Published: Tue 9 Aug 2022
Written by: Jordan King, Metro
The UK is suffering a ‘social and digital emergency’ because of huge spikes in kids recording their abuse, a report says.
Almost 20,000 children between seven and 10 who were sexually abused online in the first six months of this year were forced or manipulated into filming it themselves, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has found.
This is nearly 8,000 more cases of ‘self-generated abuse’ than the near 12,000 cases recorded for the same period last year.
It’s the second year in a row these numbers have seen an alarming rise.
Since the UK’s first lockdown in March 2020, there has been a 360% increase in self-generated abusive images.
This is likely due to a combination of lockdowns keeping children at home, with more time online and organisations like IWF’s improved techniques in finding the right material.
Read more at Metro.
The BBC’s been investigating the rise in child sex abuse material resulting from the rapid proliferation of open-source AI image generators.
