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The information about what is truly happening and how to stop the trend does not reach victims and their families effectively, and most choose not to report abuse out of fear.
Sexual abuse and harassment that occur in the real world have transitioned to the digital sphere, leveraging it. However, most cases do not involve a stranger contacting a minor through social networks while pretending to be someone their age. In most cases (53%), it is someone the victim knows or is from their environment, according to a report commissioned by the Fundación Mutua Madrileña and the Guardia Civil. Strangers also pose a threat, but to a lesser extent (17%), and only 13% of cases involve individuals the minors know exclusively from the digital world.
Additionally, experts in child protection are witnessing a surge with artificial intelligence (AI), which expands the range of harassment methods, such as the use of fake nudes, which are no longer limited to celebrities. This practice has become commonplace in many cases of school bullying and sexual abuse in family environments. The digital world’s enabling effect for those seeking to commit sexual violence against children is immense. According to experts, the worst is yet to come with the arrival of increasingly advanced digital tools that facilitate such acts.
Taking naked pictures of oneself with or for a boy or girl is common among many teenagers. If they hesitate when asked, they face typical reproaches: being called boring, reminded that their previous partner did it, or told that everyone else does it. This pressure is compounded by how deeply integrated the digital world is into minors’ lives, often leading them to downplay the significance of posting sexually suggestive content on their profiles and social networks.
When abuse occurs, the narrative also repeats itself: the blame falls on the victim for being provocative. Fear of their parents blaming them for taking the photo prevents them from disclosing the sexual abuse or bullying and from reporting it. As a result, the perpetrator, despite promising the content would remain private, shares it with the entire class or posts it online, where it spirals out of control, often landing on child pornography forums.
The fear of telling parents
“Silence and loneliness are the primary reactions of these minors,” explains sociologist Marta Delgado from the Twiga Research Institute and one of the authors of the study Violence Against Children and Adolescents in the Digital Environment, published this June. “Victims do not disclose the abuse to their parents in 75% of cases of sexual violence and tell no one in one out of three cases. Many minors face this threat alone, especially in early adolescence, between the ages of 13 and 15, when they are most vulnerable to abuse or sexual extortion by individuals from their environment,” Delgado adds.
After analyzing the situation and reviewing the data, the Guardia Civil and Fundación Mutua Madrileña will launch a campaign in the coming weeks “targeted specifically at minors, their parents, and families to raise awareness about the severity of this problem, which will only worsen in the coming years with the advantages that the digital world and now artificial intelligence (AI) provide to pedophiles and predators,” Palomo emphasizes.
“The taboo surrounding these issues, which prevents disclosure, is especially pronounced in severe cases, such as sextortion, where victims are threatened or blackmailed into having sexual relations or providing more intimate content under the threat of disseminating sexual content about them,” Delgado explains. She identifies the main reasons minors remain silent: shame (25%), lack of trust (23.5%), and fear of reprimand (18%).
The study includes two components, qualitative (focus group discussions) and quantitative. It examines two age groups: adolescents (16 to 18 years old) and young adults (19 to 22 years old). One 20-year-old interviewee commented on the silence surrounding such incidents: “Images always remain on some device and can be resent. At that age, you don’t know how to handle it. If you tell your parents, they’ll scold you.” The survey corroborates these fears: among minors who did tell their parents, 58.8% said their parents didn’t understand and blamed them for what happened.
“The recommendation for parents is to create an environment of trust and support—not only to prevent such situations but also to ensure the child feels safe sharing any incident. Emphasizing that they are not alone, that it’s essential to speak out, and that these situations can be resolved is crucial,” Delgado adds.
No cyberbullying without bullying
Clinical psychologist José Ramón Ubieto explains, “Cyberbullying doesn’t make sense without bullying.” “If someone bullies you from Canada, you disconnect, and that’s it. But if it’s a classmate, it’s a different story—you have to confront them, respond, and that’s when silence and resignation occur. It’s bullying extended through technology, originating from an existing problem in their environment.”
Ubieto, a renowned expert on the subject, is part of the World Association of Psychoanalysis and has authored several books, including Addicted or Lovers?: Keys to Digital Mental Health in Children and Adolescents. His upcoming book, 21st Century Adolescence: Between Frenzy and Vertigo, will be published next month.
The psychologist highlights that bullying occurs because of the presence of an audience: “In this scenario, there’s the aggressor and the victim, but there are also onlookers observing the spectacle and, finally, parents and teachers and how they respond to the situation. The audience plays a crucial role, and most adopt a passive attitude.”
He shares an example of a girl who would send a daily WhatsApp message to a bullied classmate to encourage her. However, she only did so privately from home, never openly at school, remaining passive out of fear of becoming the next target.
For young people, there’s no distinction between the real and virtual worlds; they are one and the same, where communication flows seamlessly between the two. At this age, they experiment with different personas, influenced by trends on platforms like TikTok. According to Ubieto, “The main issue with bullying cases is that parents are almost always unaware, and teachers fail to provide the protection and response children need. Adolescents are in a stage where they want to be both children and adults simultaneously. They seek freedom and information but also the protection of adults, and they struggle to navigate this balance.”
Concerning the reluctance to report incidents, Ubieto confirms that “the taboo arises from feelings of guilt and the shame of not knowing how to respond to the situation.” He continues, “That’s what makes someone a victim—not being able to challenge the aggressor solidifies their role as a victim and inhibits them further. The aggressor seeks the victim’s Achilles heel, and once they find it, they act.”
