" A shocking 98 percent of the victims of online child abuse are under the age of 13, a new study has shown.
Link to study:
https://www.iwf.org.uk/news/iwf-research-on-child-sex-abuse-live-streaming-reveals-98-of-victims-are-under-13
The data, which comes from UK charity the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), revealed that the youngest victim of child sex abuse livestreaming was just three years old.
Livestreaming sites present some of the biggest risks for online child abuse, mainly because they provide new ways for groomers to abuse children and produce child abuse images of the very worst kind.
According to the research, the majority of children targeted are 11-13 years old and often will be abused by people they trust.
As a result, the IWF is calling for greater awareness and more action to stomp out such vile acts online.
The UK’s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Associate Head of Child Safety Online, Andy Burrows, said: “This research is truly alarming. It is horrifying to imagine that children are being coerced and manipulated to livestream their own sexual abuse.”
“It’s time for tech firms to finally be held accountable. Too many children are abused on social media platforms and it is time for the industry to take responsibility and do more to tackle abuse at its source.”
“That’s why the Culture Secretary Matt Hancock must urgently step in to regulate social media giants and force them to take steps to keep children safe.”
Last month, the IWF revealed that one in three images of child abuse are selfies that were taken by the victims themselves.
In the charity’s damning report, it was revealed the number of child abuse websites online has grown by 37 percent since 2016.
The report also showed that the number of confirmed child sexual abuse URLs (or web pages) numbered 78,589 in 2017.
That’s a huge leap upwards from the 57,335 pages tracked in 2016.
Link to NewYork Post article: https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2018/05/15/children-are-being-forced-to-livestream-their-own-sex-abuse-study/amp/
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GreenDell144 ago
If people knew about this, they would boycott social media. Can you imagine... all people that hate child abuse, refusing to use twitter, YouTube or Facebook until it stops?
Hit ‘em in the pocketbook.
nzmc ago
youtube is pure censorship right now, they deleted lots of channels recently on various topic, we need better alternatives that respect freedom of information
GreenDell144 ago
Totally. High-Impact flix is an example. I don’t always agree with that guy, but there was no basis to remove him. YouTube is such a gimmick. They make money from everyone else’s effort. It would be nice to see the himbled and replaced by some other platform that respects creators. If we could somehow preserve subscribers in the switchover, that would allay a lot of blowback from the idea.