Childlight released its Into the Light 2026 data update in May, revealing that 38.6 percent of females and 19 percent of males globally report experiences of online sexual solicitation, with 37.4 percent of children in Western Europe affected before age 18. The research documents that females report higher rates of online solicitation, sexual exploitation and sexual extortion than males, while males report more unwanted exposure to sexual content and image-based sexual abuse. The study also identified over 1,500 devices containing child abuse guidance material, often called paedophile manuals, detected across more than 60 countries, which frontline practitioners now consider part of risk assessment for potential perpetrators.
The 38-percent solicitation rate among girls before adulthood translates to tens of millions of grooming approaches, sextortion attempts and exploitation offers reaching children in direct messages, gaming chat and platform DMs where parents, schools and even platform moderators have no real-time visibility. Guardii's anti-grooming and anti-sextortion filters monitor those private channels across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other platforms, detecting the manipulation tactics, age-gap contact patterns, and coercive language that precede image requests and offline meetings. By surfacing a child at risk to a parent or safeguarding professional the moment a grooming sequence begins, the platform closes the operational gap the Childlight data exposes: that more than one in three girls will be targeted, but most will never report until harm has already occurred.
