UK Internet Watch Foundation reports 34% rise in self-generated child abuse imagery

The Internet Watch Foundation published its annual report on 5 September 2026, documenting a 34 percent increase in self-generated child sexual abuse material—images and videos children are coerced or manipulated into producing themselves, often during online grooming or sextortion. The IWF found that 92 percent of this material featured children aged 11 to 15, and that much of it was first shared via direct messages on Instagram, Snapchat and messaging apps before being distributed more widely.

Prevention requires interception at the moment of coercion, before a child creates or shares an image. Guardii's grooming and sextortion detection modules analyse direct-message conversations for manipulation, isolation, escalation and sexual solicitation in real time across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other platforms, blocking hostile contact before it reaches the child or flagging the conversation for a parent, school or safeguarding authority. The system detects threat patterns rather than scanning images, addressing the upstream driver of self-generated abuse material the IWF has now quantified.