UNICEF Reports Online Sexual Abuse

A United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) report which surfaced on Tuesday, said that eight out of 10 young adults are at risk of being sexually abused especially through the internet.

According to the UNICEF report, most teenagers are taken advantage of online, adding that more than half of them think that their friends participate in risky online behavior. It said that more than 10,000 18-year-old participants from 25 countries had showed young adults’ awareness of the dangers of online abuse, especially as children make up one-third of internet users globally.

In Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, two-third of 18-year-old strongly believe that children and adolescents are in danger of being sexually abused online. In the Middle East and North Africa, only 33 per cent of those polled said they strongly believed that.

More than 60 per cent of adolescents in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa believed either strongly or somewhat that their friends put themselves at risk online. In the U.S. and Britain only 36 per cent of adolescents said their friends engaged in risky behavior online. In the Middle East and North Africa the figure stood at 40 per cent.

“The internet and mobile phones have revolutionized young people’s access to information. However, the poll findings show just how real the risk of online abuse is for girls and boys,” UNICEF’s Associate Director of Child Protection, Cornelius Williams, said.

The report found that while recognizing the risks, nearly 90 per cent of respondents were also confident in their ability to be safe online. The most confident being 18-year-old from the U.S. and Britain 94 per cent of whom said they can avoid online dangers.