When the danger comes through a child’s phone: One in five children exposed to sexual content online
A child using a mobile phone. A new Unicef report shows one million Kenyan children have been exposed to unwanted sexual content online.
What you need to know:
- Report shows Kenya has the third-highest rate of children exposed to unwanted sexual content online among 21 countries surveyed.
- Most Kenyan child victims knew their abusers personally, with WhatsApp the platform most used to target them.
- Despite the scale of abuse, only about one per cent of cases are reported to police.
About one million internet-using Kenyan children have been exposed to unwanted sexual content online, the most common form of technology-facilitated sexual abuse identified in a new Unicef report.
The report, Through the Child's Eyes: How Digital Technologies Enable Abuse, found that Kenya recorded the third-highest exposure rate among the 21 countries surveyed, at 20.1 per cent. Uganda topped the list, followed closely by Ethiopia.
The findings are based on nationally representative household survey data collected between 2020 and 2025, drawn from internet-using children aged 12 to 17 across the 21 countries.
Overall, the report estimates that more than 15 million children were exposed to unwanted sexual content, nine million were pressured into sexual conversations or asked to share sexual images against their will, and four million had sexual images of themselves shared without their consent. Unicef believes the true scale is likely much higher, as many cases involving children go unrecorded.
Children who experienced these forms of abuse were four times more likely to report suicidal thoughts and behaviours such as self-harm, the report found.
Researchers built the study around seven indicators linked to sexual exploitation and violence facilitated by technology. They found abusers were mainly strangers, people known to the child, or unidentified perpetrators. In Kenya specifically, most abusers were people the children knew personally, and the abuse mostly played out on social media, WhatsApp being the platform where most of these interactions took place.
"Across the 21 countries included in the study, Meta-owned platforms, particularly Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, were, on average, the platforms on which children most frequently experienced incidents of technology-facilitated sexual abuse," the report states.
Children described experiences involving manipulation, pressure, coercion, grooming and exploitation of trust, from both people they knew and strangers.
"These accounts demonstrate that technology can enable perpetrators to initiate, maintain, or escalate harmful interactions, including within relationships where children may initially feel safe," the report notes.
Also read: Phone is new hard drug for teens
Across all 21 countries, an estimated 20 million children aged 12 to 17, roughly one in five internet-using children, were subjected to at least one form of technology-facilitated sexual exploitation or abuse within a single year.
Of the nine million children asked to engage in sexual conversations or share sexual images or videos against their will, about 630,000 were Kenyan.
The report found that offenders used sexually explicit conversations to groom, manipulate or desensitise children, often by misrepresenting their identity, building trust through attention and emotional validation, and gradually steering conversations towards personal or sexual topics, including soliciting content from the child.
"It can be difficult for children to recognise these behaviours as abusive, given their gradual nature, especially if the perpetrator is someone they know or trust," the report says.
"The distinction between consensual and non-consensual sharing of sexual content is not always clear, particularly in relationships characterised by power imbalances, emotional dependence, or limited understanding of consent and privacy," it adds.
Five million children surveyed said perpetrators had offered them money in exchange for sexual favours. Of these, about 375,436 were Kenyan.
Without consent
"Commercial sexual exploitation is not always recognised by children as exploitation. For some, sharing sexual content for money was viewed as providing a degree of financial independence and autonomy," the report indicates, adding: "Economic vulnerability, unequal power relations and limited recognition of exploitation can shape children's experiences, making financially motivated sexual exploitation particularly difficult to identify and address."
Other children fell victim to having their images shared without consent. During the study period, 355,251 Kenyan children reported that their images had been circulated without their permission.
"Perpetrators often obtain sexual images or videos after adolescents share them within the context of a trusted or perceived relationship, or by capturing images or videos without the child's knowledge or consent. They then distribute the images to humiliate, manipulate, coerce, or maintain control," the report explains.
Children in this age group rarely recognise this as abuse, and once their images were shared, many were left grappling with shame, guilt and self-blame.
"Young people described intense fear, shame and anxiety, often driven by uncertainty about who had seen the images, whether they continued to circulate, or if they might reappear in the future," the report shows.
While Kenyan children have not yet been exposed to AI-generated sexual imagery, the report notes that children in other countries are already facing this emerging threat.
"The harms caused by fabricated images extend well beyond the digital environment. Even though these images are not real, the consequences can be just as severe. Interviews with children collected under the Disrupting Harm project illustrate the shame, stigma and social or moral judgment that children face when such content is shared online," the report says.
Unicef says children need support to understand healthy relationships, consent, boundaries and respectful behaviour, both online and offline.
"Children may not always recognise when requests, interactions, or exchanges involving sexual content are inappropriate or harmful, particularly in contexts where peer pressure, curiosity, social expectations, or unequal dynamics influence behaviours," the report states.
Despite the scale of the problem, reporting remains extremely low. Only one per cent of cases have been reported to the Kenyan police, 0.4 per cent to a social worker, and 0.6 per cent through a helpline.
