GENEVA, Sept 3 - About 20 million internet-using children across 21 countries were subjected to sexual exploitation or abuse on digital platforms in a single year, with most cases occurring on social media platforms, a new report by the U.N. children's charity said on Thursday.

More than one in five children aged 12 to 17 across Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe experienced at least one form of sexual abuse or exploitation on online platforms in the year before being surveyed, the UNICEF report estimated.

Roughly 15 million children in the countries surveyed were exposed to unwanted sexual content, 9 million were pressured into sexual conversations or sharing sexual images, and 4 million had sexual images shared without their consent, the report found.

The number of children subjected to this abuse globally is certain to run into many tens of millions, it said.

The research, which UNICEF described as one of the largest studies of its kind, was based on national representative surveys collected between 2020 and 2025 of around 21,000 internet-using children in the 21 countries, which included Kenya, Pakistan, Brazil and Serbia.

SOCIAL MEDIA FOCUS

Almost 60% of reported abuse occurred on social media platforms, led by Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok, while 14% took place in online gaming, the report found.

A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, said the surveys go as far back as 2020, before the company introduced protections UNICEF recommends such as automatically defaulting teens into private accounts and preventing adults from messaging teens they are not connected to. It added that it defines WhatsApp as a private messaging app and not a social media platform.

"While the report doesn't provide any specific evidence of abuse, we'll continue to fight child exploitation aggressively across our apps and support law enforcement in prosecuting the criminals behind it," the Meta spokesperson said.

Snapchat pointed Reuters to a ...