Thron’s new report on minors’ views and responses to potentially harmful online sexual interactions
Thron’s latest report, entitled Responding to Online Threats: Minors’ Perspective on Disclosing, Reporting, and Blocking in 2021, found that 22 percent of minors report having online sexual interactions with adults—the same percentage of minors who report having sexual interactions with peers their own age.
In collaboration with the Benenson Strategy Group, Thron has published a new report entitled ‘Responding to Online Threats: Minors’ Perspectives on Disclosing, Reporting and Blocking in 2021‘. Thron has conducted several research projects on self-generated child sexual abuse content, an important issue in the fight against online child sexual exploitation. Thorn surveyed 1,000 minors between the ages of 9 and 17 about their attitudes and experiences of online interventions (e.g. user blocking or reporting) in the context of potentially harmful online sexual interactions.
The results of this survey showed that
1. Similar numbers of minors continue to report having sex online with peers and people they consider to be adults.
2. Unlike offline support networks, minors are roughly 2.5 times more likely to respond to online sexual contact through online support resources.
3. When responding to online sexual contacts, minors prefer blocking over reporting as the primary online safety option.
4. Recontact rates for minors remain high, with half of the minors saying that problematic users recontacted them after blocking or reporting them.
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