Europe cannot keep asking children to protect themselves from sexual predators

We would not expect children to protect themselves from sexual abuse in schools, sports clubs or youth organisations so why would we adopt such an approach online? This recognition appears increasingly absent from discussions in Brussels where a vital, permanent solution aimed at protecting children is being negotiated this week.

Some European policymakers suggest empowering children through digital literacy, awareness raising and resilience-building should form the primary response to online risks. These measures have value, but they cannot substitute for accountability from the tech companies that design and operate the online platforms where abuse occurs. No serious child protection framework would place the primary burden of prevention on children and victims themselves.

Children who are manipulated into sharing intimate images are not making poor choices, but are responding to sophisticated forms of pressure, deception, blackmail or exploitation. Effective child protection requires systems, safeguards and interventions that reduce opportunities for abuse in the first place.

The scale of the problem makes this narrow position even harder to justify. In 2025, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) actioned a record 311,610 reports containing confirmed child sexual abuse material.

More than 27 per cent of the over 500,000 unique child sexual abuse images and videos identified through this work were ‘self-generated’ by children who had been groomed, deceived or extorted into producing and sharing a sexual image or video of themselves. About 25,000 of these were classified as Category A, the most severe category of abuse, including material depicting rape, sadism and other forms of extreme sexual violence against children.

These figures tell us how child sexual abuse is evolving. The stereotypical image of abuse material being produced by organised criminal networks or adult offenders abusing children in physical settings remains part of the picture, but children are increasingly being targeted directly through digital platforms, manipulated into creating sexual content, and then subjected to further coercion, blackmail and exploitation. The online environment is not merely facilitating abuse; in many cases, it is the primary setting in which abuse begins.

The EU has allowed itself to become trapped in legislative paralysis. Technology companies operating in the bloc previously relied on a temporary legal framework that allowed them to voluntarily detect, remove and report child sexual abuse material on their services. This arrangement was designed as a bridge while European institutions negotiate the long-term Child Sexual Abuse Regulation.

The debate remains polarised, often falsely framed as a choice between privacy and child protection. But democratic societies routinely balance important rights and interests. The question is not whether privacy matters, it does. The question is whether policymakers are willing to engage seriously with how privacy can be protected while also ensuring that technology companies are able to identify and report some of the most serious crimes committed against children – crimes which represent the most serious, lifelong violation of their right to privacy and their right to be free from degrading and inhumane treatment.

The fact that Europe has spent so long debating whether action is even possible should concern every European citizen. While other jurisdictions continue to strengthen child safety frameworks, the EU has struggled to maintain even the minimum conditions necessary for voluntary detection.

A legal framework that provides certainty for the voluntary detection and reporting of child sexual abuse material should represent the floor, not the ceiling, of European ambition.

The connection between children’s wellbeing online and the sexual abuse of children online is not incidental, but structural. Cyberbullying, extortion, intimidation, sextortion, grooming and child sexual abuse often take place on the same platforms, involve the same perpetrators and affect the same children. A child coerced into sharing an intimate image may first have been manipulated, threatened or blackmailed online. A framework that seeks to address one of these harms while ignoring the others is not a coherent child protection strategy.

Europe prides itself on being a global leader in protecting fundamental rights. Yet rights are meaningful only when they protect real people facing real harms. The political difficulties surrounding this issue are undeniable, but leadership is measured by the willingness to confront difficult issues rather than postpone them. Citizens should demand that their representatives stop treating child protection as an intractable political problem and start treating it as the urgent responsibility that it is.

The establishment of a permanent framework that allows companies to continue voluntarily detecting and reporting child sexual abuse material must be regarded as the minimum necessary step towards meeting that responsibility. It is not a burden that should be shouldered by Europe’s children alone.