“The perpetrator is not, as we often associate, an adult hiding behind the internet, but rather peers or slightly older individuals from the victim’s physical world. The real and digital worlds are not parallel; the digital world acts as an amplifier of daily life,” explains Delgado. “The result is that victims feel a genuine lack of control over their lives because once content is online, it stays there,” she adds.
This type of sexual violence has a more significant psychological impact on girls than boys, affecting them more profoundly. Boys often perceive it as a betrayal of trust from their friends, while girls experience it as an assault. Regarding perpetrators, the study highlights that cases more frequently occur from boys to girls or from boys or groups of boys to other boys. “However, all of this dispels the myth that the risks of the internet are centered on a man contacting a girl through social networks. Girls are often aware of this type of danger but are not as prepared for incidents involving people close to them,” Delgado points out.
Child pornography: Another type of violence spread online
Beyond cases of digital sexual violence that arise from minors using the internet to interact (with peers or others, known or unknown), there is another form of digital violence against them, committed both online and offline, unrelated to their regular internet use.
According to data from the Fundación de Ayuda a Niños y Adolescentes en Riesgo (ANAR), collected between 2019 and 2023, 79.5% of sexual assaults originate from people in the victim’s close environment, including friends or acquaintances, while 50.3% come from family members.
Andrés Palomo, who has handled such cases for 17 years at the Guardia Civil, explains, “There are cases of children aged eight or nine who see interactions with an adult as a game because that person is a figure of trust for them, and at that age, they don’t fully understand sexuality. Additionally, there are cases of underage girls who don’t report what is happening to them out of fear of being criticized or feeling shame.”
Regarding reports, he mentions that some come from information shared by other police agencies regarding different offenses. “Some actions are made possible through citizen collaboration. We also receive information from Europol and Interpol on suspected cases originating in Spain. In total, between 6,000 and 7,000 such cases are identified in Spain monthly,” Palomo reveals.
There is an entire subworld of child pornography content on the dark web—content that isn’t indexed and can only be accessed through specialized browsers, explains Palomo. He describes, “There are even children well-known on these networks, whom pedophiles recognize by name. Some have been ‘famous’ for 20 or 30 years, but the content continues to circulate because for new pedophiles, these materials are new and just as appealing.”
Two significant factors contributing to the rise in online sexual violence cases are early use of social media and owning a personal mobile phone, Palomo highlights. “Boys are often lured by pedophiles offering access to specific apps or games their parents won’t buy them, while girls are manipulated into believing the predator is their true love, even if they’ve only been chatting online for three months before sharing photos or videos.”
The pandemic: A turning point
“The number of videos involving minors and online pornography has increased significantly from pre-pandemic to post-pandemic periods. During these phases, pedophiles intensified their grooming efforts through ‘fishing tactics,’ casting wide nets in hopes of catching victims,” Palomo explains. “The main issue is that these young individuals have a distorted sense of risk, as these interactions often occur with acquaintances they consider friends or strangers they mistake for friends, who then exploit them,” adds the officer.
The Guardia Civil expert mentions numerous cases where aggressors start as pedophiles, consuming sexual content, and eventually transition into pederasty, actively abusing minors. Examples include the cases of the Lasalle priest and the Fuenlabrada teacher, who allegedly abused children.
“The most significant increase has been in child pornography and related to video games. Then there are cases of underage girls posting in lingerie on social media to attract clicks, only to be exploited through grooming or traded explicit content for something in return. There are also other cases of sexual abuse stemming from close environments, such as grandparents, uncles, aunts, step-siblings, stepfathers, fathers, teachers, and youth group leaders,” Palomo adds.
In some devices, authorities have discovered up to 1,000 child pornography photos accompanied by threatening messages, amounting to extortion crimes. These materials often end up on global child pornography networks.
Greater family support and societal involvement
Regarding solutions for technology-related sexual violence against minors, Delgado emphasizes that parents should ensure their children feel they can always reach out without fear of reprimand.
Parents can also seek assistance from organizations equipped to remove intimate content uploaded online about minors, such as the UK-based Report Remove or the US Take It Down.
Ubieto believes “the most effective way to address this issue is to form groups of eight to ten boys and girls and have them empathize with victims, possibly by hearing directly from one of them about their experiences. This approach is impactful because they see the victim as a peer, which helps them grasp the danger,” he states.
“The digital realm is contrary to reflective thinking and pausing to consider,” Ubieto concludes, “so the remedies must target adolescents, creating diverse interventions, from school-based initiatives with comprehensive coexistence plans to open conversations with parents, educating them on how to address topics like screen time, drugs, sexual matters, and stress.” He also calls for administrative action, emphasizing the need for clear rules, legislation, minor data protection, and AI regulation in this context.
Palomo, from the Guardia Civil’s Technical Unit of Judicial Police Intelligence, highlights collaborative campaigns soon to be launched, international efforts with law enforcement agencies, and the work of the US-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
NCMEC, a US nonprofit, partners with law enforcement and major internet companies to monitor online content, identify potential pedophilia cases, and remove harmful images and videos. This initiative exemplifies that much more can be done to curb the growing trend of virtual sexual violence against minors.