New research estimates that roughly 1.5 million children who use the internet experienced sexual exploitation or abuse linked to digital technology in a single year. Nearly one in 16 internet-using children aged 12 to 17 faced at least one incident of that kind. The figures come from Disrupting Harm in Pakistan, a study published in September 2026 by Unicef, the United Nations children's agency, together with ECPAT International and INTERPOL, the international police organisation.
What children reported
Children in the study described unwanted sexual images or conversations, demands that they provide intimate photographs, images of them shared without consent, and sexual threats or blackmail. The term for this pattern is technology-facilitated sexual exploitation or abuse: harm that digital tools made possible. Both the 1.5 million estimate and the one-in-16 rate refer to that same group of internet-using children, counted over one year.
In the incidents children described, the person responsible was someone they already knew 85 per cent of the time. Social media was the setting for 44 per cent of reported instances, the biggest share of any digital space in the study. Those children were describing people already in their lives. A check limited to unknown contacts would leave most of that pattern unseen.
Why so few children speak
Fear, stigma and trouble at home often stop children from telling anyone. They may expect blame, humiliation, or new restrictions from their families. Boys can be missed for a further reason set out with these findings: social expectations about masculinity, and a reluctance to discuss sexual abuse.
Unicef says more than half of the children who experienced this harm did not tell anyone. Among children surveyed, none reported it through a helpline, a social worker or the police. The published findings highlight the need for reporting that is safe, confidential and accessible. On this evidence, that harm also includes children who told no one.
What a UN official warned
On Monday, Najat Maalla M'jid presented her final report to the UN General Assembly. She is the secretary-general's Special Representative on Violence Against Children, and she asked governments to strengthen protection for children living through several crises at once. Speaking to journalists at UN Headquarters in New York, she said: "Almost 45 million children are displaced because of conflict, but also because of natural disasters, because of the climate crisis." That displacement figure is global.
She described fast-moving technology as something that can help children learn and communicate while also creating new risks. Artificial intelligence, in her account, has opened "huge avenues for child sexual exploitation", alongside "cyberbullying, deepfakes and the recruitment of children into criminal activities." A full 20 years separated this presentation from the UN's first global study on violence against children. Progress since then, she warned, has not removed the layered crises that followed the Covid-19 pandemic.
The General Assembly, on the same Monday, identified sexual material generated by artificial intelligence as an emerging risk. Beside those international warnings, the Pakistan figures still rest on the September study: about 1.5 million children in one year, someone already known to the child in 85 per cent of incidents, and more than half of the children telling no one.
Aasan alfaaz mein
Pakistan mein taqreeban 15 lakh aise bachay, jo internet istemal karte hain, ek saal mein online sexual abuse ya exploitation ka samna kar chuke hain. Ye bachay 12 se 17 saal ke thay, aur internet wale bachon mein har 16 mein se qareeb ek ke sath aisa hua. Zyada tar dafa ye kaam kisi ajnabi ne nahi kiya, balkay kisi aise shakhs ne jo bachay ko pehle se janta tha, aur social media sab se aam jagah thi. Aadhe se zyada bachon ne kisi ko nahi bataya, is liye ghar par blame ya sakhti ka khauf unhein chup kara sakta hai.
