Today in Congress, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a public hearing on the crisis of online Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) and how X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Snap (Snapchat), Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and Discord are contributing to the crisis and should improve their policies to protect children. Currently, 9 bills are being considered in Congress to address the problem. Click here for a MassKids summary of what they would do.
Meanwhile, as we await federal action, several states are focused on strengthening their own laws to build online protections for children. For example:
- MassKids is currently working with Massachusetts legislators and parents to draft a bill that would prohibit persons from developing and sharing images of children that are edited, collaged, morphed or AI-generated.
- MassKids supports An Act to Prevent Abuse and Exploitation - a bill that would establish an educational program on the legal and non-legal consequences of sexting to educate youth charged with disseminating, producing or possessing CSAM.
MassKids strongly advocates for passage of a set of CSA prevention bills that would: require CSA prevention education of staff and children in schools and youth organizations; standardize screening of prospective new school employees to prevent hiring those with histories of sexual misconduct and abuse of students; criminalize sexual abuse by adults in positions of authority, including educators, regardless of the age of consent. Urge your legislators to move these bills out of committee now and onto the floor for passage where we expect unanimous support.
Some facts you should know:
- In 2023 alone, over 36 million reports of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) were received by the National Center on Missing and Exploited Children.
- In 2023, 186,000 children were victims of online sextortion (an increase from 80,000 in 2022). Sextortion is when someone threatens to share sexual images of a child online if the child doesn’t meet their demands for money or for more sexual images.
- 20 cases of suicide by youth have been reported in response to their facing sextortion threats or having their images posted.
- Most perpetrators of online crimes against children are not “dangerous strangers” but are people with legitimate access to them, including parents (biological, step or adoptive), relatives, babysitters, neighbors, etc.
- Two-thirds of online sexual imagery of children appear to have been produced in the home.
MassKids pledges to continue educating ourselves and you, our supporters, about the disturbing impact of sexual abuse and exploitation on children and how citizens can support efforts to strengthen our laws and policies to protect children.
For more information about Internet Safety for children and parents, visit our Enough Abuse website.
