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Global Threat Assessment 2025
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Digital safety

Why digital safety matters

Digital safety isn’t just about giving children access to technology – it’s about creating spaces where they can explore, learn, and connect without fear of harm.

The Global Threat Assessment 2025 shows that safety must be embedded into every stage of product design and company culture, not treated as an afterthought.

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Safety by design and child rights by design

Safety by design means asking: “What would we do differently if the end user was a child?*”

It shifts responsibility to companies to ensure products do not cause harm.

Key features include child rights impact assessments, privacy protections, and child-centered design.

*(OECD).

What our members are doing
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HMD Fuse

Child-safe smartphone with built-in AI content filter and restricted mode.
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Apple Communication Safety

Detects nudity in images/videos, warns child, provides age-appropriate guidance and parental controls.

I think a lot of the time it’s very tricky to actually find where to report, and there’s not much on how it actually works.

15-year-old female, UK

Proactively detect and disrupt harm

Companies must proactively detect harmful content and behaviours using AI-powered tools and ensure children can report concerns easily and safely.

Reporting should trigger timely removal of harmful content and connect users to support services.

What our members are doing
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Thorn’s Safer AI tools

Detect and report CSAM across platforms.
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Tech Coalition’s Lantern Program

Enables industry-wide signal sharing to detect and remove harmful content.

When we ask the offenders where do you contact children, they say, of course it’s in the open web and the social media and the gaming platforms, where the children are.

Civil society representative

Building trust through transparency

Transparency is critical for accountability and progress. Companies should commit to publishing child safety transparency reports that go beyond generic metrics.

These reports should include:
  • Child rights impact assessments and findings.
  • Data on risks and harms, such as victim and perpetrator demographics.
  • Effectiveness of safety measures, e.g., session abandonment rates or click-throughs to support services after warnings.
  • Standardised child safety metrics across industry for comparability.

Without transparency, harmful practices remain hidden, and progress stalls. Public reporting and independent audits help ensure companies prioritise child safety over profit.

Actionable examples:

These steps are aimed at technology companies, with support and oversight from regulators and independent bodies:

  • Mandatory child rights impact assessments
    By companies, before launching new products. This ensures features are evaluated for risks to children’s safety and rights, using frameworks like UNICEF’s D-CRIA Toolbox.
  • Annual child safety transparency reports
    By companies, published in accessible formats. These reports should detail risks, harms, and the effectiveness of safety measures, enabling accountability and comparison across industry.
  • Independent oversight bodies
    By regulators and multi-stakeholder coalitions. External review mechanisms verify compliance and hold companies accountable for child safety commitments.

Only 4% of children report sexual extortion to the platform where it occurred.

‘The nature and extent of youth sextortion: Legal implications and directions for future research’ by Patchin JW, Hinduja S.

60% of the top 50 global content-sharing platforms publish no information on how they address child sexual exploitation.

OECD Digital Economy Papers; vol. 357

Global Threat Assessment 2025

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Download the Global Threat Assessment

Prevention Framework

Download the Prevention Framework

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Download: AI: What you need to know to stay safe

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Download: Staying safe online

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