over artificial intelligence
The report also highlighted growing concern over artificial intelligence. In the nine countries where data was collected on this issue, roughly 1.1 million children said their photos had been used to create sexual images or videos using AI.
The research found that children who experienced technology-facilitated sexual exploitation reported thinking about suicide or self-harm roughly four times as often as other children. Their levels of anxiety were also significantly higher than other children’s.
UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement: “These experiences leave children in deep psychological and emotional crisis. Many children suffer in silence, unsure where to turn for help.”
UNICEF has called on governments and technology companies to strengthen safety measures on digital platforms further, update laws to address evolving forms of sexual exploitation including AI-generated sexual content, and improve child-protection and reporting systems.
The highest percentage of child sexual exploitation cases occurred in the Philippines, at 42.51%.