One third of minors received messages from an adult with sexual intent

Children and adolescents are surfing the internet without adult supervision and at increasingly younger ages. Families and guardians take care of their children's surroundings, but they are unaware of the extent of their world beyond the mobile phone screen. Contact with strangers that would never occur on the street is naturalized by young people online: they establish relationships with anonymous profiles —sometimes even trusted ones—on social networks, video games, and instant messaging platforms. And sexual predators are there, infiltrating those same environments.

According to the Ministry of the Interior, 4,896 reports of cybercrimes against children and adolescents were registered in Spain in 2023, of which 1,068 were for sexual offenses. Worldwide, in 2024, the NCMEC (the world's leading organization for the prevention and identification of child victims of digital sexual exploitation) recorded 19.8 million reports of child sexual abuse material.

In this context, Save the Children is publishing today, in collaboration with the European Digital Transition Partnership, its report "Networks that Entrap," which analyzes how the internet, social media, and technology facilitate recruitment and exposure to sexual exploitation networks and become the medium through which violence against minors is committed .

The report also includes the results of a survey on online experiences and behaviors conducted among more than 1,000 young people between the ages of 18 and 21. And pay attention to this data: 97 percent reported having experienced some form of sexual violence in digital environments when they were minors.

Among the main types of digital sexual violence in the report are contact by adults for sexual purposes (known as 'grooming' ) and 'sexting' without consent or the unauthorized dissemination of intimate content.

Also forms of online sexual abuse and exploitation, including the consumption, production, and dissemination of child sexual abuse material ; "sextortion," in which children and adolescents are blackmailed or threatened into sending intimate or sexual material; and the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to create sexual images (known as "deepfake pornography").

The threat is hidden, but it's real. Lucía López , a Save the Children educator in Alicante, detected a case of 'deepfake' in a minor she works with: "A 12-year-old girl told me fearfully that she was being threatened by a person who told her on social media that if she didn't forward a video with sexual content she had shared previously to all her contacts, he would publish her nude photos, which had been created using AI. The girl claimed that she had never forwarded photos of herself with that type of content, but she had forwarded the video, and she felt fear, guilt, and shame."

On the one hand, most young people do not see these manipulations as an attack on human dignity, nor do they fully understand their danger. Thus, nearly 70 percent of young people surveyed do not identify AI image manipulation as a perceived risk during their childhood. On the other hand, 27 percent admit to having voluntarily sent intimate or sexual messages, photos, or videos of themselves during their childhood or adolescence.

"Even when done voluntarily, these behaviors pose risks. Once shared, the content escapes the creator's control, opening the door to multiple forms of victimization. It can be redistributed without consent, used by adults for sexual purposes, or used for sextortion," warns Catalina Perazzo , Director of Influence and Territorial Development at Save the Children.

Among the main forms of child sexual exploitation is the so-called "grooming," which involves manipulation, deception, and coercion to obtain sexually explicit digital content from children or to incite them into sexual encounters. In 2023, the Ministry of the Interior recorded 525 reports related to grooming, more than 100 compared to the 408 reported the previous year.

In this regard, Save the Children describes its figures as "much more worrying." 33.5 percent of young people surveyed had had contact with an adult for sexual purposes online as minors. Breaking down the sexes, more girls (36%) than boys (26%) received messages with these intentions.

Looking more closely, it can be seen that 26 percent admitted to being pressured into sending intimate or sexual content as minors; 20 percent were threatened or blackmailed into sharing such content; and almost the same percentage were threatened or blackmailed into sharing sexual content in which they appeared.

According to Save the Children, the most common means of contact used by perpetrators are social networks such as Instagram (68 percent) or X (44), messaging applications such as WhatsApp (48), and online games and streaming (44). As with AI setups, the lack of knowledge about the crime of 'grooming' makes it difficult to detect and report, according to the organization: only 24 percent said they knew that it was a crime.