Sexual crimes against children online are growing at an alarming rate around the world, a study by Childlight, a data institute based at University of Edinburgh, reveals.
"Searchlight 2023", a first of its global kind, puts the number at a shocking 302 million children. Yes, Malaysian children are somewhere there, though we do not know the exact number.
One reason is that not many are reporting such crimes to the police. But the United Nations Children's Education Fund (Unicef) estimated it to be four per cent of Malaysian children with access to the Internet or 100,000 were victims of some form of sexual exploitation or abuse online in 2022.
Quoting Malaysian police data, Unicef also noted a drastic increase in average monthly number of IP addresses suspected of engaging in child sexual abuse material: four in 2017, 4,062 in 2021 and 4,795 in 2022. Childlight is treating it as a public health emergency. We must, too.
But parents may be our first hurdle. Many, if not all, are quick to share their children's identities on social media platforms such as Facebook, not realising that their inadvertent "sharenting" is helping predators to target their loved ones.
Technology such as artificial intelligence is making it possible for criminal gangs and other predators to use such identity markers to trace their potential victims. If Malaysians felt safe before, they must now exercise more than the usual caution.
The dark online world has found a way through the locked doors of our homes through social media platforms. Yet, parents are of two minds when it comes to restricting access of such platforms to their children as this newspaper discovered through interviews.
Anecdotal though this is, it is an indicator nevertheless. The government is working hard to restrict social media accounts to children above age 13, but some parents aren't helping.
Parental inadvertence, they will come to realise, is a dangerous thing. Parents are a hurdle in another way. Many leave the children to their own devices — forgive the pun — untutored and unsupervised.
Some parents think closely supervising children goes against the grain of 21st century living. They can't be more wrong. Data disagrees with them.
Laws can help, but only so much. The arm of the law may be long, but cyberspace is a blackhole. Perhaps a treaty among nations may be more fruitful.
How international treaties are abused doesn't promote faith in such international legal instruments. For sure, social media platforms can curb cybercrimes such as child sexual exploitation and abuse. Unfortunately, not all are volunteering.
The best approach is to aim for measures that are within our control. Here, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, law enforcement agencies and public health authorities can come together to share their data to uncover hidden abuses.
Nature has granted the best control to parents. Being parents, they must teach themselves how online child sexual exploitation and abuse happens. They must pass this lesson to their children.
Next, they must learn how to keep an eye on teenagers aged 15 and above when they surf the Internet. As for the younger ones, parents must learn how to restrict access to the Internet.