Over 300 million children a year are victims of technology-facilitated sexual exploitation and abuse

The Childlight Global Child Safety Institute, hosted by the University of Edinburgh and funded by the Human Dignity Foundation, released a groundbreaking report estimating that 302 million young people globally, or 12.5 percent of children, were subject in the past year to online solicitation such as unwanted sexual talk, non-consensual sexting, unwanted sexual questions and unwanted sexual act requests by adults or other youths. The report warns that pupils in every classroom, in every school, in every country are victims of this hidden pandemic occurring at a rate of 10 per second, with North America showing one of the highest prevalence estimates at 23 percent for non-consensual taking, sharing and unwanted exposure to sexual images and videos. Meanwhile, one in nine men in the United States, equating to almost 14 million men, admitted online sexual offending against children at some point in their lives.

A finding that 302 million children annually experience online solicitation, occurring at a rate of 10 per second globally, translates into a detection challenge that cannot be met by manual review or retrospective investigation alone. Pattern-based detection that identifies sustained targeting, escalation and coercion in direct-message exchanges intercepts harmful contact before it reaches the target. Guardii, a world-leading AI online-safety platform and Meta Business Partner, deploys anti-grooming, anti-sextortion and child sexual abuse material detection modules across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other platforms, surfaces a child in crisis to a parent, school or professional, and enables rapid escalation to the right authority in an emergency, detecting threat patterns at scale rather than reading every message.