Children under the age of 10 are increasingly being targeted by paedophiles online, figures from The Internet Watch Foundation suggest.
The internet watchdog received 392,660 reports of possible abuse images on websites in 2023, of which 275,655 were found to contain such material.
Of those, 107,615 (39%) were found to contain images of children under 10, up from 64,735 pages out of 255,580 (25%) in 2022. Its chief executive also criticised plans by Meta to bring in end-to-end encryption on Facebook Messenger.
Lynn Perry MBE, Barnardo’s Chief Executive, said:
“Young children are being forced to share sexual images and videos online on a horrific scale. Sexual abuse has devastating, life-long consequences for children, and without swift action to detect these crimes, their images can be shared and viewed endlessly.
“The rollout of automatic end-to-end encryption across Meta’s messenger services means the company will no longer be able to detect, and therefore report and remove, hundreds of thousands of suspected child abuse cases every single year, unless child protection technology is put in place.
“Meta has not shared how it will identify illegal images of children on its messenger services once these changes are made- so it is very likely that it will be easier for offenders to groom children, to make, share or view sexual images of children, and avoid detection by law enforcement agencies. Meta needs to demonstrate that these steps won’t make it easier for offenders to target and abuse children on its platform.”