Issue | Canary

This is not an easy issue

The darkest truths are the hardest to face and accept. Every moment of understanding brings us one step closer to a safer world for every child.

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What we are facing

Online child sexual exploitation isn’t one dimensional; it’s a spectrum of abuse.

At Canary, our work addresses a range of harms, largely through these three key areas:

The Issue

Online Child Sex Trafficking

Amika was 6 years old when her parents separated. Her Dad was incarcerated when she was 9. Her Mom had a hard time paying the bills and keeping up with her four kids and eventually the kids were turned over to child protective services and into the foster care system. Amika felt lonely and deserted. At 15 years old, she met her “boyfriend” online. He fills a void for her she can’t get at home. She decides to run away from foster care to be with him. He provides her with her basic needs, and “what she thinks is love”, until he asks her to do him a favor just once - to sell herself for sex. It gets worse over time; he posts her pictures on escort sites, she’s sold 8 times a day. He takes her money and threatens and beats her when she tries to leave him.

What This Is

Child sex trafficking is one of the most pervasive forms of child abuse. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 250,000–325,000 children are at risk of sex trafficking at any given time.

It occurs when anyone under 18 is advertised, solicited, or exploited in exchange for money, shelter, food, drugs, or something else of value. Children experiencing housing instability, homelessness, and other vulnerabilities are at heightened risk. Traffickers often use these very vulnerabilities to groom, exploit, and control them.

How technology Enables It

Technology is being used to recruit, advertise and exploit children at scale — via public platforms and apps we all recognize, as well as encrypted messaging apps and networks designed to evade detection. The vastness of these spaces means abuse can spread fast and wide, overwhelming traditional safeguards.

The Issue

Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM)

Two weeks after John moves in with his girlfriend, he begins sexually abusing her 6-year-old son Sam. John records the abuse and shares the videos with other offenders in a forum on the Dark Web. Other community members encourage John to abuse Sam in specific ways and then share the abuse. The abuser’s rank in the group gets stronger as he produces more abuse material, so he perpetuates the abuse.

What This Is

Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is any form of media that documents the sexual exploitation or abuse of children. Most victims in these images are young (often prepubescent) children, many still unidentified, and the abuse they suffer is severe. In 2024, 20.5 million images and videos of child sexual abuse were reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC).

How technology Enables It

Today, most CSAM is created, stored, and shared as digital files. CSAM may be produced through:

Contact/physical abuse by a trusted adult, caregiver, family member, or fellow child
Self-produced images via sextortion, grooming threats, or other coercive tactics
Image theft from social media or private accounts
Live streams where the viewer explicitly directs the sexual abuse or manipulation of the minor(s)
Generative AI used to turn non-sexual images into abuse material and extend existing CSAM series

Once created, offenders often distribute CSAM across the open and dark web for their own sexual gratification, money, clout, and other unjust motives.

The Issue

Sextortion

Ryan, a 16-year-old, thinks he’s talking to a new girl he just met online. Minutes after sending an image, he’s threatened with mass exposure unless he pays or sends more. He feels trapped in shame and terrified to tell anyone.

What This Is

Sextortion occurs when offenders threaten to share sexual, intimate, damaging images of children to force them into meeting their financial or other demands. Sextortion cases can advance rapidly, sometimes moving from initial message to coercion within hours of a single online conversation. The intentional shame or embarrassment of the child in sextortion cases becomes a tool to isolate them, exacerbating the situation.

How technology Enables It

Sextortion threats are predominantly made via digital forums, such as gaming platforms, social media and direct messaging services (e.g., Roblox, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook Messenger).The materials are often nude or sexual images of the victim that can be real digital files, or fabricated through generative AI technology. Once created, these materials can be shared far and wide through encrypted messaging apps, cloud storage, and file-sharing services.

The path forward

Every second of a child’s life matters. Every.

Each digital touch point presents a hidden signal that can trace back to a child being exploited. But only when actioned.

We offer tools and insights that empower first responders to parse through data, find children, and support their identification— faster.

Because safeguarding a child’s dignity and wellbeing begins with vigilance — and ends with a future where child sexual exploitation doesn’t exist at all.

Learn About Our Work