Study to examine four-fold rise in self-generated child abuse images
Nandita Prabhakar
Tuesday, July 25, 2023
A study has been launched to examine a “disturbing” increase in sexual abuse images self-generated by children aged between 11 and 13 over the last three years.
Nominet, the official registry for UK domain names, has joined forces with online safety organisation Internet Matters to fund the new research into self-generated child abuse material (CSAM) and how best to prevent it.
The term self-generated CSAM describes sexual content – images and videos – generated and shared by children themselves.
Statistics from the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) show an increase of more than 400 per cent of such imagery in the UK – from 38,500 cases in 2019 to 182,000 cases in 2021, and 199,000 in 2022.
Last year, 78 per cent of all abuse content accessed by the IWF was reported to be CSAM, with 127,732 incidents linked to 11-to 13-year-old girls.
Previous research by Internet Matters on the self-generation of abuse images found children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and those excluded from school are more likely to be impacted.
It suggested that the normalisation of image-sharing among young people, gender-based bullying and the manipulation of young people by predators has led to the increase.
Campaigners are concerned that predators could use the images to blackmail victims to provide more self-generated content.
Simone Vibert, head of policy and research at Internet Matters, said: “The surge in recent years of so-called self-generated CSAM is deeply disturbing. Efforts to remove it from circulation are necessary and important – but so is preventing its creation in the first place.”
The latest research will focus on how best to prevent the creation and distribution of self-generated images among young people.
Internet Matters plans to work with young people, parents and teachers to consider the most effective ways to share prevention messaging, including through the curriculum, pastoral work in schools, face-to-face interactions with peers and social media campaigns.
Simone Vibert, Head of Policy and Research at Internet Matters said: "We are concerned that some education programmes focus too heavily on the risks associated with image-sharing and offers a message which fail to resonate with young people; educational messaging is more effective when it focuses on healthy relationships, consent and inclusive sex education.”
Eleanor Bradley, Managing Director at Nominet, added: “It’s important that we help young people protect themselves from exploitation. The technology industry needs to act fast and make greater efforts to prevent this material from being created, and we’re playing our part by supporting Internet Matters to deliver the responses needed to this problem.”
